south finistère into morbihan

Not one of the feux illustrated on the JBH postcard of this bit of France have we seen properly if at all. At time of writing that is. The first five are all on the islands while La Teignouse and Les Grande Cardinaux are rock lights.

If you proceed from Eckmühl in the same general ESE direction but by sea (in your yacht, or flying your private jet) you could navigate your way toward St Nazaire by 'hopping' from island to island. There is a a string of them. It is upon these that the lighthouses of this area are located, not on the mainland. Add in several rock lighthouses as well, and you have more or less, a chain of lighthouses all the way to the mouth of the Loire.

Les Moutons is on Île aux Moutons unsurprisingly.
Penfret graces the Îles de Glénan.
Île de Groix stars Pen Men lighthouse and Pointe des Chats at the opposite end.
Belle Île has Les Poulains but best of all, the Augustin Freznel designed lighthouse commonly called Goulphar (see below). At the eastern end we find Kerdonis. You want details? Well, go to The Lighthouse Directory, for starters… or toddle along to appendix three of this blog which gives some more illumination regarding the smaller island lights.

As they are out there, off the coast, we have not been able to visit these constructions. Or to put it another way, we have not seen fit to shell out for boat trips and island visits, and the associated stopovers, as yet. I am disappointed, given our poor luck with visibility, to have had little success in getting even distant views and snaps either: most often we could not see hide nor hair of the islands, even if we had comprehended that lighthouses worth the name were out there, not around here!  Add to that the catch 22: out of season hotels cheaper but often closed and no boats going out. In season hotels expensive, fully booked, ferries running but hoards of folk. pah!

Presqu'île de Quiberon has Phare Port Maria which we have visited but not climbed; and Port Haliguen, a neat little harbour light with aspirations to phare status, no climbing allowed. But these two lights were within our grasp, as they are on the mainland,  y'see. It was raining.

From the Quiberon/Belle Île divide, our profile improves considerably. The JBH postcard below has two mainland lights at either end and three rock lights in the middle. We have had sight of all these even though the 'proper-jobs' have necessarily been viewed at a distance.

As Goulphar is a first class light I shall be content, until such time as we get to visit it, to give you the bare bones about this Grand Phare, derived from The Lighthouse Directory.

The Phare de Goulphar was commissioned in 1836. (For lighthouses we mean by commissioned, that it came into use -Ed) It has a focal plane of 87 metres or 285ft showing two white flashes every ten seconds. The tower overall is 52 metres (17ft) tall, built of granite, rising from a two storey circular base attached to the  keeper's accommodation. Huelse has a historic postcard view. so you see what it looked like a while back by clicking on the link.

This is one of France's most powerful lighthouses, designed to have a range of 50 kilometres or 31 nautical miles. At the end of ww2, it was discovered that German troops had placed explosives in the tower to blow it up; German POWs were employed to remove the explosives, and they managed to do so safely. As pointed out earlier this light was designed by the legendary Augustin Fresnel, the father of 19th and 20th C lighthouse optics (he designed Biarritz aussi).

Port Navalo is at the entrance to the extensive Golfe du Morbihan and thus runs to something like a lighthouse. (The picture at the end of this post is off the entrance to the Golfe). It had two towers once but now manages with just one. You really do need a boat for the Golfe de Morbihan, as well as a keen sense of your French geography. Remember that Vannes is not really on the sea but on this Golfe. And on the N165 which I am sure far more of my public will be familiar with. Very nice, but a bit tame for my liking (not the road… the sea side…… too touristy).

God, this is boring! Tell you what. Let's go straight to St Nazaire in the next posting, yes? Take in the lights there, and the rock lighthouses that reach up from there right up to Les Grands Cardineaux, slot in Penn Lann etc, then retrace our steps, get over the Pont St Nazaire, down to Pointe de St Glidas?  Yes that's what we'll do. I will of course introduce you to Mr Hulot at St Marc and give honourable mention to that other white paint light (Aiguillon) on the second JBH postcards exhibited here…

… which reminds me: thanks to JBH for the use of two of his spiffing landscape postcards on this post, not to mention a reproduction of the only known source for his Les Moutons rendition. For now though, enough of Chats, Moutons and Poulains, lets get to something more akin to phares proper! Phew!

footnote: There is a phare that gets missed in these parts. It is eight nautical miles west of Quiberon and took longer to build that any other French lighthouse. I haven't see it, you haven't seen it, hardly anybody has seen it (I exclude the boat people) save by the flash of it at night maybe. It is called Birvideaux and is a true lighthouse. Even JBH has omitted it from his oeuvre, which I think is sad. You can read all about it in the appropriate Lighthouse Directory posting . . . twenty nine years in the building! Two white flashes every six seconds. It is marked on page 123 of the Michelin A4 wiro bound atlas of France. They mark it as a feu but it is a phare but seemingly didn't run to a keeper.