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Travelling through Brittany in France

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Travelling through Brittany is a journey through medieval France. Small villages pop up every 10 km and all have churches. The streets are paved and everything is built in stone. Around Brittany everything is in two languages, French and Breton and they also have 4000 year old remains. Travelling through Brittany is an adventure.

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The Breton language

In Brittany, not only French is spoken, but also Breton. Breton is an ancient Celtic language, which is unfortunately under threat. The language is related to Cornish in Cornwall and is also related to Cymric in Wales. Breton is thought to have arrived in Brittany in the 6th century as British groups fled the British Isles from the Anglo-Saxons.

Breton is mainly spoken in the western part of Brittany, but the language is declining in size. In the 1980s there were around 600 000 speakers. Today there are only 200,000 speakers, most of whom are over 60 years old. Breton is neither an official language of France nor of Brittany, but has been recognised as one of France's regional languages.

bretonska

Stone houses and narrow roads

When travelling through Brittany, you pass through countless small villages with stone houses that make you feel like you have travelled many hundreds of years back in time. Each village has a church, a town hall, a small kiosk selling tobacco and newspapers, a boulangerie (bakery) and a patisserie (pastry shop). You really can't go wrong!

Resa genom Bretagne
Each village has its own church
vägar i Bretagne
The roads in Brittany are like travelling 1000 years back in time.
Att resa genom Bretagne
Travelling through Brittany is an experience, sometimes like time travel!

Travelling through Brittany

The villages are charming, and very small. You barely have time to enter them before you have to leave them again. The roads are narrow and winding and not really suitable for motorhomes ... but there are buses here and if you take it easy it's no problem.

We enjoy travelling this way instead of the main roads and there is plenty to see. Some places you won't want to miss in Brittany:

Fricampa - the quest for electricity

We have been free camping two nights in a row now, so tonight we were looking for a site with electricity. We found one here in Plogoff, on the west coast of Brittany, but to get electricity you have to pay in 2-euro coins, and the only open shop in town refuses to give change....

Instead, we have found a regular car park with electric poles. So tonight we've plugged in our cable (a bit secretly) and are charging everything we have to charge: computers, phones, camera batteries, tablets, electric toothbrush...

Frankrikes västkust
View from the Pointe du Raz viewpoint, just outside Plogoff on the west coast of Brittany.

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