The Festival de Lanvellec et du Trégor takes its audience inside the église Saint-Efflam at Plestin-les-Grèves for a guided visit that doubles as a recital. Marthe Vassallo, one of the greatest voices of Breton music today, walks the building with Natacha Adlerfliegel, the festival’s guide conférencière. The reading of the church is broken at intervals by chants traditionnels bretons. The sung repertoire returns under the vault that framed it.
Topic: events
Gwennyn présente Enez à l’Espace Keraudy
Enez is Gwennyn’s staged creation, built from dance, song, lighting and costume. Some thirty artists share the stage with her, among them the storyteller Patrick Ewen and musicians well known on the Breton music scene. She sings in Breton, and the costumes she wears were designed by the Quimper embroiderer Pascal Jaouen. The evening lands at the Espace Keraudy in Plougonvelin, one of the halls carrying the creation across the region.
Visite de la Cidrerie Coat Albret à Bédée
Morgan opens the Cidrerie Coat Albret, at La Haie Rénier in Bédée, while the apple pressing is at its height. Visitors follow the fruit through the press, then drink the juice as it comes off, before fermentation has begun. A tasting led by the house compares its apples, its juice and its cider. This is a family holding whose bottled ciders and juices sit among the department’s regional specialities, and Breton games close the children’s round.
France Haliotis: Europe’s only abalone hatchery
France Haliotis runs the only abalone hatchery in Europe. Its team sets out halioculture and algoculture: the biology of the ormeau and of the seaweeds, the secrets of their reproduction, and the rearing of the spat from nought to two centimetres. Photographs and film carry the visit through the growing methods used on land and at sea, the production gear, and what the farm does to protect the natural resource. Recipe ideas close it.
Night walk to the lights of the Pays des Abers
The Pays des Abers tourism office takes walkers onto the GR34 after dark, four kilometres there and back. The route turns on the history of the île Vierge and the île Wrac’h, their lighthouses and the maritime signalling that marks this coast. The guide reads the territory’s heritage under those lights, so the beams become instructions to shipping, not a view. A torch, sturdy shoes and warm waterproof clothing are needed.
Boulangerie Le Signor: pastry and bread at Saint-Thonan
Boulangerie Pâtisserie Le Signor opens its ateliers de fabrication at Saint-Thonan for the Semaines du tourisme économique et des Savoir-Faire. The hour starts on the organic raw materials, the founding choice of the house, then the pâtisserie and its artisanal creations. In the bakery the bread is followed from the pétrissage to the façonnage to the cuisson. It closes in the salle des préparations, on the measures against waste.
Galerie Casanova, Chantal Royant’s glass
Chantal Royant works glass at the Galerie Casanova in Dinard and opens it for the Savoir-Faire fortnight. The round of forty-five minutes passes glass sculptures, art installations and delicate jewellery. The artist was born at Lanester and carried the Studio Glass movement’s experimental method back to this coast. Her forms answer the sea and the Breton landscapes, and the shifting light of the Breton shore that the material keeps transforming.
ESAT Les Genêts d’Or opens its workshops, Plabennec
The Établissement et Service d’Accompagnement par le Travail at Plabennec opens its workshops and lets the workers do the talking. The trades shown are groundskeeping, horticulture, printing, brewing and packing. Each is explained by the ESAT workers themselves, who set out their savoir-faire. The jobs are held under adapted conditions by workers with disabilities, and what the visits raise goes to the Fondation du Patrimoine de Bretagne.
Anatole Le Braz, with Hussön and Lefondeur
An evening given to Anatole Le Braz, his work and his legacy. Xavier Hussön, who illustrated the temporary exhibition shown alongside, sits with the novelist Gérard Lefondeur, who brings the writer back through his investigations. They take in the writer, the collector and the Brittany he described, drawing on archives, contemporary art and the imagination. The Cercle Celtique de Malestroit performs at the close, and admission is free.