The inhabitants of Plougastel have preserved their ancient costumes with little or no modern interpolation. Particularly is this to be noted among the young girls, on a Sunday, as they come from the mass, and also on the fifteenth of August, when there is a great religious procession. The “Pardon of Plougastel” is known also as the “Birds’ Pardon,” for a great bird fair is opened St. John’s Day.
On the same side of the Goulet of Brest, that narrow inlet which is the entrance from the sea to the bay, is Le Conquet. It sits at the very tip of Finistère, just above the Pte. St. Mathieu, and its great lighthouse, which, with a thirty-second eclipse, sends its rays some twenty miles out to sea.
Le Conquet has but fifteen hundred inhabitants, and its isolated population apparently has not many friends, else the place would be filled to overflowing in the summer months, which it is not. Its two hotels, St. Barbara and Hôtel de Bretagne, are all that could be expected, and more, hence the paucity of visitors to this charming bit of “land’s end” is the more remarkable.
Anciently Le Conquet was a strong fortified place, and it underwent a great number of sieges, and was burned by the English in 1558. Eight houses alone of the present habitations of the town survived the flames.
The port is frequented only by the fishing-smacks, which land vast quantities of lobsters and shrimps.
There is also an ancient pottery here, the most ancient in all Finistère. Its pots and pans are found in all the homesteads hereabouts, and such tourists from all parts as actually do come here carry numberless specimens away with them.
The modern church, after the ogival manner, is far more satisfactory than most modern ecclesiastical monuments. There is a fifteenth-century portal, however, and some contemporary statues, which save it from being wholly a modern work.
The coast-line round about is the rough, abrupt ending of the Léon plateau, jagged and deeply serrated like the jaws of a shark, as the native tells one with respect to about all of the Breton coast-line. Fine beaches do exist here and there, but in the main it is a stern and rock-bound shore that buffets the Atlantic’s waves in Finistère.
Three times a week one can make the journey by steamboat to Ouessant, which English sailor-folk—those who go down to the sea in great liners—know as Ushant. The Île Molène and the Île Ouessant are the principal members of the group, and are even more stern and rock-bound than the mainland.
“Very little comfort on the boat,” you will be told at the port-office, where you make inquiry as to the hour of departure. Any but good sailors and true vagabond travellers had best leave the journey out of their itinerary, although it has unique interest.