Visit to the Côte de Granite Rose

We spent two nights in a small AirBnb in Perros-Guirec, on the Granite Coast (a small resort town about a 2 hour drive from St Malo).  We did a few days of hiking as well as a visit by boat to the lovely island of Île-de-Bréhat (purple circles on the below map) - also part of the famous GR 34.

Monday we arrived in Perros-Guirec, and since we couldn't check into our AirBnb until the afternoon (our host was very insistent and every message reinforced the checkin at 3pm and checkout by 11am NO EXCEPTIONS) so we did a hike around the coast.

Our walking route started in Perros-Guirec and very quickly we came upon the famous beautiful granite formations.

We admired these for awhile and looked to see how many faces we could find.

Just to prove we were here ... :-P

Does this look like the Lion King or Homer Simpson?

A beautiful vista!

Some of the rocks, smoothed by weather, look like fabric!

Another face hiding in the granite.

Another beautiful vista!

Heading down the trail ...

Another fancy French lighthouse.

Vista with the fancy lighthouse and some of the neighbours.  Amazing to think people live along this coast!

Tuesday on advice from our home exchange host we did a boat trip to Île-de-Bréhat.  Here is Sonya waiting by the pier.  At this point it's close to low tide, so we had to walk out fairly far along the pier to a point that the boat could dock.

Our ferry!

Another fancy French lighthouse, at the northern end of the island.  (There are actually two island, connected by a little bridge.  You have to be knowledgeable of the tides in this part of the world or you could get stranded on the north island!)

Closer to the fancy lighthouse.

Some more studding granite rock formations.

A view looking south from the lighthouse, still low-ish tide.

The rocks along the shore ...

... and built into the wall surrounding the lighthouse.

There is a small town on the south island.  The population of the island (technically "islands" I guess) is about 300, most of whom live in town.

We found an old boat wrecked along the beach.  (Well ...  "we found" ... actually it was listed on google maps :-P)

Close up inspection of the boat in case my friend Chris wants to buy it.  A handyman's delight!

My footprints in the mud walking up to the boat.

Wednesday we checked out of our AirBnb (before 11am!!!) and on the way home visited a couple of Menhirs and did another hike (aborted by a torrential downpour!!!)  (We planned an 8km hike around Grande Ile.  In our route below you can see where we abandoned the coast and made a bee line back to our car.)

The first menhir we visited - about 5000 years old, but desecrated in about 1700 by some Christians.

The second menhir, also about 5000 years old.

(Actually to be pedantic a "dolmen", which means "table rock", as opposed to "menhir", which means "upright rock", and which Asterix fans will be familiar with.  I'm reading the Inspector Dupin series of books by Jean-Luc Bannal'ec, which all take place in Brittany ("Death in Brittany" etc) and provide a lot of good Brittany lore!!!  Including some information about menhirs and dolmens and one other kind of big ancient stone which I forget.)

(There's also an "Inspector Dupin" TV series, which we are also watching, which for some reason is in German.  It's bizarre watching a TV show taking place in Brittany where everyone is speaking German, almost as if they'd won the last war.  (Except they all still say "bonjour".)  There was a German family on the Île-de-Bréhat and I wanted to ask them if they'd come to Brittany because of the Inspector Dupin TV show?)

Is this a menhir?  No just a big rock.  Note the lines along the end where it was cut.

Is this a menhir?  No just a marker for our island trail.  (It's started drizzling but not yet pouring.)

There's some sunlight somewhere!

More clouds rolling in!!!  It hasn't started pouring yet so we're soldiering on with our walk!

  

There is an old Brittany saying - "It only rains on idiots" (I also got this from Inspector Dupin).  Anyways it started pouring on us, so we abandoned our walk, changed in the car (at least we had the foresight to bring a change of cloths) and headed home.  Along the way we stopped for lunch at a local creperie, and then back for our last couple of days in St Malo!