I’ve written before about the lovely French region of la Bretagne. And of course, last summer I shared a whole series of post following up on my trip to France for my step-daughter’s amazing wedding. Well my son and I recently got back from another amazing trip there and we discovered a wonderful new coin (corner) that I want to share with you.

For our trip to France this year, we returned to the lovely little town of Josselin where we stayed last year. We didn’t get to spend as much time in town cette année because we were toujours partis à droite à gauche (always out here and there [lit. to the right to the left]). We returned to some of our favorite spots like la ville de Rochefort-en-Terre and to le forêt de Broceliande, but our favorite new discovery was la côte de Granit rose (The Pink Granite Coast).

La côte de Granit rose is a lovely stretch of picturesque towns, rocky outcroppings, and sheltered beaches along Brittany’s northern coast. It runs approximately from the town of Perros-Guirec to the commune of Ploumanac’h * on la Manche (the English Channel).

The region derives its name from the very interesting (and large) rock formations of pink granite that, in the right light, really show off their pink color. I live in a part of les États-Unis (the United States) where we have really large granite boulders that were left behind by the glaciers during the last période glaciaire (ice age) but I’ve never seen anything like the massive boulders that make up the côte. Il faisait nuageux (it was cloudy) when we were there, so we couldn’t fully enjoy the effects, but it was still a really lovely spot.

* Plouc is a French slang injure (insult) that is used pejoratively to refer to people from the campagne (country). According to my belle-fille, the word traces its origins back to all the Bretons (people from la Bretagne) who moved to Paris due to all the towns in the region that start with ‘plou’ (the breton word for ‘parish’).

All photos (C) Tim Hildreth.