August 24, 2005
Roscoff - St. Jean-du-Doigt
The weekend before our arrival, Roscoff had held its annual Fête de l'Oignon Rosé, or in English, Pink Onion Festival. We managed to contain our disappointment at being unable to attend. Roscoff features large in the recent history of the onion. It was from here, in the mid 19th century that Breton onion sellers first sailed to the UK to sell their produce. They were known as Onion Johnnies and are still recognised as such in Roscoff today. The figure of a moustachioed man on a bicycle, wearing a beret and horizontally striped sweater, strings of onions draped over his handlebars, selling door-to-door, is, in some quarters of this Sceptered Isle, still recognised as the archetypal Frenchman, despite his Breton provenance. In fact I can remember having seen such a figure, myself, sometime in the late 1950s, in my home town in the north-east of England. The transporting of commercial quantities of onions distances of 500 miles or so by bicycle defies logic [and logistics too] and so, I believe, the onions were transported by truck to local depots and moved on by means of two wheels. Nevertheless, I am inclined to the opinion that though the transportation may have been cumbersome, the marketing was pretty cute. On the other hand, my man might have been some smart-arse from Stockton-on-Tees, with a lot of neck: 'Voulez youse des onions, madame?'
We rode through the surprisingly clean and pretty stone-built town of Roscoff with hardly the sight of an onion, though market stalls [including vegetables] were being set up by the harbour, as we pedalled past. We climbed gently out, towards St. Pol-de Léon, only to be confronted by the sight of fields full of more mouth-watering produce, the artichoke.
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We stopped in St. Pol for coffee. At this point I would like to pay tribute to Carsten Hoefer, another CGB contributor, for converting me to café-au-lait, if only temporarily. Carsten's most recent tale of a trip through Italy made frequent mention of enticing breaks for cappuccino. Although not readily available in France, its nearest equivalent un grand café au lait certainly is. For our morning stops I switched from my usual black.
Outside of St. Pol were yet more hectares of artichokes. Barbara photographed most of them.
After this wondrous abundance of edible thistle, we found ourselves on a main road for several km. before turning left, near Carentec to follow the inlet of the Baie de Morlaix down to the town of Morlaix itself, where we bought picnic supplies, near the huge railway viaduct which bestrides the centre of the town.
The weather was beginning to look unpromising, it was still windy [mostly in our favour], but the clouds were thickening. We set off along the other side of the same inlet until the road turned inland towards the village of Plouezoc'h. The apostrophe is no mistake. It's a feature of the Breton language, indicating a back of the throat pronunciation like the 'ch'in the Scottish loch. In the départements of Finisterre [where we are now] and Côtes d'Armor [next], most road signs are bi-lingual. I don't know what is the Breton for rain, but it had started to rain in any language.
In Plouezoc'h we ate a baguette, goat cheese, tomatoes and fruit in the rain, sitting on a bench and sheltering under the trees of the churchyard. We set off again, cold now and stopped almost immediately at the village bar-café-tabac, for warmth and more café au lait. A Doberman dog, belonging to another, local, customer tried to eat all our possessions, while we half-heartedly fought it off. The rain was showing little sign of letting up but we left anyway. Snatching my mobile phone from the jaws of the dog, I called ahead to a hotel in St. Jean-du-Doigt, a theoretical 10km away. We would have an early finish today.
We struggled to reach St. Jean-du-Doigt in the allotted 10km. I began to notice that not all the local roads were marked on my Michelin Regional series map. This was a shattering loss of faith, as though St. Theresa [of whom, more ahead] had turned showgirl. A part-explanation occurs later in the piece. I asked directions from a farmer's wife and we were way off beam. We turned onto a busier road and the rain really let rip. The saving factor being, that the wind, though still around 40kph, was safely at our backs.
We arrived at the hotel, Le Ty-Pont, [Little House by the Bridge ] around 2pm. There was no sign of anyone, but there was a note for us to make ourselves at home, which, initially, we did, by dripping water all over the hotel lobby and thereby turning its tiled floor into a slithery hazard for all its customers. I took the bikes back outside, locked them and we partially dried the floor with paper towels from the toilet, before our misdemeanour was discovered. Later, the man of the house, the cook, led me and the bikes down the garden path to park them in a locked shed.
We showered, then caught up on sleep. Later I drank a couple of beers in the bar nearby and around 8-00pm, we went down for dinner. This trip, I kept a record of what we ate for dinner. Tonight's fare, Ladies and Gentleman, was, for Barbara: Grilled Goat's cheese, Skate wings with Leeks, served in a Crabshell, followed by Profiteroles and for me: Fish soup, Confit de canard, and Calvados ice cream. After dinner, in a clumsy mixture of three languages, I chatted to an amiable group of three couples from Rome, who were touring Brittany in three cars. They spent an inordinate amount of time, it seemed to me, poring over the same Michelin map as we were using, and enthusiastically debating alternative routes. They were very impressed with Breton pâtisseries, as, we discovered later, were we.
Today's ride: 60 km (37 miles)
Total: 72 km (45 miles)
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