Rosporden, on the shore of the great lake of Rosporden, as it was described to us, proved a disappointment. Not that so very much was expected of it, but that so little was found in it. The lake is a misnomer, though the water-weedy pond near the church serves the innumerable artists who flock to the region as a highly interesting foreground. The women of Rosporden wear the most immense bonnets and coifs to be seen in all Brittany, and wimples like those of the Sisters of Charity.
Rosporden
The church dates from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, and is in every way an admirably preserved monument.
To Concarneau and the smell of the sea is a dozen or fourteen kilometres over a gently rising and falling road, with a tendency always to descend until finally one coasts down the long main street of the celebrated fishing port and artists’ sketching-ground (it would be hard to tell in which aspect it is the more famous), until one comes to that famous Great Travellers’ Hotel, where one eats of oysters, lobster, and fresh sardines and many other kinds of sea food to such an extent that one feels decidedly fishy, or at least thirsty.
This should make little difference, as the coffee-room of that most excellent hostelry is likewise excellent, and has a charming outlook upon the wharfs and fishing-boats, thus affording as delightful a method of accustoming oneself to strange sights as could be imagined.
The fishing-boats of Concarneau are one and all great brown-winged gulls that flit slowly over the great bay, going in and out with the rise and fall of the tide all through the round of the clock, depositing their cargoes on the wharfs, shifting crews, and starting off again in a continuous performance of coming and going which never ceases until their timbers, from some untoward cause, fall apart.