Green pastures in Brittany

The time has gone incredibly quickly but a week last Saturday we returned home from a wonderful family holiday in Brittany.

Our home for two weeks was a cottage on 'Le Venec', a farm near the village of Loperec in central Finistere, about 8 miles inland and slightly north from Chateaulin. John and Jo Bryant who own the farm (which has two other attached cottages on it) live next door and their generosity and warmth made the holiday special. John would pop in each day with something - courgettes the size of marrows, eggs, beans or an invitation for the boys to go to walk the dogs or paint the hen house with him. They did not really need much more to make their holiday. They could go out early in the morning; we could relax. Vacances completes.

But of course we did do a lot of other things. The beach - Pentrez Plage was the best with acres of clean sand and free parking on the edge of the beach so no miles to walk over pebbles carrying chairs, tent, spades and bags. A little beach near Douarnenez was good too but a bit hot and very busy the afternoon we visited. A swimming pool with water chute and wave machine was a good alternative one day when we visited Quimper.

Pont l'Abbe was the little town where I lived for 6 months in 1975 working as an assistant in the Lycee Laennec. It has not changed much. I could see the room in which I had lived and the classrooms in which I had conversed in English with groups of French teenagers.

We walked along the riverside path in Huelgoat, strewn with massive boulders, and revisited a week later for the boating lake - Thomas and Hilary in the 'police' boat, Nathaniel and I in the 007 boat. Then a family pedallo round the lake.

We visited Locronan, a highly commercialised but very picturesque medieval town, and the abbey at Landevennec, founded, like a lot of religious establishments in Brittany by a Welsh monk (this one by St Guenole, a big noise in early Breton Christianity). I had once stayed a night in a guest room there on a hitch-hiking trip, in the absence of a local youth hostel.

We twice visited the nearby village of Pleyben, with an immense junk-shop about two kilometres away, to which we walked, and poked around at loads of interesting and not so interesting stuff sourced from house and shop clearances. Pleyben also has a chocolaterie!

We could not stay in Brittany without eating crepes which we did in style twice, once in Le Faou and once in a delightful creperie on the edge of a lake a few miles north of Le Venec - a lake which has its own beach, so no problem in entertaining the boys afterwards.

Our one visit to church (the first Sunday we listened to a sermon in the house and sang some hymns with the help of a CD) was to an evangelical church in Brest where we were given a warm welcome and heard a good message on Jeremiah 1, translated for us by Jo Bryant. In the afternoon we took a picnic into a local botanical garden where it rained heavily for a while but we had a lovely walk down to the beach and back.

Meanwhile back at the ranch - we read, played Scrabble (Hilary usually wins), watched the Olympics and the boys enjoyed playing around on the farm, 'helping' John or scooting in the yard.

A great holiday; it went too quickly. Even the 11 hour drive back to Dunkerque did not erase the relaxation or the memories!