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| | | | Brittany, France vs Cornwall, England
Cornwall is enjoying a renaissance. Surfing has never been more popular, explaining the boom in popularity of resorts such as Newquay and Sennen.
The county that used to be a place of soggy chips and dubious pasties is now awash with trendy bars and beach cafes serving food that holds its own against the best London has to offer.
But for some people, only Abroad will do. You want the beaches, the bracing walks, the scenery and the culture, but can't face the long haul down the M5 or the endless train ride from Paddington. And you want some better weather.
Happily, there is another Cornwall you can visit. A little farther away perhaps, but strangely familiar, with strong links to the British region from which it derives its name.
The old kingdom of Cornouaille in southern Brittany is one of France's most popular seaside destinations.
It lacks the glamour and the weather of the Cote d'Azur, but it lacks the crowds, too.
So how do they compare? I have had a family home in Cornwall for 20 years and know its attractions well.
This was my first visit to the delights of Sud Cornouaille and I was keen to see how it shaped up.
We rented a cottage near the village of Tregunc, which is five miles from Concarneau, a fishing port similar in atmosphere to (and twinned with) Penzance.
We checked the brochures and internet, and went for a chaumiere (thatched cottage) by the sea (a must), which had an enclosed garden and accepted dogs.
First impressions of this part of Brittany are all about space. Cornouaille's beaches are less dramatic than the surf-pounded shores of Newquay and Perranporth, say, but are much emptier, with outlandishly blue (and clean) water and miles of silver sand.
Travel guide: Brittany
The land of fish and ships
Brittany has long been a popular destination with British families - it's a handy hop across the Channel, you'll find plenty of self-catering accommodation and it's not too hot for the children.
As for the food, well, you can buy crepes anywhere and drink local cider in those strange rustic beakers. But what else might you expect?
Unsurprisingly, Breton cuisine is dominated by fish - the region's coastline makes up two-thirds of the French seaboard.
Some towns owe their very existence to seafood. Cancale, just east of St Malo, is built on oysters, while Erquy, further west, is the world scallop capital.
We stayed on the Cote d'Armoire, on the northern coast of Brittany, in a gite owned, and most importantly equipped, by a Frenchman, Michel Dubois.
Unusually for a holiday gite, the kitchen knives were razor sharp and the kitchen alone presented us with a huge range of possibilities.
We found garlic presses, salad spinners, a proper coffee machine, even a miniature machine for making raclette, that curious melted cheese dish native to the Alps 700 miles away.
So many gadgets, so little time. The empty fridge yawned at us like the opening of the Channel Tunnel. It was down to us to fill it.
The nearest market to Vieux Marche was at Plouaret, where local farmers come to sell their products once a week as they have for generations.
In France, the small farmer has not yet been bludgeoned into oblivion by the supermarket chains.
We bought some wonderful local cherries at £4.80 a kilo, some pungent organic goats' cheeses at £2 apiece, and local lamb chops at £7 for four.
It wasn't cheap - but the farmers have to make a living. The largest market in this part of Brittany - strangely ignored by the British, who tend to flock to the west coast - is on Thursdays at Lannion, the most important town in the region.
It is a dynamic, bustling place and the epicentre of the French telecommunications industry, served by fast TGV trains that whisk sleek businessmen in from Paris in under two and a half hours.
But on Thursday mornings the town thinks only of its stomach.
Travel guide: Brittany
Picture perfect Brittany
Finistere, in Western Brittany, may mean the end of the earth but to scores of artists, from the 1800s onwards, it has been a brave new world.
Turner was one of the first to be attracted by the countryside and unruly coastline. Corot, Monet, Renoir and Matisse were equally captivated.
But it was the artists who grouped themselves around Paul Gauguin in the small port of Pont-Aven, which art historians have called the Pont-Aven School, whose work shook the world.
Caring less about photographically reproducing a landscape and more about looking at things in a whole new way, Gauguin and the others, notably Emile Bernard and Paul Serusier, opened the doorway to modern art.
Gauguin, the centenary of whose death has been marked in Brittany this year, spent the summer of 1886 painting in Pont-Aven.
He was drawn by the wild, primitive nature of Brittany's landscape and people - the solid women in their colourful aprons and distinctive white headdresses, the religious festivals, the music, the sheer strangeness of a place whose inhabitants, originally from Wales and Cornwall, prized their separate Celtic identity.
Without leaving France, Gauguin could be abroad. Brittany was 100 different countries with l00 different costumes and in each corner, a different dialect.
He went back to Brittany five times before 1894 and produced some of his finest paintings there. It's easy to see why he was so seduced by Pont-Aven.
Just inland from the Aven Estuary, it's an immensely charming mixture of art galleries, biscuit shops, quayside restaurants and hotels.
In Gauguin's time, the little port was renowned for its hospitality. The Pension Gloanec, where he stayed on a tight budget, was one of 40 hotels which attracted artists from all over the world.
Beside the Aven, a riverside walkway, the Promenade Xavier-Grall, criss-crosses the rushing waters with wooden bridges.
The walk is dotted with ancient washing places of the kind used by the women who inspired Gauguin's impressionistic painting The Washerwomen Of Pont-Aven.
A longer walk leads to the Bois D'Amour, the Lover's Wood, where Gauguin gave his close friend Serusier a revolutionary lesson in abstract painting: 'How do you see those trees? They're yellow. So use yellow.'
My friend Anne and I followed the Rue Emile Bernard a short way out of town to see the old Breton Chapel of Tremalo. On a warm, spring day, a fresh breeze mingled with the smell of woodsmoke. An old man doffed his beret.
Travel guide: Brittany
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| | | | Beaches, driving and cycling
BEACHES: Cornwall's rugged coastline is dotted with dozens of beautiful beaches. Among the best are Sennen, Perranporth, Widemouth Bay and Newquay for surfing.
Porthcurno, near Land's End, and Kynance, on the Lizard, are two of England's prettiest coves. Cornish water quality is generally good.
Brittany's coastline is similar to that of its British equivalent - long, sandy strands and sheltered bays backed by granite cliffs.
The coast around Concarneau has a series of inlets and estuaries divided by long stretches of white sand.
The sea is marginally warmer than in Britain, and just as clean (the oil spill that desecrated the south Breton coast three years ago has been cleaned up).
DRIVING AND CYCLING: After Britain, driving in France is a delight. The minor roads in Brittany are deserted and the area is accessed by a motorway network.
Cyclists are despised in Britain, but the French seem to worship Le Velo. Rural French roads are quite suitable for children to cycle on.
Getting there: You can be on a Cornish beach in five hours from Southern England or Birmingham by car; six or seven by train. Realistically, however, the trip can take twice as long at weekends.
An open train return from Paddington to Penzance costs £151, dropping to £31 for an APEX ticket booked at least a week in advance.
Fares from the Midlands are similar. Cornwall is a long haul from the North and Scotland, although you can fly to Plymouth from Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow on Brymon Airways (tel: 0845 779 9977).
Most people drive to Brittany. One option is to take the Shuttle, but you are then faced with a long drive south and west on the autoroute through Normandy.
To cut the driving, we paid £390 to sail to St Malo from Poole (4.5 hours) aboard a Condor Ferries catamaran (tel: 01305 761551). From there, it is another two to three-hour drive to Brittany's south coast.
Brittany Ferries connects St Malo with Plymouth. The journey takes 13 hours and costs around £300 to £400 return for a twin outside cabin and a car.
Expensively turned out
We were met by Luce Daube, wife of the owner of the Manoir de Lan Kerellec, a smart threestar joint in the nearby holiday town of Trebeurden.
In common with many female hoteliers of a certain age, she is glamorous, expensively turned out and charming.
There is something about her that conjures up a long-ago, far-away France, a country that belongs in spirit to Bardot, Vadim and Gainsbourg.
As an expatriate English friend remarked: 'When you dine in a serious restaurant in France, you buy into a little bit of showbiz. A whiff of sex and glamour is all part of the package. And the owner's wife is usually part of that.'
Mercifully, Mme Daube also knew a fair bit about vegetables.
The speed with which she raced around the cobbled streets of Lannion in her kitten heels on market day was perhaps an indication of just how involved the process of shopping in a market in Brittany can be.
One stall sold the best artichokes, another the best garlic. As for bread, well, it was no good just going to any old boulangerie: only the best would do.
In Lannion, the best is Chez Hubert, a boulangerie artisanale set up eight years ago by Monsieur Hubert and his wife.
The queue stretched right out of the bakery and into the town square: the Hubert loaf, known as a Gana, has become celebrated locally for its crisp midbrown crust and denser than usual interior.
It is made from unleavened flour and costs about twice the price of a standard baguette.
Elsewhere in the market, other stalls show the surprising range of what comes out of this fertile region - 90 per cent of all produce came from Brittany.
We saw piles of fresh langoustines looking reproachfully up at us from the slab; we found oysters from Cancale and clams from Concarneau.
The strawberries came from Plougastel, and artichokes from Finistere at a remarkable 70p apiece.
The main attraction
Inside the chapel hung a primrose-coloured Christ, carved in wood. With its sorrowing expression, the figure was instantly recognisable as Gauguin's famous Yellow Christ. It was like meeting the Mona Lisa.
Gauguin left Brittany in 1887 for Panama and Martinique but lack of funds forced him back. He met up with Emile Bernard in Pont-Aven and was particularly struck by his painting of young Breton women in a green field.
More than anything, this work, with its flat areas of colour, dark outlines and action spilling from the frame, clarified Gauguin's ideas on art. He called it Synthetism.
He wanted to show that the important thing with a picture is how it makes you feel. He advised one of his pupils not to copy from nature but to dream about it, then just go ahead and paint.
In trying to link the real and unseen world, Brittany, whose myths and religion were part of daily life, suited him well.
We drove from the oldest Breton city, Quimper, where Breton culture is thriving, to Chateauneuf-du-Faou. Passing through the valley of Odet, we found villages with names such as Langolen and Kergreac'h and countryside more like South Wales than North-West France.
After falling in love with the views, Serusier made Chateaneuf-du-Faou his home. The church of Notre-Dame-des-Portes looks much as it did when he painted it.
The picture itself hangs in Quimper's excellent Musee des Beaux-Arts. But Serusier gave other treasures to the town of Chateauneuf-du-Faou. The Life Of Christ is a simple and austere fresco in the Church of St Julien, currently being restored.
The resurrection represents the end of the Second World War and Serusier signed it, hopefully, with Pax.
The mayor has a collection of Serusier's work in his office but, to the despair of the town council, Serusier's house, known to contain a marvellous zodiac frieze, also contains a young woman who's letting the place go to ruin.
Gauguin moved down the coast to the small port of Le Pouldu in 1889. It was one of his favourite places. The beach and rocky headland are still striking.
The main attraction is a faithful recreation of the Maison Marie-Henry, a few yards from the original Buvette de Plage, a beachside inn where Gauguin and his artist friends stayed.
The dining room gives a hint of what the atmosphere must have been like. Gauguin, Serusier and Marie-Henry's lover Meyer de Haan painted every surface with still-lifes, caricatures and self-portraits. Gauguin, always assured in his ideas and older than the rest, dominates.
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| | | | Food, drink and accommodation
FOOD AND DRINK: Eating out in Cornwall used to be a hit-and-miss affair, but that has changed.
The county's most famous eaterie is the Seafood Restaurant in Padstow, run by Rick Stein (tel: 01841 532700). Expect to pay £40 a head for dinner and book weeks in advance.
St Ives is now well-served for diners. Try the lovely Porthminster Beach Cafe (tel: 01736 795352), which does wonderful seafood.
But France wins easily, thanks to its thousands of small, family-run eateries. Breton cuisine is dominated by two staples: crepes and seafood.
The former (and their savoury cousin the gallette) are pleasant enough, but too insubstantial to be considered anything other than a snack.
Fish, molluscs and crustaceans, however, are as good as you'll find anywhere.
Les Vagues (tel: 00 33 298 06 82 52) overlooks the Atlantic at Rospico beach, 12 miles east of Concarneau, and has excellent seafood.
Les Grandes Roches (tel: 00 33 298 976 297) is a secluded, Michelin-rated restaurant set in wooded grounds just north of Tregunc. Specialising in game and seafood, it has a four-course dinner with decent wine for £25 a head.
ACCOMMODATION: British hotels are generally a rip-off. You usually pay per person, not per room, and prices are double for an equivalent place in France. Cornwall's myriad B&Bs are much better value, from £15 per person in rural areas.
Holiday cottages in Brittany and Cornwall are similar. After a random internet trawl, we found a cottage to rent near the village of Tregunc for £500 a fortnight. See http://www.armor-vacances.com/finistere/tregunc.html.
Floridly pink garlic
We took home an armful of floridly pink garlic, its cloves fresh and moist, quite unlike the dried out, bitter Spanish varieties that have become depressingly ubiquitous at home. Superb when roasted whole with chicken.
This came not from Provence, as you might expect, but from the Ile de Batz - a rainy spot near Roscoff.
Mme Daube went from one stall to the next. She introduced us to a couple of middle-aged women who she said produced the best lettuces in the region. Everyone else seemed to agree - by noon they'd sold out.
As the market shut up shop, we enjoyed a restorative kir breton - a surprisingly enjoyable aperitif made from cider and creme de mur, before accepting an invitation back to her hotel for lunch.
Hers is a serious restaurant, perhaps a little too serious for a beach resort (it's part of the Relais and Chateaux group), but the food is spectacular even if it is served in cathedral-like surroundings.
The waiters brought out a freebie made from king prawns and an avocado mousse heavily flavoured with anis (this was followed by foie gras and St Peter's fish, not at the same time, while the children were given rack of lamb).
It was delicious but, alas, not all of us thought so. As soon as the waiters placed it on the table, alongside the Coca-Cola that the sommelier had helpfully decanted first, my four-year-old daughter gave out a loud and piercing verdict: Yuck!
But she did enjoy the lamb - and the Coke went down a treat.
TRAVEL DETAILS:
Brittany Ferries (08705 360360) offers crossings from Portsmouth to St Malo. The Manoir de Lan Kerellec can be booked through Brittany Ferries.
The gite at Vieux Marche (00 331 42 88 56 14) sleeps six
WHAT TO BUY IN A BRITTANY MARKET
Artichokes; Strawberries; Oysters; Langoustines; Local goats'cheese; Fresh garlic
MARKETS IN BRITTANY
Lannion:Thursday. Perros Guirec: Friday and Sunday. Plouaret:Tuesday Guingamp: Friday and Saturday. Paimpol:Tuesday. St Quay Portrieux: Monday. St Brieuc: Wednesday and Saturday. Lamballe:Thursday. Dinard:Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday
Gauguin and the Pont-Aven group
Marie-Henry was no fool. When Gauguin had to leave with outstanding debts, she hung on to his paintings. Despite taking her to court in 1894, he never got them back. The next year he left France for ever and ended his days in the Marquesas.
Driving through Finistere was most agreeable. The roads were clear. We based ourselves at the well-run Hotel Gradlon in Quimper, near the old town, full of restaurants and cafes in half-timbered buildings.
'Did you know Serusier's bed is upstairs?' inquired Madame. We did not - nor that the picture of a girl with plaits was by his wife or that the salon chairs were his.
We moved on to the Maison d'Hippolyte, an idiosyncratic chambres d'hotes on the quayside in the pretty medieval town of Quimperle. The Beaux-Arts in Quimper and the Musee de Pont-Aven have both been celebrating Gauguin and the Pont-Aven group with major exhibitions.
More than 150 works have come back from around the world to the place they were first created.
One of Gauguin's paintings is called Kenavo Mister Gauguin. It means ' Goodbye'. 'Kenavo' is what our bill for a meal in Quimper said. It added: 'Benn ur wech all.' 'See you soon.' With pleasure.
TRAVEL DETAILS:
Brittany Ferries (0870 536 0360) sails from Portsmouth to St Malo.
The Hotel Gradlon (tel: 0033 (0) 2 98 95 04 39) and at La Maison d'Hippolyte (0033 (0) 2 98 39 09 11).
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| | | | Weather, language and art
WEATHER: Brittany and Cornwall share a maritime climate dominated by the Atlantic, which means mild, soggy winters and, er, mild, soggy summers.
That said, Brittany is usually warmer and drier than Cornwall. For the best weather, head south and east. South of the Loire, in particular, the climate changes dramatically.
COSTS: France is a cheaper place to spend your holidays than Britain. Visitors should allow £60 to £80 per person a day to cover accommodation, travel and food expenses in Devon and Cornwall, whereas £45 a day should do the trick in Brittany.
LANGUAGE: The last native speaker of Cornish died more than 200 years ago, but several hundred thousand speak Breton (which is similar to Welsh), and road signs and official documents are often bilingual.
ART: The Tate Gallery in St Ives has rejuvenated the town. Some say the gallery - a dramatic modern building overlooking the lovely Porthmeor Beach - is better than the art within.
However, there is a good selection from local artistic superstars such as Patrick Heron, Alfred Wallis and Wilhelmina Barns-Graham.
The Musee des Beaux Arts in Quimper has a good collection of works by Cocteau, Gustave Dore and Max Jacob.
THE VERDICT: Cornwall has the edge when it comes to dramatic coastal scenery. The pubs are more atmospheric than any French bar, and you won't (for the most part) have any difficulty making yourself understood. And despite the traffic, Cornwall is closer.
But Cornouaille has better food, weather and is more welcoming. Quieter and cheaper, too.
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5 minutes from the beach in the grounds of a 17th century manor, a charming, very well-equipped cottage (75 m2). The folding bed is on the landing and
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