What to do in Morbihan

Morbihan means “little sea” in Breton, after the Gulf that made its name. It is the most sheltered department in Brittany, and the sunniest: the south coast facing the Atlantic gets less westerly wind than the tip of Finistère, and the water is one or two degrees warmer.

It is also the department of prehistory. The Carnac alignments have nearly three thousand menhirs still standing over four kilometres of heath, raised between 4800 and 3500 BC: they are therefore older than the pyramids of Egypt and Stonehenge.

The Gulf of Morbihan

An inland sea closed by the Port-Navalo channel, nine hundred metres wide: on every spring tide, sixty million cubic metres of water pass through it in an hour. Inside, between Berder and the Île de la Jument, the current reaches 9.1 knots, the second fastest in Europe after the Raz Blanchard. The Gulf is said to have as many islands as there are days in the year: it has forty two, two of which are inhabited and served by boat, the Île aux Moines and the Île d’Arz.

Carnac and the megaliths

Access to the stone fields is free from October to March. From April to September, you can only go in on a guided tour, of about an hour and to be booked: the heath has suffered from trampling, and it is the only way to let it recover. Many July visitors find this out on the spot, and regret it.

The Quiberon peninsula

Fourteen kilometres long and two hundred metres wide at its narrowest point, with two faces: the wild coast to the west, where swimming is forbidden in places because of the currents, and the sheltered east coast, with its fine sand beaches. In July, the single road that serves it is jammed. The seasonal train avoids the traffic: the Tire-Bouchon, named after the jams it lets you skip, links Auray to Quiberon over twenty seven kilometres, every day in July and August, and carries a hundred and fifty thousand passengers each summer.

Belle-Île

The largest of the Breton islands, forty five minutes from Quiberon: eighty five square kilometres, four municipalities, and enough to fill a week. Monet came in the autumn of 1886 for a week or two; he stayed seventy five days and brought back thirty nine canvases, all of the wild coast. The Port-Coton needles he painted are still in the same place.

Where to stay