Rambles in Brittany

by M. F. Mansfield

The great national road which stretches from Paris to Brest covers a distance nearly equal to that from Paris to Turin, or from Paris to Amsterdam.

There are, however, in Brittany no long stretches of unrolled road surface, and for the most part the roadways are as smooth as can anywhere be found. Were it not for the eternal switchbacks, and the aforementioned hobnail, with its pointed end usually upmost, Brittany would be a far more popular touring-ground for the automobile than it is. The hooded cart of Normandy and Brittany, such as one meets going to and from the market-towns, is another real dread to the man in the motor-car.

It is not that the occupant is unwilling to hear one’s horn, but it is almost impossible that he should against a head-wind, until you are close upon him. It is useless to point to your ear as you whisk by and ask him—in a shout—if he is deaf, or to say: “Well, now, you sleep well.” He will pay little or no attention to you, and anyway, most likely, he was not asleep, as are so many of his fellows that one meets on English roads.

In Brittany the traveller by road often meets an obstruction in the shape of a flock of sheep slowly making its way toward one, or in the opposite direction, or even a flock of ducks or geese, which are even more dreadful. Sheep are stupid, hens and chickens are silly, but geese are arrogant and obstinate.

It is very disconcerting, of course, for the motor-car driver at full speed to have to draw in his ten, or twenty, or thirty horses in order to avoid decapitating a whole goose and gosling family, but it lends a charm to the travel, which a badly paved stretch of roadway—in Picardy, for instance—wholly lacks.

Here when one does actually run into a flock of geese, such as one sees on the high-coloured posters advertising a certain make of car, and in the comic journals, it is one of the real humours of life. The amount of curiosity an old goose or gander can show in a death-dealing motor-car as it rushes by, and the chances they take of sudden death, are enough to give an ordinarily careful driver innumerable heart-leaps.

This is about all the trouble one is likely to meet on Breton roads, except, of course, the always present grazing cows, which here, though they are always attended,—generally by a small boy or girl, who often is not able to keep them in line as one would wish,—are allowed to stray freely, and are not tethered as they are throughout Normandy.

It is not for the aforesaid reasons alone that motor-cars are scarce in Brittany, for, after all, they form but minor troubles as compared with the eccentricities of the machinery itself, and the tourist in a motor-car is usually prepared for most things which are likely to happen to him en route. So really if one likes a hilly country—and it is not without its charms—Brittany offers much in the way of varied and natural beauties that certain other provinces lack. Touraine, for instance, delightful as it is as a touring-ground, is as proverbially flat as a billiard-table.

There are, in the first place, not nearly so many motor-cars owned in Brittany, and accordingly there are astonishingly few shelters and repairers. Apparently, the Breton does not care for the new-fangled means of locomotion, not recognizing, perhaps, that it has come to stay. Still less does the Breton peasant’s brother, the Breton sailor or fisherman, care for the motor-boat, which ought to have a great vogue in such great inland seas as Morbihan, the Bay of Douarnenez, or the Goulet or the roadstead of Brest.

The sailor of Brest or Lorient and the little fishing villages of the west will tell you: “I like my boat better, with my sail and my arms for motors.”