ADVENTURE HIBERNATING IN BRITTANY

Brittany in winter can be wild, wet and windy and not an obvious choice for spending the off season on board. But southern Brittany in particular has many charming advantages, as Detlef Jens found out

- Detlef Jens

This was the one shopping trip that I'll never forget. Indeed, I'll probably have fond memories of that particular day in Brittany for the rest of my life. I had sailed into the Rade de Brest where I was to meet friends with their boat and one fine summer day we hooked up in a small, rural town on the banks of the River Aulne that flows into the Rade de Brest and which is navigable for yachts up to the market town of Chateaulin. A low bridge over the river is the barrier for any sailing boat with her mast up, but smaller motorboats can from here connect into the canals and waterways of inland Brittany.

While we enjoyed our reunion in Port Launay, we decided to provision our ships as we would be cruising south in company from here. And what a way to do the shopping! We took my boat and motored a few short miles further upstream from Port Launay, where we came into the outskirts of Chateaulin.

GETTING PROVISIONS

On the starboard bank of the river was a huge Leclerc hypermarché, together with a very inviting jetty to which we moored my boat. As we walked around the monstrous hangar that was the store, we emerged onto a car park about the size of an airfield, with thousands of vehicles shimmering in the midday sun.