Brittany is an enormous peninsula in western France, which slices through the waters as though it were separating
the English Channel from the Atlantic Ocean, and offers a variety of equally delightful landscapes. Between
the land and the sea, the blue and the green, sheer cliffs and legendary forests, its charms are there to be seen
at any time of year.
Once you set foot in Brittany, you run the risk that you may never want to leave! The region already attracts a lot
of tourists but, thanks to factors such as increasingly fast transport links, it has also seen the arrival of many
Parisians fleeing the feverish pace of the capital as the earliest opportunity and coming to enjoy the flavours of
fresh cider and the gentle pleasures of the sun setting over the sea while the tide goes out only to come back in
again.
Officially Brittany is made up of the four departments of Finistère, the Côtes-d'Armor, the Ille-et-Vilaine and the
Morbihan (although historically, the province of Brittany also included the Loire-Atlantique region) and first and
foremost it is a seaward-looking region. With the English Channel to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the
south, we have no less than 2,700 kilometres (approximately 1700 miles) of coastline marked out by cliffs, dunes
or long stretches of fine sand beaches. In addition to this omnipresent call of the sea, there are ten or so islands
(without counting the islets of the Gulf of Morbihan) all inviting you to take a nautical trip. So it is hardly surprising
that above all the Bretons are sailors.
Brittany offers moors, hedged farmland, plateaux and mountains, all of which have managed to retain a raw,
wild look, sometimes almost desert-like, making the landscape feel timeless. Originally the whole of the inland
part of the region was covered by the forest. Nowadays it only makes up 10% of the land, but it has retained all
of its magic. The forest of Brocéliande (now the forest of Paimpont) whose name is still inextricably linked with
those of Merlin and Viviane, or King Arthur and his knights , covers 7000 hectares of faults, valleys and streams.
And although Brittany remains a land of legend, there is one myth that needs to be laid to rest: the weather is -
almost - always very good in Brittany! Remember that!