Paris - Do you know where the world ends? According to the French, it ends somewhere near Ruscumunoc, a little fishing village in Brittany. Just follow the road up the hill, the locals tell me, then straight, then to the left.
As I drive up the narrow potholed road, the radio that has been blasting Breton Celtic music goes completely quiet. After a kilometre or so, the road suddenly ends.
I park my small rental car and walk up an overgrown path to the crest of a hill. There the ground suddenly drops in a dramatic cliff toward the Atlantic Ocean, and France is no more. A sign points to the west: New York 5 080km, it says.
To my left, at the base of the cliff, is a small sandy beach. It’s so postcard pretty I scramble down for a suntanning break at the “end of the world”. There’s no one in sight.
I’ve wanted to go to the western-most French department of Finistère (from the Latin finis terrae, or the end of the earth) since the day I first heard about it a few years ago. I wanted to see this edge of Brittany, the land that time forgot, and take a break from the rush of modern life. I wanted to see the wild, empty beaches, the tiny roads and villages.
But what lured me most to Finistère and to Brittany were the lighthouses, promising remote beauty, relaxing solitude – and sweeping views. There are 148 lighthouses in Brittany, one of them dating back to the time of Louis XIV. Some are perched on rocky islets lashed by waves; others sit safely on the coast, looking out to sea. Once, their lights guided sailors to safety. Today, 80 are working, but many others are just majestic ghosts of the past.
To get a good view of Brittany’s stunning coast, I decide to climb to the top of the 19th-century Eckmühl (named for a Napoleonic general) lighthouse. After climbing its 307 steps, my muscles are sore and my legs rubbery, but I emerge into the vast panorama of the Atlantic, the wind bringing up the smell of salt and algae and wet sand.
The village of Penmarc’h spreads out below, with its small white houses set against green pastures. If the name Penmarc’h doesn’t sound French to you, that’s because it isn’t. The word means “head of a horse” in the local Breton, a Celtic language brought to this region in the Middle Ages by Britons migrating to the continent. The name comes from a local legend about a king whose head was turned into that of a horse.
The lighthouse of Saint-Mathieu, a classic white-and-red tower, is gentler on my knees: it’s only 163 steps up. The semi-modern lighthouse, built in 1835, is part of a crumbling 16th-century abbey, picturesquely set at the edge of the ocean and built on the site of an even older, sixth-century monastery.
Saint-Mathieu is a calm, quiet place, yet its history is far from peaceful. Taking a short walk along the coast, I stumble upon a reminder of Brittany’s turbulent past. Hidden in a carpet of wild grasses are German bunkers: concrete installations built during World War II to guard the coast against the Allies during the German occupation of France.
This area was once the site of raging battles, including the Battle of Brest, which lasted from August to the end of September 1944 and was one of the most violent of the war. It may not have the famed D-Day sites of Normandy, but I find exploring the war mementos of Brittany more compelling. Here, I can sit at the edge of the ocean and reflect on the past with no crowds of tourists to interrupt my thoughts.
For me there’s nothing better in Brittany than walking. Countless trails run along the cliffs, starting at lighthouses or leading to them, and although I have a few favourites, it’s hard to decide which is the most spectacular. Would it be the path in Côte Sauvage (the Wild Coast), with its sandy beaches tucked between peach-coloured cliffs?
Or would it be the one around Cap du Raz, where sharp rocks run far into the sea and vast fields of gorse flowers smell of vanilla? Or maybe the one along the pink cliffs of Cap Fréhel that surround its sturdy modern lighthouse, where I have a picnic lunch (farm-fresh strawberries, a crunchy baguette and a piece of a delicate local goat cheese called Le Ménez Hom) and watch the seagulls?
If I could, I’d hike all these trails in every season, every year. Next time I come, I’ll add another lighthouse experience to my travels at the end of the world – and for that I’ll head to Riantec. There, in a whitewashed village on the edge of the sea, stands a slim white lighthouse with a modern kitchen and a bathroom. It’s available for rent.
The beauty of Brittany’s coast kept my index finger glued to the shutter button of my camera, but this far corner of France was pleasing to more than my sense of sight. The region also has a lot to offer a gourmand: buttery cookies and eggy puddings, mussels in white wine and buckwheat flour pancakes.
The galettes (savoury pancakes created in Brittany in the 16th century) are so delicious that I had them for breakfast, lunch and dinner: pancakes with Camembert cheese in applesauce, with smoked salmon and sour cream, with scallops baked in whiskey.
After several days of a pancake-based diet, I was ready for another Breton delicacy: oysters. For that, I headed toward Saint-Philibert, one of the villages on Brittany’s oyster route. I was going to sample oysters straight from the water, from a gold medal-winning producer.
Renan Henry’s oyster farm is one of many dotting the shore of the peaceful bay of Quiberon, but it’s also one of the best. Instead of a sign to assure me that I’ve arrived at “Huitres Henry”, there’s a huge pile of mussel shells in the front yard, a sure giveaway that oysters are being raised nearby. Oysters grow attached to mussel shells, which are later discarded.
Henry welcomes me with a smile, while employees clad in yellow overalls work around the muddy shore, washing the oysters and dragging cases full of them. The farm has been in Henry’s family for five generations, and now it’s in his and his brother’s hands.
He shows me around. He points at crates submerged in the ocean where the molluscs are “self-cleaning”, then teaches me how to judge the quality of an oyster by checking the cleanliness of its interior, the regularity of its shape and the evenness of its colour.
Then it’s time to try the oysters. I slurp one, then another. They taste of salt, of citrus fruits, of sea.
I drive to the town of Carnac, where I’ve booked a bed-and-breakfast for the night. I suddenly notice something that makes me bring the car screeching to a halt: menhirs, standing silent in the middle of a forest. In the dim light of the moon, the ancient stones resemble small extinguished lighthouses scattered among the trees, sentinels from Brittany’s mysterious Celtic past.
Or even pre-Celtic, as some of the stones are believed to be 6 500 years old – much older than those at Stonehenge. Breton legend claims that the menhirs were brought here by goblins or fairies, or even by the devil.
Since I don’t believe in goblins or fairies, I visit Carnac’s museums to look for a less supernatural explanation. But to my disappointment, a straightforward answer doesn’t seem to exist.
Archaeologists don’t know for sure why the menhirs were erected here. What seems certain, though, is the Carnac area has one of the highest concentrations of megaliths in the world: more than 3 000 of them.
But what’s most magical about Carnac’s erected stones isn’t their sheer multitude – it’s the way I stumble upon them everywhere, unexpectedly. As I take a path through one of the forests, I suddenly come across circles of prehistoric stones, tall, lonely menhirs and moss-covered dolmens. The way they take me by surprise, with my 21st-century phone in one hand and my digital camera in the other, makes me feel connected to the distant past of this place, to its people and legends.
The next day, I buy a box of oysters at a farmers market – less than $10 (about R102) for 18 – and in the evening come to watch the moon rise above the ancient alignments. I sit on one of the fallen menhirs, savour the oysters and wonder who dragged these enormous stones here and pushed them upright. And why.
The bells of a medieval church in a nearby village chime. Brittany may not be the end of the world, but sometimes it feels as if it were. In a good way. – The Washington Post