Those 396 steps on the Lantern of Trézien and La Vieille

Back on the Breton coast, we head for the Trézien Lantern, which takes the form of a cylindrical tower as high as 37 metres and is located in the village of Plouarzel, on the coast north of Le Conquet. Our next destination is the lighthouse on Ile Vierge, another icon of the region. It is considered, by virtue of its 82.50 metres, to be the highest lantern in Europe, so much so that one has to tread 396 steps of a spiral staircase destined to remain memorable in travel memories, to penetrate the luminous canopy: all its inner walls are covered with an opaline mosaic. By contrast, the Bodic lighthouse at Lezardrieux, built in 1867, resembles a sputnik on the launch pad. A truly vertiginous viewpoint is the one built from the rocky promontory of Cap Sizun, the westernmost in France, because from this overhanging promontory you can either see in succession the lighthouse of La Vieille, the only one still working with a petroleum lantern, the lighthouse of Tevennec, near the Ile-de-Sein, where the keepers secured their livelihood by rearing cows in the small garden, while the one further away is the mysterious, arcane lighthouse of Ar-Men.