Chapter IV: Travel Routes in Brittany

Tourists are commonly supposed to belong to the pleasure-seeking or invalid class, and so they mostly do, still one may travel for instruction (which is pleasure, also) and be mindful of the conditions of life around him, and profit accordingly, unless he absolutely demands the life of the boulevards of Paris or the homœopathic excitements of the little horses in some popular watering-place.

It is undoubtedly true that most tourists are of limited interests, which may be pleasure, or art, or architecture, or worshipping at historical shrines. All this is well enough in its way, but if one could combine a modicum of each he would profit much more largely, to say nothing of being amused and instructed, too.

The time has long since passed when travellers reviled Brittany as a province where “husbandry was no further advanced than among the Hurons,” as a writer of the eighteenth century said within twenty-four hours after he had crossed the boundary between Normandy and Brittany, at Pontorson, where the causeway road branches off to Mont St. Michel. Evidences of husbandry are still very much to the fore, but it is more advanced in the interior, at least; on the coast the harvest of the sea takes its place.

Brittany, in husbandry, may not be so advanced as some other parts. There are no such elaborate operations going on here as in the regions where high farming is practised--in Beauce, or Normandy, or Anjou. Neither are such numbers of mechanical farming-tools in operation, but in spite of all this there is a very considerable and prosperous industry born of the soil of which most strangers to Brittany, and some who have travelled there, are entirely ignorant. All along the great highways crossing and recrossing Brittany one sees the little roadside farms with their attendant small flocks of live stock, sheep, cattle, geese, ducks, and fowls, which point, at any rate, to the fact that the peasant need not be as ill-nourished as he is generally supposed to be; and really he is not.

The charm of journeying by road in France is indescribable, perhaps, to its fullest degree. Natural beauties count for much, but in a land peopled with historic castles, churches, and abbeys, as Normandy and Brittany are, it is found doubly enjoyable even though one professes no expert architectural knowledge, or no profound aptitude for historical research. These, however, are but side-lights, which make the actual pilgrimage among such shrines greatly to be cherished among one’s personal experiences.

It is the whole which pleases, and not fragmentary and piecemeal beauties and charms; and never was this more true than of a well-beloved land, be it one’s own or an alien shore.

Brittany and its travel routes, whether by road or rail, offer as full a measure of all these attractions as it is possible for one to conceive.

The great highways of Brittany have not the same favour with travellers by road as those of other parts of France. They are equally important and equally well cared for by a paternal government, but their inclines are steeper--sometimes suicidal--and certainly more frequent than elsewhere in France, and distances stretch out interminably.

The great national road which stretches from Paris to Brest covers a distance nearly equal to that from Paris to Turin, or from Paris to Amsterdam.

There are, however, in Brittany no long stretches of unrolled road surface, and for the most part the roadways are as smooth as can anywhere be found. Were it not for the eternal switchbacks, and the aforementioned hobnail, with its pointed end usually upmost, Brittany would be a far more popular touring-ground for the automobile than it is. The hooded cart of Normandy and Brittany, such as one meets going to and from the market-towns, is another real dread to the man in the motor-car.

It is not that the occupant is unwilling to hear one’s horn, but it is almost impossible that he should against a head-wind, until you are close upon him. It is useless to point to your ear as you whisk by and ask him--in a shout--if he is deaf, or to say: “Well, now, you sleep well.” He will pay little or no attention to you, and anyway, most likely, he was _not_ asleep, as are so many of his fellows that one meets on English roads.

In Brittany the traveller by road often meets an obstruction in the shape of a flock of sheep slowly making its way toward one, or in the opposite direction, or even a flock of ducks or geese, which are even more dreadful. Sheep are stupid, hens and chickens are silly, but geese are arrogant and obstinate.

It is very disconcerting, of course, for the motor-car driver at full speed to have to draw in his ten, or twenty, or thirty horses in order to avoid decapitating a whole goose and gosling family, but it lends a charm to the travel, which a badly paved stretch of roadway--in Picardy, for instance--wholly lacks.

Here when one does actually run into a flock of geese, such as one sees on the high-coloured posters advertising a certain make of car, and in the comic journals, it is one of the real humours of life. The amount of curiosity an old goose or gander can show in a death-dealing motor-car as it rushes by, and the chances they take of sudden death, are enough to give an ordinarily careful driver innumerable heart-leaps.

This is about all the trouble one is likely to meet on Breton roads, except, of course, the always present grazing cows, which here, though they are always attended,--generally by a small boy or girl, who often is not able to keep them in line as one would wish,--are allowed to stray freely, and are not tethered as they are throughout Normandy.

It is not for the aforesaid reasons alone that motor-cars are scarce in Brittany, for, after all, they form but minor troubles as compared with the eccentricities of the machinery itself, and the tourist in a motor-car is usually prepared for most things which are likely to happen to him _en route_. So really if one likes a hilly country--and it is not without its charms--Brittany offers much in the way of varied and natural beauties that certain other provinces lack. Touraine, for instance, delightful as it is as a touring-ground, is as proverbially flat as a billiard-table.

There are, in the first place, not nearly so many motor-cars owned in Brittany, and accordingly there are astonishingly few shelters and repairers. Apparently, the Breton does not care for the new-fangled means of locomotion, not recognizing, perhaps, that it has come to stay. Still less does the Breton peasant’s brother, the Breton sailor or fisherman, care for the motor-boat, which ought to have a great vogue in such great inland seas as Morbihan, the Bay of Douarnenez, or the Goulet or the roadstead of Brest.

The sailor of Brest or Lorient and the little fishing villages of the west will tell you: “I like my boat better, with my sail and my arms for motors.”

Often these great stretches of Breton roadway show an aspect of human nature that is probably the same the world over; a peasant man or woman is leading a cow,--always on the wrong side of the road, of course,--or a sleepy farm-hand is drawing his cart to or from market,--still on the wrong side of the road,--when the whirr and snort of a motor-car does something more than awaken echoes.

The cows entangle themselves in their leading ropes, and the usually placid horses bolt with the cart into the ditch. The native, of course, reviles the car and its occupants, not because he hates them,--for they are one of the mainstays of the inns of the countryside,--but merely to display that untamable spirit of independence, which every mother’s son of a French peasant has developed to a high degree.

In Brittany, as in most other lands,--in summer,--the traveller by road gathers in a fine crop of wingy, stingy things, which project themselves into one’s eyes with a formidable force when one goes at them with a swift-moving car.

Occasionally one thinks he has come upon a vast convention of them, so many are they in numbers and variety--flies, wasps, bees, and what not, with a peculiar Gallic species of fly so infinitesimal that one only stops to clear them out when he feels that his eyes are so full of them that they may be uncomfortably crowded. The real or fabled Jersey mosquito would go out of business with his Breton brother as a competitor. Truly this is a new terror, and one that certainly was not apparent, to anything like the present extent, before the advent of the motor-car.

One comes upon a dull week in Brittany often, even in summer, when the sky remains overcast, and great clouds roll up from out of the western ocean. Often it is not cold, but it is bitterly damp and sticky, even though it does not rain, but the native does not seem to mind it, at least, he never complains.

The only objector ever met with by the writer was a Gascon who kept a pharmacy at Quimper. He discussed it as follows: “Hideous country! The wind blows here every day in the year, and the rest of the time it rains,” he continued, enigmatically. “Yes, that abominable wind always plays the same trick on me! What a country!” He was probably thinking of his own bright and sunny home in the South, where seldom, if ever, are conditions other than brilliantly tranquil.

There are three great highroads which cross Brittany from east to west, the main road of Brittany from Alençon in Normandy, through Mayenne, Fougères, Dol, Dinan, Guingamp, and Morlaix to Brest; the southern road from Paris via Le Mans, or even following the Loire valley down from Orleans to Nantes, and thence westward via Vannes, Lorient, and Quimper to Brest, thus making the complete circuit of the Breton coast. A midway course lies in almost a direct line east and west through Laval, Vitré, Rennes, Ploërmel, Pontivy, and Carhaix.

These three highroads cover completely the itinerary of Brittany, in so far as they follow the north and south coast and the country-side lying between.

Cross country, from the Bay of Mont St. Michel to the mouth of the Loire, one “route nationale” lies directly through Rennes, and another ends at Vannes, in Morbihan.

These cover practically all the regular lines of traffic, and include all the chief points of historical and topographical instances.

Distances of themselves are not great in Brittany. From St. Malo to Nantes is but 180 kilometres; from Laval to Brest but 337 kilometres; and from Nantes to Brest is but 324 kilometres.

In these days of motor-cars and even bicycles, these distances are not great, and so long as they are not taken at a rush,--which forbids enjoyment,--they form no drawback to the pleasures of travel by road in Brittany. One has only to add two or three hundred kilometres more, in order to reach the starting-points of Nantes, Laval, or St. Malo from Paris. Then the tour may seem a lengthy one; but even this is nothing to find fault with; the intermediate country is in itself delightful, whether one journeys down through the Orleanais, Touraine, and Anjou, or westward through the heart of Normandy.

The railways in Brittany, except on some of the cross-country routes, are developed to a high stage of efficiency. The great express lines of the Western Railroad to St. Malo and to Brest run due west from Paris, straight almost as the crow flies. Again, one may make his entry via Nantes and the Loire valley through Touraine and Anjou by the Orleans line, and have the satisfaction of setting out from Paris by the world’s finest and most modern railway station, that wonderfully convenient and artistic structure on the Quay of Orsay.

Rennes is the great railway centre of Brittany, and accordingly all roads lead to Rennes. Here one may make up his itinerary at a price which will include nearly every place west of that point for a matter of _frcs._ 65 for first-class, and _frcs._ 50, second-class, and if he tell the clerk of the booking-office at his point of departure for Rennes that he intends doing this (and agrees with the formalities) he will get a discount of forty per cent, on the price of first or second class tickets up to that point. A plan of this itinerary and further particulars are given in the appendix.

Third-class railway travel in Brittany ought to form one of the long-remembered experiences of one’s visit to that province.

There is much amusement to be got out of a journey across Brittany from St. Malo to Nantes, with mob-capped peasant-folk and blue-bloused and picturesque farmers, all laden with huge baskets and bundles, and an occasional live fowl, or perhaps a rabbit, or even a guinea-pig, though one must not believe that Frenchmen eat guinea-pigs. The writer, at least, never saw one being eaten, though what use they are really put to is an open question.

Occasionally there will be a want of elbow-room in a third-class carriage, but this is no great inconvenience, as the Breton mostly travels short distances only, and at the next station one may be left alone with only a drowsy Breton sailor--off on a furlough from a man-of-war--to keep him company, with his red-knobbed tam-o’-shanter rakishly over one ear.

Often a _foreigner_ will throw himself into one’s compartment,--an American or an English artist, with his sketching paraphernalia, white umbrella and all,--for artist-folk are mostly of the genus who travel third-class. Good-naturedly enough, if his journey be a long one, he will tell you much of the country round about, for your artist is one who knows the byways as well as the highways--and perhaps a little better. By this procedure, one stands a chance of gathering information as well as being edified and amused.