Day 2 of 3 gray and wonderful days on Belle-île-en-Mer, Brittany

This is a continuation of Day 1 of 3 gray and wonderful days on Belle-île-en-Mer, Brittany.

Our second day in Belle-île-en-Mer started with a change of hotels. The owner of the Hotel Clos Fleuri wasn’t any easier to deal with in the morning, so we quickly booked the hotel we considered when we first planned the trip, the Hotel de Bretagne on the waterfront in Le Palais. What a difference. While the ratings are much lower, the hotel is an ideal place for getting a feel for the port city and the staff was excellent. So much for sites that give advice on lodging.

Aiguilles de Port Coton

After the move, we headed for the south coast of Belle-île-en-Mer to a place we’d seen in Monet paintings, the famous Aiguilles de Port Coton. These rock formations and the cliffs that surround them were painted by Monet in the 1860’s and are stunning to see. It was raining lightly, but that only added to mood of the sea, the gulls and the remarkable rock formations. There was even a quirky sign post telling us the distance to world’s cities like New York (5524 km) and Havana (7236 km). Most noticeable was the lack of crowd control barriers that would be found in the U.S. We were free to wander (or fall off) the cliffs at our leisure.

In World War II when the Germans held the island, they created a vast network of defenses and this point was no different. Belle-île-en-Mer sits just outside the Golf de Morbihan and was a natural choice as a landing point for the Allies with the ports of Lorient to the North, Vannes in the Gulf itself and Saint-Nazaire to the south. The Germans clearly intended to defend the island from attack and placed bunkers along the entire coast on the hilltops but also hidden on the beaches and within the cliffs themselves.

The German defenses, while an ugly reminder of a brutal war, were fascinating for the stairways they cut into the cliffs and the ways they used the natural rock formations to hide their defenses. The island was never attacked during the war and it was clear why.

Monet’s rocks

It only took a few minutes of research to find the exact spot where Monet stood to paint. Regardless of the century and a half that passed from his moment to ours, the timelessness of the view and the strokes of his brush gave us a great moment to appreciate both his and nature’s artwork.

Once back in the car, we drove a little to the northwest to the summertime destination of Plage de Donnant. This is a very pretty beach located at the end of of a ten minute walk through the dunes to a crescent-shaped cove. Of course, the ubiquitous German defenses could be spotted at each end of the sandy stretch. Like the entire southern coast of Belle-île, the beach is a rare break in the cliffs that are pounded throughout the year by the waves and winds from the Bay of Biscay.

This was also my first time trying out the sling we brought along to carry Catherine. It turned out to be an excellent way to carry her and she enjoyed facing out so much that she fell asleep fairly quickly.

Standing near the water, it was quickly apparent that the rainy, breezy weather was best enjoyed on the cliffs and not on the beaches, where the views were limited an the idea of swimming or relaxing on the sand wasn’t in the cards.

L’Apothicairerie

With that realization, we drove a short distance to the northwest again to a point of rocks known as L’Apothicairerie, a site of a former hotel that was torn down last Fall as part of a restoration of the seashore project. Like Aiguilles de Port Coton, the views are inspiring and the lack of tourist barriers makes roaming the clifftops easy and fun.

At this point, the views were more open and the coast more rugged that the cliffs where Monet painted. Waves crash into tunnels and cracks in the rocky coast in a way that is very visually inspiring. We decided that the cliffs of Belle-île-en-Mer are the perfect place for picnic lunches, and that we should have brought our favorite traveling lunch, the baguette with ham and butter.

Back to Le Palais

By the time we headed back, it was raining, so we found a parking spot in Le Palais and enjoyed a pizza dinner on the terrace. The combination of the countryside along the cliffs and the conveniences of the ancient fortress city of Le Palais is an ideal way to enjoy the island.