A note regarding Brest: If you want to know what Brest is like, here is not the place to find out. You'll no doubt be aware that the city got trashed during the unpleasantness of ww2 and the allies were disappointed to discover that after bombing the place at length and driving out the uninvited guests, who contributed to the destruction, Brest was a complete shambles and not remotely able to provide port facilities for the ongoing retake of Europe in 1944/5. The invaders left the U-boat pens of course and the French Navy finds a use for them to this day, not sure what exactly, best not to ask, but otherwise it was a complete rebuild, the port, the town, the lot. The Fr got on with it tout de suite: they had to.
Which is why Brest is a modern city, benefitting from straight streets and semi-brutalist concrete architecture. One or two old historic bits (like the château) either survived or have been restored, so it has some character. Good bridges, interesting port and naval dockyard. There's a distinctive hard edge cathedral (visited some years back) and now a rather swish looking tram network which we failed to sample. A new extension to this network was opened without too much fuss while we were making this stay.
But if you want the full Brest story well, go on line, buy a guidebook, you'll not get anything more from this source much. I quite liked the place in as far as I can get on with conurbationary constituencies at all. Easy to drive through. And get in and out of. Worth a visit. Spend a few days there and drink it in.
Visit the U-boat pens even (free, but no snaps to be taken and you must surrender your passport: you'll get it back if you behaved). No we didn't, but you could. We might someday.
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| fort de bertheaume |
On the Thursday we were subjected to sharp light and torrential downpours. Trudged round the Brest château environs and port terrace to get you these pictures, I am a fool to myself. Dodged the downpour(s). Mid morning, we took off to Le Conquet stopping at a café above Fort de Bertheaume to take coffee. And take the distance telephotos of Crozon peninsulas
that grace the first post in this series. But we were set on a crêpe lunch in Le Conquet, so to avoid yet further disapointment regarding crêpes, we were almost first in the establishment. Thereafter a farewell to St Mathieu via Lochrist (for another look at the little concrete phare, it hasn't improved any) and a brief visit to said west facing beach (the Lochrist beach) but heavy rain precluded much activity, drove us off it in fact. We motored thereafter back to Brest and tried really hard to revisit Portzic from the naval dockyard side en route. We failed. We know it goes, but it didn't this time, for us, I think we are losing our grip.
Drenching rain determined an early arrival back at Les Voyageurs and rather than be adventurous but soaked we decided to eat at Chez George for the third night running! It's the rain, it robs you of resolve.
