An owl was hooting last night as we went to bed – he was very close so we hoped he was in one of the nearby trees and not perched on our roof! We saw more flashes of lightning in the distance as we nodded off too, but that was the last of it.
We left this little campsite and headed off. We haven’t really been “heading south” these last few days, more like “heading west”, but now we were veering away from the northern coast and heading deep into Brittany. The countryside was rolling and very rural, interspersed with pretty little villages. We were liking this area.
We stopped at one of these villages, Jugon Les Lacs after finding an aire hidden behind the church. It was a warm day and we decided to have a look at the nearby lake, just outside the village square. We had a wander for about 20 minutes – the Pup’s ears were up as she spotted ducks – before we went for a coffee. We found a busy tabac bar on the sunny side of the square and ordered coffees, hearing a few English voices, as we sat down. Three ladies were having coffee too and chatting away in our native tongue. They all headed off, except one who came over and had a chat – she had lived in the region for about 10 years and worked as an estate agent. She had a fascinating backstory and told us that quite a few English people lived around the village. The Pup made friends with a large, but handsome dog and I fell in conversation with his German owners, so missed half of what the English lady was saying. But it was lovely that we were all having a chat with each other in the middle of a French village.
https://www.capderquy-valandre.com/en/jugon-les-lacs
We headed back to the Van and made ourselves a quick cheese and pickle sandwich before carrying on with our journey. It was lovely countryside with far reaching panoramic views, wooded valleys and wonderful little villages and hamlets. We ended up on a few narrow country lanes and met a few oncoming cars and large lorries who didn’t seem to slow down or know what the brake pedal was for – they seemed to come perilously close to us and we half expected to hear metal scraping metal.. Luckily these guys knew their width!
We ended up on the N164, a broad dual carriageway carving its way through Brittany with hardly any traffic upon it. At one point there was no vehicles on the other side, in front or at the back of us and we wondered if some apocalyptic event had occurred without us knowing and we were the only humans left. It was really weird, this huge road with nothing on it – in the UK, it would be chocker block with cars, vans and lorries – but it was rather nice to have a road to ourselves instead of someone’s grille in your rear view mirror. We enjoyed the experience until a speeding Renault overtook us and we breathed a sigh of relief.
The countryside was changing – there were a lot more hills and valleys now with deep woods. We pulled into a couple of small towns to have a wander, but the streets were empty of people and the shops seemingly shut. We wondered if everyone was on their lunch breaks and had closed for a couple of hours – but it didn’t really incentivise you to stop and have a stroll. All it needed was some tumbleweed………
We started to notice that the road signs were dual language like in Wales, Scotland and Ireland. We wondered if Breton was spoken here as well as French, so we googled it and discovered that indeed Breton was the language in this part of Brittany, just like our home countries. A lot of the villages names began with “Ker” too. It had a bit of a Cornish feel about it too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breton_language
We were back on the little A roads and finally dropped down into Huelgoat, our stop for the night. We checked into the little campsite, surrounded by woodland and after a cuppa and a bit of a breather, we waddled into the centre for something to eat, just as it started to gently rain. The village sits on the banks of another large lake and is quite pretty with the woodland backdrop. We came across a restaurant offering pizzas and salads and went in to ask if we could bring the Pup in – it was nearly 7pm. The proprietor asked us if we had a reservation, which we hadn’t and then asked for our name which she wrote in a book. “Five minutes, you wait” she informed us which we were happy to do, but then almost immediately, she was offering us a table at the back of the restaurant. All a bit of a strange rigmarole, but we ordered pizzas which were delicious and large, all washed down with a beer. Afterwards, as the light was fading, we wandered around the town and into its sweet little square and back down to the lake, where we discovered the Moulins du Chaos, huge granite boulders wedged in the river. It was all very pretty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huelgoat
We sauntered back to the campsite as the last of the light disappeared and sat under our awning as the evening was quite warm. It tried to rain again, splattering gently on the awning, but it was very half hearted. We lose all sense of time on this holiday and before we knew it, it was time for bed. We wrestled our fair share of the duvet from the Pup and fell easily to sleep.
