Hiking in Brittany

The customs officers’ path, now the GR 34, follows the coast from Mont-Saint-Michel to Saint-Nazaire for more than two thousand kilometres: it is the longest long distance trail in France. It dates from 1791, when the national customs service was created to stop the smuggling of salt, tobacco and alcohol landed in the coves. That explains its route: it hugs the coast, because everything had to be watched. Abandoned in the early 20th century, it was reopened as a hiking trail from 1968, near Lannion.

Almost nobody walks it all: it takes eight to sixteen weeks. It is walked in day stages, and that is when it is at its most beautiful, since you can choose your tide and your wind.

What makes walking in Brittany special

• The climb is deceptive: the GR 34 never goes high, but it drops and climbs again at every cove. Over a day, the total climb often exceeds five hundred metres.
• The ground is slippery as soon as it has rained, and it rains. Wet granite slabs and roots call for shoes with grippy soles, not trainers.
• The wind doubles the effort. Walking into a thirty knot wind on an exposed headland is as tiring as a climb.
• The tide can cut off a passage. A few stretches of shore can only be crossed on a falling tide, around mid tide.

The hikes in our guide

Our guide lists two hundred and thirty seven routes, most of them loops, with their route and distance. A loop is better than an out and back on the GR: you do not see the same landscape twice, and you do not need two cars.

The headlands, worth the detour

A Breton headland has to be earned on foot: the car park is always some way off, and that is just as well. The most spectacular are reached by paths of half an hour to two hours.

When to go

Spring is the best season: the gorse and heather are in flower, the days are getting longer, and the path is dry more often than in autumn. Summer has the drawback of crowds on the well known stretches; winter, of short days, with night falling at five o’clock.