Being A Tour Guide

I have a guest.
A friend of many years, in fact we've been trying to remember when we first met, through our husbands who worked together in the late 70's.
We had lost touch and then I joined Facebook and found her.

We met again down in Dorset when I rented that gatehouse for a few days, and spent a happy day fossil hunting and lunching and playing catch-up.
And here she is, in France with me for a week of exploring and adventures.

On the first afternoon it rained so we went to La Vallée des Saints and wandered among the statues, oft times with another visitor nearby listening as I told Maggie the stories of the saints,not all of the saints, there are about seventy now and I'm not that good at memorising the guide book, but the ones that have impressed me for one reason or another. Like Saint Melar. It was a shame for the other visitors, and for the coffers of the organisation that runs the site, that the shop selling guide books was closed. A missed opportunity there, I wonder they don't have them in a bar or a shop in the local village too. Happily we had two copies, I buy one each year.

So that was the first afternoon. An introduction to Breton saints on a rain-swept hilltop.
The next day the forecast was for more rain but, this is Brittany, the weather can change from minute to minute so we went to the coast.

One of my greatest pleasures is arriving at the Pink Castle Beach and finding a high tide.

We had put swimming costumes and towels in the car, I never go out without mine these days, but we first wandered along the sand collecting shells. We are a pair of committed beachcombers, we discovered. But that sea... so blue, so calm, so empty, so, so there!

After a while I left Maggie on the rocks and snucked back to the car, changed into my cossie and before you could say "Bobbing about on a wave" I was swimming.

It was perfect. It is always perfect. On such occasions, life is perfect.

Of course, once someone realised that I was in the sea he appointed himself my lifeguard...

Once dried and dressed we drove past Ploumanac'h so that we could walk the Sentier des Douaniers.

It was breezy, blustery, blowy...
 

We took many pictures.
We stopped many times to gasp at the waves crashing against the rocks.
We paused to breath in the scents of iodine and ozone.

It just goes to show that you should pay no heed to the weather forecasts.

Towards the end of the path we took a detour into Ploumanac'h for a lunch break, then it was back on to the Sentier des Douaniers to retrace our steps back to the car.

Then a cold drink at Trégastel before winding our way home.

This is now a regular event for me, a swim in the sea, a walk along the pink granite, refreshments in Trégastel, and then home. To arrive sandy, salt-crusted, windswept or with a few more freckles but always, always with a happy heart.

I am so blessed, and so appreciative.

And Maggie has fallen in love with the Pink Granite Coast, as I knew she would!