Sasha Doll Style

We are home from our magical holiday in Brittany.



We stayed in the beautiful Breton house that my sister Pip and her partner Euros are renovating. Pip was with us for the first week which was great fun. That is Pip cutting the hedge.



My brother also lives in Brittany not far from Pip so we were able to visit him frequently and Neil spent a day helping him bring in the bales of hay to the barn (I on the otherhand enjoyed a peaceful walk to Bon Repos along the canal).





The house nestles within an acre of peaceful woodland and we were woken by the dawn chorus and the peck peck peck of a woodpecker.

The canal runs along the lower edge of Pip's garden woodland.



It is a beautiful walk of about 4 kilometres along the canal to the Abbey of Bon Repos.



The tow path is used by riders, cyclists, anglers and on this occasion by the lock there was also a small group of English ladies painting.

Pointe du Raz was a very touristy place when we arrived but it had all the amenities, toilets, shops and cafes. I bought a book of Celtic Legends of Brittany and a few postcards of lighthouses.



The beautiful statue overlooking the point seemed to be for sailors lost at sea (we may be wrong on this as our French is not all that good).

We parked beside the lake in Huelgoat, crossed the bridge and looked down upon Chaos.

We walked on through the tunnels and arches created by huge 100 tonne rocks and boulders of the Grotte du Diable. It was extraordinary with tree roots grasping hold of the boulders like huge hands.

An attractive town built mainly from granite. It was a very arty place with crafts people, artists and gift shops as well as cafes and creperies.



My sister Pip sitting beneath the wisteria!



The druids created large sacred areas called Nemeton. These represented on earth the movement of the stars in the sky. The Locronan Nemeton is the only one to still survive. This is thanks to the Irish missionary St Ronan who merely replaced the Druidic divinities with Christian saints.

It was beautiful at Pointe de Minard.



The views in both directions of the rugged windswept coastlines were stunning.

We parked at the base of the castle walls and watched lizards darting in and out of gaps in the stones.



We visited a great doll museum where I really loved a pair of carved wooden dolls and adored the beautiful carved breton furniture.



It was a beautiful old town and we enjoyed wandering around the streets absorbing the atmosphere.

I adored Beauport Abbey. It was a marvellous building even though much of it was in ruins.



The local rookery had moved out of the large trees around the abbey into holes in the walls which once upon a time would have supported roofs and floors.

There were 3 covered alleys (allees couvertes) which consist of several linked dolmens at Liscuis.



I particularly liked the wilder neolithic sites where the stones had become a part of their landscape.



Beautiful views of the Abbey Bon Repos in the distance.

Awesome number of standing stones placed in linear formations.

Some of the stones were huge, while others were only knee high.
















Photographs do not do these stones justice as it is hard to fathom the sheer scale of these stones as they stretch for over a kilometre.
















As we walked around the edges of the stones as you can no longer walk through them, we stopped at the farmhouse creperie for ice creams.