OUR FINAL FULL DAY on Finistère-firma but once again there is no appetite from the squad to do owt much. Mme Melling is below par, and I'm not in very good fettle either. So we decide to stay local. We get our breakfast, as you do if you are us and in Roscoff, at the singular Café Ty Pierre where the coffee is hot, strong and served in cups the size of soup tureens. We bring our own croissants just in case the in-house supplies are running out: you can do that in civilised Fr cafés, y'know. We'll be in here twice more before we're through. We have to get ourselves to the Leclerc at St Pol to lay in tins of confit and similar so it seems a no brainer, as it is sunny again, not to take in at least a modicum of shore – so we drive the short distance to Carantec. Because I am a big fan of the Rade de Morlaix and we've not visited this side of it in yonks… so here we went.
And while in the offing we shifted ourselves to the north-west tip of Carantec, ignoring the rather confusing signage (well I found it so) to pull up sharp before the submerged causeway out to the Île Callot. I don't think one can generally drive on over, and even if you have the requisite permit you'd not try it, save at low tide. There's a house out there…not to mention a Notre Dame. I dispute with Mme Melling as I am reasonably sure we have driven over there, in another age, in a Citroën, when Roscoff visits had only just become a route we frequented, maybe just as far as that first islet?
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We skip lunch, motor back to Roscoff, buy a bag of onions as required by local custom (best pink onions known to mankind) and repair to the Ty Pierre where we collect and down half litres of proper Fr cider, or cidre as they choose to call it. Sorry chaps but it pains me to opine that this cider knocks into a cocked hat anything of that description that retails in the SW of the UK.
At 1900 hours we make up for that skipped déjeuner by reporting to our favourite fish restaurant of Finistère where we have eaten from time to time almost from its inception. The repast this evening touches the spot: Le Surcouf wins hands down as the best meal of this trip. You have to book though and Mme Melling instinctively has done so, she's a tonic.
Cometh the dawn we are back in the Café Ty Pierre for the final time. Thereafter and reluctantly it is off to the boat, the last roundabout is counted en route (the three-hundred-and-thirty-second) and we embark. Windy sunny crossing, cabin with circular picture window (see left), then after five hours of voyaging, promptly off the Pont Aven in Plymouth (just fifteen minutes) and back at the country seat in sunshine by a little past 1600 hours: it would have been sooner if not for the final sting in the tale: a road closure just two miles from base. We have garlics, tins, bibs and bottles to see us through to Christmas and beyond. The clocks go back the following week and all we can do now is, well, suck it up, I suppose…… We have at least a few ripe figs, but only three apples from our fruit trees, the birds having taken a dim view of our absence and acted accordingly.
codicil: I am reliably informed that the number of roundabouts we have had to negotiate on this return journey in the République has eclipsed the previous total of Spring 2025 by at least sixty-seven. Not that we came the same route, mind; but whichever way you cut it, you can't escape the conclusion that the Fr have an ongoing roundabout fixation.
……… not just the French either……
