In the Pont-l'Abbé fairground to the Plage de la Grève Blanche

Described by the writer himself as 'the most typically Breton town in all Brittany', Pont-l'Abbé does not betray this reputation more than a century and a half later. Certainly, its male inhabitants could no longer wear wide-brimmed hats, embroidered waistcoats and even four jackets, one on top of the other, as Maupassant recounts, without concealing their astonishment. But certainly, the enchantment of being on a beach like Grève Blanche is the same. Not least because now the gastronomic fashion of feasting on the panorama and lobsters is still palpitating (An Atoll is the right restaurant). Above all, one must cross the threshold of Notre-Dame des Carmes, which one encounters once past the harbour quays erected with the stones of the ancient walls: it constitutes the last architectural legacy of a 16th-century convent, while the stained glass windows dating back to the 19th century give life to lacework of light, especially between the rays of the original granite rose window. Also impressed in the mind and heart is the 14th-century fortress with its keep and cellars, rebuilt after the fire of the Red Berets, the protagonists of a furious battle against the taxes imposed by King Louis XIV.