Hiking Crozon: Near Roscanvel

The maps have been rather confusing. The France Outdoors app says the GR34 doesn’t go out on the Roscanvel Peninsula. But other maps show it does. When we visited the Pointe des Espagnols (see our earlier post), we saw GR34 signs so we decided to head out to the coast west of Roscanvel for a hike.

(By the way, we’ve been debating what you call a peninsula sticking out from a peninsula… A penpeninsula? A peninsulala? The Germans probably just make one big word that says “peninsulaoffthepeninsula”… I guess we’ll find out when J gets around to translating this post!)

The weather forecast at our rental in Lézargol was for no rain, so we headed out the door without our rain gear. We had, however, brought the drying laundry in, as “no rain” didn’t prevent a passing shower from getting everything damp again. We looked north and saw dark clouds, but it wasn’t clear where they were headed. The forecast our destination, Roscanvel, just twenty minutes away, said it was raining, but when we got there it wasn’t. We eyed the dark cloud over Brest and said, “Well, if we get wet, we get wet,” and started down the path.

The coastline here is littered with fortifications from WWII and much earlier.

On the Îlot de Diablo, the gun emplacement provides gallery space for some of the more interesting graffiti we’ve seen.

The black cloud we had been eying passed safely east of us, but another appeared in its place. As the wind rose, we cut short our Facetime session with J’s dad but decided to persevere toward our goal, the île des Capucins.

Fortuitously, we reached a German bunker with a sheltered nook just as rain started to fall. It happened to be the very spot that the German commander of Brest surrendered to the Americans…

The rain let up after five or ten minutes, so we continued on. The rain we’d avoided, however, was nothing to the rain that started a few minutes later. After persevering for a while (with a lot of other wet walkers appearing from out of nowhere), M was starting to mumble about hypothermia and we could see that there wouldn’t be much of a view at our destination (so close!), so we turned back.

It was a chilly walk back in the wind and the rain, but we managed the slippery bits and got back in good form. The hot showers felt really good when we got home and the cider went down very smoothly. So much for being fair weather hikers! Of course, it would be better to be well–prepared foul weather hikers…

I’m sure what brought us through was the fine meal we’d had at midday. J cooked two things for the first time ever – fresh fava beans and sauteed radishes – making this Sunday Chicken a fine meal.

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