Our next leg took us to the towns of Vannes and Vitré – and several places in between.
Megaliths at Gavrinis
After leaving Quimper we stopped at the tiny town of Lamor-Baden where we caught a little ferry to the island of Gavrinis. There we experienced a fun guided tour of a Neolithic cairn that held some megalithic structures with mysterious carvings. The tour guide explained that the local soil in the area is so acidic that no traces of human remains have been found, and that large fragments of the carved stones have been found on nearby islands but no one knows how they got there!
Vannes
Vannes is located on a site that has been home to the Celts and the Romans, before the Britons. It once served as the capital of the Duchy of Brittany and has been an important military and commercial hub for centuries.
Though smaller than Quimper, it felt larger mainly due to the proximity of the old part of town to the more modern city. Our tiny hotel was on a street that featured a US-style coffee shop, a smash burger joint, and a Monoprix department store, but our room overlooked the medieval walls and we only had to turn down a small nearby passageway to emerge onto the narrow cobblestone streets of the medieval section.
Disappointingly, a lot of the major sites – the cathedral, the history museum, many of the ramparts and towers, and the Château de l’Hermine – were closed fully or partially for renovation. Nevertheless, we enjoyed the overall atmosphere and had a very tasty multi-course lunch at the one-star Michelin restaurant, Le Tête en l’air.
Carnac was nearby, so we made a short day trip on Saturday. It’s home to one of the largest concentrations of aligned Neolithic standing stones in the world. We rode a little tourist train through the town and then alongside several fields holding thousands of stones arranged in rows or circles. After the tour we explored a bit on our own and found some more cairns, menhirs, and other ancient features.
We then stopped at the town of Josselin, which features an impressive castle complex dating from the 11th century. It turned out that we were there for France’s heritage weekend, so most sites had free admission and some kind of special festivities going on. At Josselin, costumed dancers performed outside the Renaissance-era manor house that is inside the fortress walls.
From Vannes to Vitré
On Sunday, we set out to Vitré. On the way we stopped to see the Château de Châteaubriant. Like Josselin, it was free for the weekend and had some interpretive guides and activities. The sites and its various structures were important in the economic development of the region, and played a significant (if losing) role in the defense of Brittany against the French. The site is privately owned and not as open as some others. Like Josselin, its owners added a palatial residence during the Renaissance era but only a couple rooms are now accessible to the public.
Next, we headed to Fougères to see … Yet Another Castle! The Château de Fougères is large and generally wide open to exploration by the public. It was a bit crowded due to the heritage weekend traffic, but we still enjoyed traipsing along the ramparts and climbing the towers.
Vitré
We arrived to Vitré on Sunday evening and were pretty exhausted from our weekend of sightseeing.
Vitré is a commune in the Ille-et-Vilaine department of Brittany, and has a population of just under 20,000. French King Henry IV is reported to have said in 1598: “If I was not King of France, I want to be bourgeois from Vitré!”
We planned only one full day there, and since that day was a Monday (when a lot of places are closed) the town was somewhat sleepy and it sometimes felt like we had it to ourselves! Vitré castle, thankfully, was open and was pretty impressively in tact and accessible, with many restored and staged rooms. Part of it even served as municipal offices (though not for the IT department as far as we could tell).
We enjoyed as a large and simple lunch at a local restaurant and digested with a walk along the river. We skipped dinner and just bar-hopped along the narrow little streets until we retired for the night. And I met my 4th cat friend of the trip!!