Patrouille de France on The Pink Granite Coast

Zagan the motorhome is back in his normal European habitat. No more beach front campsites, he’s parked up in a motorhome aire between a road and some tennis courts. It’s the last Sunday in August and we’re hoping that the aires are now quieter as les enfants are heading back to school next week. Will holidaying families be replaced by retired camping-caristers who have hidden at home all summer? I guess we’ll find out.

We’re parked up in Tregastel (N48.824221, W3.498769). We’ve opted for the aire, as opposed to the harbour side campsite just 500m down the road, as we’re here for a one-nighter (€12 instead of €20). During our two year motorhome tour about a decade ago, almost every stop was a one-nighter because we were on the trip of a lifetime and there was so much to see and do. As we’ve grown older, a little more travel weary and this is our lifestyle as opposed to a one off, we tend to stay longer in places.

So why is Tregastel a one-nighter? Jay had spotted a walk he fancied doing and after a bit of planning we figured we could nip here for the night before we head south towards Brest. After that we’ll start making our way slowly east back towards Calais and the ferry home in the fortnight. We didn’t know much about the walk, just that it was one of the best bits of the côte de granite rose, the pink granite coast.

To be honest, we hadn’t been very taken with the pinkness of the granite on Ile Grande, squinting at it in all types of sunlight to try to see a definite pink hue. The island is only a 15 minute drive away and part of the côte de granite rose, so would it be much different here – you bet it was.

The walk follows our old friend the GR34, also known as the Sentier des Douaniers (the coastguards’ watch path) for about six kilometres east around the headland from Ploumanac’h. So, after a quick nip to the Super U across the road from the aire to grab a baguette, we set off armed with a packed lunch to see what all the fuss was about.

Walking down the street we noticed that many of the houses are either built with or have pink granite trimmings, as are garden walls, and kerb stones. In fact the whole place has a pink hue about it. We stopped for a few minutes to explore one of two tidal mills built in the fourteenth century to harness the energy generated by the strong tides. The mills sit on dams built where two rivers meet Ploumanac’h harbour, and from 1896, the smaller mill, was used to make ice to store fish caught by the local fishermen. Looking across the harbour of boats standing in the sand waiting for the tide to return, we spotted huge rounded, almost sculptured boulders, so we skirted around the edge of the harbour to get a closer look.

Looking out over the boulders we were immediately taken back to Tafraoute in Morocco where we’d been parked up among such big rounded rocks. There in the Anti-Atlas Mountains it felt like we were in Fred Flintsone’s home town of Bedrock. Surely this was Fred’s beachside resort. The smooth sculptured rocks were formed by the erosion of cooled magma then shaped by the rain, salty sea spray and wind. They look like a surreal painting, but when the granite is cut, processed and polished it looks even pinker. On an island just off the shore stands a pink palace; Château de Costaérès, which in Breton means “old drier”, because the island it sits on was where local fishermen used to dry their fish in the sun.

As we rounded the coast, the views got better and better. A pink granite lighthouse sitting amongst the chaotic rock formations is called Phare de Mean Ruz, from the Breton Men Ruz, meaning pink stone. The lighthouse built 1860 using grey granite, but was blown up with dynamite by German troops before their surrender in August 1944. Pink granite was used to rebuild the lighthouse in 1948, which was automated in 1980.

Information boards along the walk provided details in French of some of the things we were looking at. Unfortunately, when we reached the information centre hoping to grab a leaflet in English, it was closed for lunch. I do admire the French for their work / life balance. Most places are closed on a Sunday, the supermarket only opens until lunch. Sometimes, like today, it’s a minor inconvenience, but I think I’d rather that than people having to work all hours.

As we reached the end of the path the number of people around started to build up. A coastal car park was rammed full, with cars lining the entrance road to it and nearby street. We couldn’t believe how many people were here for a Sunday afternoon stroll. But then a lot of them were sitting holding cameras, and those still arriving on foot were checking their watches and looking hurried. We began to suspect something must be going on, but didn’t have the guts to ask – fearing we wouldn’t understand the answer.

We followed the rows of parked cars back to the centre of Ploumanac’h, and found ourselves in a sculpture park. These sculptures weren’t done by nature, but by local artists using the local pink granite – which is still quarried today nearby. In 1998 a park in the town was converted into an open-air workshop for a month, with compressors, drills, grinders and polishers available to the artists to use to create their artwork. I did enjoy the work, but I think I preferred nature’s version.

Next to the sculpture park was an information board giving details of events taking place in the town. Yesterday and today it simply said Patrouille de France. Normally we wouldn’t have a clue what that meant, but the French version of the Red Arrows had flown over our campsite yesterday, and I googled them and found they’re called Patrouille acrobatique de France, or Patrouille de France for short. It was now two minutes to three, surely any fly past would be on the hour, and we had no chance of getting back to the coast in time to see them, so we sat in the park to see if we could spot them over the trees. Five minutes went by and there was no sign, we’d clearly missed it. So we headed back to the motorhome aire, listening all the way to see if we could hear them and catch a glimpse.

Every car, breeze in the trees and electric bike sounded like the planes as we kept scanning the skies. About 100 metres from the entrance to the aire we’d given up when I happened to turn around. Coming directly towards us were all eight of the planes trailing their red, white and blue coloured smoke. Then they looped around and flew past again, and again. As Jay got embroiled in a conversation with a chap who we think was saying they are fun to watch but bad for the planet, the planes looped around the skies around us. In the end they entertained us for half an hour before flying through a heart-shaped smoke trail and heading home.

This evening we nipped out for a walk around the coast area behind the aire. The tide is in and it all looks so pretty. We’re now thinking perhaps Tregastel isn’t a one-nighter after all!

Ju x