A Little Hike
This part of Brittany is called The Pink Granite Coast…
…and the most celebrated part is a walk around the Ploumanac’h peninsula on The Trail of the Customs Agents. Before almost every available coastal space became taken up with a vacation rental, these charming boulders must have had very remote hiding places for smuggling in, what? Woolen cloth? Whiskey? No doubt either whiskey, or whisky. Anyway. 
By a bit of luck, this trail starts just below my little condo, and after a few initial sprinkles the weather set in sunny and comfortable. People are still swimming in the sea here!
The flora of this coast is unusually attractive, though I’m not sure which trees are native here. I passed a patch of very demure and diminutive gorse, which I note because it is an invasive scourge on the southern Oregon coast, towering in impenetrable masses and abetting the conflagration that leveled a town to ashes early in the 20th century. Look at this innocent little arrangement.
Gradually there were more people, as most seemed to have started from the other end of the trail. There were many older couples, since school has started, and I noticed that almost always the woman looked quite miserable, while the man often gave me a small, sideways smile. It happened enough times that I finally laughed out loud. Not sure what is going on there, but it isn’t good publicity for marriage. After one glare, I said “Cheer up, it may never happen!” I should be more careful not to assume a person doesn’t understand English well. Moving on.
I took more pictures of rocks than is probably normal.
But I kept an eye out for things to show scale this time. Note the man sitting near the bottom edge. He’s smoking a cigarette. Somehow that feels more picturesque than the kayakers I saw in some of the coves.
Eventually human-made structures appeared. A tiny building for holding gunpowder. A tinier round building for an unknown, to me, purpose. A lighthouse. Since all were made of this same pink granite, they looked quite nice. Then I saw a large house, converted to a regional museum, with a rock next to it. This is how big some of these boulders are. The photo still doesn’t capture it, but hopefully you can get an idea. They are like sentient beings almost.
After a couple of miles, the trail ends at St. Guirac, a village that is indicated as a picturesque example of a Breton fishing village. It is absolutely not that. It is your basic mix of small hotels and vacation rentals, with a small chapel for the fishermen that contains a wooden carving of St. Sebastian with a large wooden lance left where it impales his solar plexus. Would it effect one to have to see this at least once a week? Worse, how is one affected when one no longer sees it?
On the other hand, the memory of atrocities may make a population more aware of the truth of the human potential for nasty behavior. We in America are really way too dependent on our rose-colored glasses.
That reminds me, the pink color of this granite is due to feldspar. There are only two other pink granite coasts in the world (according to the tourist bureau, so…) and one is in China.
At St. Guirac there is a tiny structure that is said to have existed on that spot for about a thousand years. That is when St. Guirac himself arrived by sea in these parts. The local legend, and there are old local photos to corroborate it, is that if an unmarried woman sticks a needle in the saint’s nose and it stays there, she will be married within the year. So, I learned that the nose of the statue has been transformed into a gaping, ragged hole. And yet there are plenty of people who want to look at that. I did not.
I think it is about time that the worth and importance of men is judged by their ability to gain and retain the privilege of being married. Perhaps then it would be them looking like the miserable member of an old couple, and the women will have a twinkle in their eye. Imagine that.
