Saturday, 3 February 2018 to Tuesday, 6 February 2018
It was Saturday morning and we were woken up by a loud TV bombarding of news directed at us in an “un-understandable” language; it wasn’t English, it wasn’t Afrikaans, which of course should not have been surprising. What was surprising though was that I did not request this TV news broadcast. Was the landlord above an early riser, I wondered as I checked the time… 03:30!

I wandered out of the bedroom to find some sanity in the facility and that’s when my faculties totally deserted me… it was our television that was blaring away, probably due to some timer switch? After switching off the racket I groggily went back to bed. I fell back into a deep sleep, I needed another couple 100 hours or so more.

It was late morning when I next woke up. It was just past midday when we heard the doorbell ring; it was my friend of 30 years, Philippe, and eldest son Xavier – who lives in nearby Pabu – who came to pick us up for lunch.

A specialty in Brittany are crêpes served in crêpe restaurants called crêperies; and crêpes of every persuasion are found everywhere, white ones and brown ones, salty and sweet ones and anything in-between. And that was where we were heading for lunch, a crêperie.

As we settled in at their local and favourite crêperie we were joined by Lucie, Philippe’s wife. And that’s when I discovered the other Brittany specialty, cider or cidre; sweet cider, less sweet cider and sec cider, and anything in-between. The cider come in 750ml bottles and is drunk before and with the meal much like wine, just faster. So before too long we had a bottle of cidre on the table accompanied by a first round of salty crêpes which was closely followed by a second round of the sweet variety. During this feast the glasses of cidre never reached empty. It was an amazing lunch.

After lunch we had to shed the weight we had just gained so we strolled though an icy cold and near rainy Guingamp. We walked along and across the local river where Lucie pointed out some upmarket houses that she thought would suit us. If only I could afford such mansions I would buy it in a heartbeat!

 

 

 

 

After having coffee at Philippe’s house Lucie and Adri went to the cinema to watch a ballet, a ballet movie that is, while the boys went to the local pub for a pint. La Glycine turned out to be more local than what I expected, a wonderful experience and truly local in ambience. We had a few pints while watching rugby, France was playing Ireland in a Six Nations clash. The first half was forgettable but the second half the game came very alive. Ireland won… just… pity. I was as exasperated with the loss as the rest of the Frenchmen in that pub, but there was nothing that another beer couldn’t fix.

Since I booked our apartment in Guingamp I was wondering how to pronounce the name. I would have gone with Goon-ghaamp, maybe even with a silent p at the end… but that would be wrong and so would any other attempt at it be. Over the second beer Philippe helped me on the path to enlightenment; it’s pronounced like anything… Gang-gore, who would have thought! Maybe I would have received a different answer after the first or third beer.

Back at Philippe’s place we were fed with the most wonderful traditional baguette and cheeses from all around France… and then a pumpkin soup and then…

It was past 22:00 when we were dropped off at our home, we fell into bed almost immediately…

It was Sunday morning and we were woken up by a loud TV bombarding of news directed at us in an “un-understandable” language; it wasn’t English, it wasn’t Afrikaans, which of course should not have been surprising. What was surprising though was that I did not request this TV news broadcast. Was the landlord above an early riser, I wondered as I checked the time… 03:30!

I sat up and wondered whether I was caught up in a Groundhog Day scenario as so hilariously portrayed in the movie of the same name by Bill Murray, who wakes up each day re-living the same day. But fortunately it was nothing that sinister; it was than dammed timer setting on the TV again. “I must find that setting sometime” I thought as I pulled the plug from its socket to make sure the rest of my sleep goes undisturbed.

As we have not done any shopping since arriving in Guingamp we were fresh out of sugar, and everything else I might add, but sugar was now top priority. Adri went upstairs and the old lady, grumpy from being woken up, gave us a bag of sugar that sweetened my two mugs of morning coffee… it was time to go shopping so we could return the grumpy sugar to the landlord lady…

We were ready to walk to Carrefour City but there was a slight rain in the air. Now if there’s one thing you should know about Brittany, it is that it is beautiful. If there’s one more thing you should know about Brittany, it is that you will experience four seasons in one day, according to the locals. But what Philippe failed to add was “24 times a day”. I have seen rain and snow and sleet and clouds and sunshine, all in less than one hour. So when we were met with rain we waited 10 minutes and the sun was shining upon us. The sun was weak and would not warm your body but it at least warms the mind.

Guingamp, or Gang-gore, have a large Carrefour, Lidl and LeClerc supermarkets, the latter being closest to us at around 1km. But, it was Sunday and France was closed, so the only supermarket open was the small Carrefour City at 1.5km… Be as it may, we really did need the exercise after having picked up a number of kilograms of unwanted weight during our sojourn to South Africa, so we were happy to walk it off in the weak sunshine.

It was late in the afternoon when Philippe and family picked us up to take us to La Grande Ourse, a performing arts theatre in Saint-Agathon a short ride away. We were to be treated to a show by Elliot Murphy, an American singer/songwriter now settled in Paris, who has a rather large following here in France even though he sings exclusively in English. The music was mostly original and most enjoyable.

 

 

After Elliot’s show we were treated to dinner at another crêperie – I told you there were many – I chose the crêpe with pork, and specifically the one with andouillette which is kinda pork/pork belly but in reality is actually a kind of tripe. The taste was good, I did not care for the smell!

Philippe had taken two days leave from work to entertain us – for which we were most grateful – and it was mid Monday morning when he and Xavier arrived to take us on a mini road trip around the beautiful Côtes-d’Armor. Part of the trip would include the beautiful Côte de Granit Rose or Pink Granite Coast. Notice how the English name is noted exactly in reverse. The bloody English always have to be different!

The weather was not in our favour, it had started snowing, wonderful!

While making our way towards the coast my thoughts turned to the road signs we were passing in a hurry. Most of them contain two names for the same place, one in French and one in Breton.

Breton is a Brittonic language that closely resembles Welsh, which of course is also Brittonic. Apparently people who speak Welsh and Breton can understand each other, similar to people who speak Afrikaans, Dutch and Flemish, who can communicate quite happily. Breton not too long ago seemed to have been a dying language but it was saved from a certain death due to it now being taught in Brittany schools. Not too many people however speak it as a matter of course.

We stopped off and passed by towns and villages such as at Trégastel, Sainte-Anne, Poul Palud, Saint-Guirec, Perros-Guirec, too many too mention. We had lunch at the Les Triagoz Restaurant in Trégastel which has an amazing sea view setting, it was wonderful to be inside, outside was rather freezing.

 

 

 

 

Our last stop for the day was to be the telecom museum – Cité des telecoms – just north of the village of Notérigou. We arrived at dead man’s door; the museum is closed in the low season and only opens for high season and school holidays… Bummer, but we will be back, we have to be back, we have to check out that huge white balloon structure!

Our final stop for the day ended up being the beautiful Lannion, a site for by now sore eyes…

On Tuesday Philippe and family took us for a menu de jour (menu of the day, or day menu) lunch in Guingamp at  Sidonie & Campagnie, a wonderful bed and breakfast with an excellent restaurant, it was packed! The food was wonderful, the company was wonderful, things could not get better… but then it did.

 

 

 

 

After lunch we drove to Paimpol which is one of Lucie’s favourite towns in Brittany, and I could understand why, it really is a delightful place. We wandered around, ducking into little book shops, antique shops, clothing shops…

 

 

 

 

It was late afternoon when we returned to Guingamp, Philippe had to catch the train back to Paris, him being the only employed one amongst us. We dropped Philippe at the station at around 18:30 and what should be less than a three hour trip ended up being a near 10 hour one. It was only the next day that we learnt that it had snowed so much in the Rennes area that all trains were halted. All passengers were bussed from Rennes, Philippe eventually arrived back in Paris only at 03:30 in the morning!

And by the way, as we dropped Philippe off at the train station we were intending to return the car to his house but he insisted that we keep it, we needed a car to explore the area. This decision was to be a fatal mistake, but more about that in a future post!

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