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Rain! Outside, through the window, we can no longer see the sea. All we can see is the rain. It is only light but there is a lot of it. How depressing! It didn’t last too long. We had breakfast, sat in our room for a bit studying and then it stopped. We went out.
Today we saw something that Mirinda has wanted to see for years. The chapel at Kermaria-an-Isquit, dedicated to Itron Varia an Iskuit, which is Breton for St Mary of Healing. I had no idea. The thing that makes this little place famous – and the village is very little though the car park is quite large – are the frescos on the walls of the church. They depict the dance of death; the danse macabre. A long line of people holding hands with cadavers as they all dance a jig. The paintings are high up the walls of the church. Originally, each picture would have had text beneath it and the rest of the walls would have been brightly patterned. At some stage, the walls were covered in whitewash and it wasn’t until 1856 that someone found them and, by doing so, saved the church from destruction by an overzealous parish priest who’d rather have a new one.
Part of the Danse Macabre fresco at Kermaria-an-Isquit
What is left of the fresco is amazing. You can clearly see the skeletons between each type of person (the king, the bishop, the beggar, the lady, etc), all of them holding hands. The idea is that we are all equal when it comes to mortality. You can be the pope or you can be a rope maker but we are all going to die sometime and will wind up dancing a polka with a skeleton sooner or later. It really is fascinating.
Another amazing thing about this church is the porch. The Rough Guide reckons it is the best preserved in all of Brittany and, from the ones I’ve seen, I’d agree. It is rare to find a porch which retains its statues but this one does. It is very impressive.
After a long stay at Kermaria, we drove on a little further up the D786 to the small village of Kerity where the ruined Abbaye-de-Beauport is located. Fantastic place. A little like Tintern Abbey in that it was an abbey and it’s now a ruin. Very similar bits left.
Interestingly, Beauport was established as a way-point for pilgrims on their way to Spain from England. Because of this, the abbey received regular payments from four parishes in Lincolnshire. When the monasteries were dissolved, this cash instantly dried up and the Abbey had to survive on its own wits. It doesn’t appear to have had many. It soon fell into disrepair – the sea wall collapsed a number of times because they did a lousy job fixing it.
Cloister in the Abbaye-du-Beauport
What is left is a lovely romantic ruin with lots of wildflowers, bushes and wildlife invading it. We spent an age wandering from room to room and managed to work up two big appetites. Luckily, just across the road, is the Abbaye Creperie. What a coincidence. We had galettes and coffee. The creperie is memorable for more than its food. I’m ignoring the woman in the strange red shorts and the long wait to have our order taken.
More memorable is the fact that the light in the toilet is somehow connected to the lock on the toilet door. This means you enter the toilet, shut the door and, in complete darkness, lock it before the light will come on. Classic. I like the originality of the arrangement and would like to try something similar but, it does occur to me that if one could connect the light switch to the lock, one could just as easily connect it to the door handle.
Full, happy and slightly bemused, we drove on, still following the D786, to the small town of Treguier. It has a lovely medieval square and a pretty sizeable cathedral. The beauty of this cathedral is that it has the tomb of St Yves who died there in 1303. He was so trustworthy, he became the patron saint of lawyers. His skull is still there. On display. He had quite a small head. The jokes about him are far too obvious so I’ll not indulge.
The other thing about Treguier is the statue of Ernest Renan who was born in the town in 1823. He was a writer and philosopher who worked tirelessly trying to marry the dual concepts of religion and science. He became quite famous so at the beginning of the twentieth century, the local townsfolk erected a rather interesting statue of him – it looks like he’s walked up the steep streets from the quay and collapsed exhausted on a bench, a beer bottle having been added quite recently. Incensed that such a heathen should get a statue outside the cathedral, the Catholics of the town put their cash together and, in retaliation, erected a Calvary of Reparation, which seems to have made them feel a lot better. I really hope the same person made both statues. What a great job.
The statue of Ernest Renan in the centre of Treguier
We had a lovely wander around the twisty streets, admiring the half timbered houses with the impossibly sloping floors. We admired the art class, dabbing at their easels being watched over by a clapping art teacher. We walked back to the car and drove off. All the way back to Pordic and the apartment for a bit of a rest before going out to dinner.
Happily rested we bound down to Binic, eager to once more savour the offerings to be had at Margot’s Table. Imagine our horror when we found that it was not open on Sunday nights! But it gets worse. They are also closed on Monday nights which means we will probably never eat at Margot’s Table again! Unless we find ourselves near to Binic one day at dinner time. Not likely but possible.
So we ate at Le Grande Large which, to my limited French, appears to be called The Big Big. Anyway, the food was good, like most French places (though not quite like Margot’s) and we supped well, before heading to the giant ice cream parlour for an after dinner glace. I had Smurf and Crème Brulee while Mirinda had Snickers and Violet. All of it was truly odd but delicious in that way that only ice cream knows how.
