Memories of France
Wednesday 21 July 2010
FRANCE – LOW BEDS AND HIGH PLACES!
The French may think they are very chi chi but they have yet to cotton on to decent beds – that is unless you are staying in the Ritz! We now take for granted our high off the floor superking beds with orthopoedic mattresses and it is only after a night scrambling up out of low lying ‘scratchers’ that you thank God for King Coil!
We took our annual run around Brittany and Normandy recently and covered quite a bit of mileage. We tend never to book accommodation as I love to float around looking at different places but, I have to say, my better half, the long suffering Brendan, does on occasion lose the cool when we are not ensconced somewhere by 8 pm!!
Our first port of call was close to Cherbourg to visit Hotel de La Marine at Barneville-Carteret www.hotelmarine.com. Designed somewhat like a large yacht facing out on an estuary, which in low tide can have a bit of a pong, it has been in the Cesne family for five generations and Laurent Cesne’s food is absolutely superb – not cheap but superb. Accommodation prices on the other hand are reasonable. From there we moved down to Mireille and Raymond Delisle’s Chateau de la Roque at St. Lo. www.chateau-de-la-roque.fr -an old favourite of ours. It is a small 17th C Chateau four sheaf Auberge de Campagne and offers really good value on extensive beautiful grounds. Some rooms are in the main house but most are in converted stable blocks. The main attraction for us is their communal dinner each night at around €25 which kicks off with aperitifs beforehand. The long table seats about 25 people and big platters of rustic food are passed around – maybe a really good country terrine with cornichons, country chicken or rabbit, dessert, cheese, and the price includes all your drinks – Pommeau, wine, Calvados. Raymond Delisle is a former French cycling champion and he and Mireille sit at the top of the table and generally put French speaking people at their end. It is always interesting, including having their funny pug dogs sniffing away at your feet. Tell Raymond Delisle you are Irish and he will immediately tell you he is a friend of Sean Kelly!! Another little spot we like is Hotel des Bains www.hdesbains.fr at St. Jean Le Thomas near Avranches. The rooms are very basic but are not expensive at around €60 for a double room, or €75 for a triple. What we like here is the hotel has an outdoor swimming pool, and a very good restaurant.
A great find was Annie and Thierry Lefort’s L’Auberge du Terroir at Servon, a tucked away historic village, near Mont St. Michel. They don’t have a website but can be contacted on aubergeduterroir@wanadoo.fr or tel: + 02 33 60 17 92. Annie Lefort is meticulous about her restaurant and hotel. There are rooms in the main house and in a very comfortable converted stable block which has a garden table outside where you can relax and take the sun. Somehow everything is thought of – the hook in the right place to hang your robe, little details. The restaurant is very popular with local diners who come for Thierry’s excellent food which is served in a very pretty dining room with beautiful accoutrements, flowers, and lots of blue and white china – every little detail is perfect – and Annie talks to everyone – almost conducting the room like a big dinner party. We were on an amazing good value demi pension rate of €69 pps sharing and had superb foie gras, salt marsh lamb, apricot tart, and cheese for dinner – the menu of course changes – and there is also an excellent a la carte menu. One French couple there, including their dog, only temporary shifted from their table sitting through breakfast, lunch and dinner, at €89 pps! This place is a rare gem.
Our next port of call was Cancale, beside St. Malo, a seafood and restaurant town a tad like Kinsale. We considered the Relais & Chateaux property Chateau Richeux with its Le Coquillage restaurant www.maisons-de-bricourt.com owned by 3 Michelin starred chef Olivier Roellinger but getting a quotation for a midweek night of €225 for the room, plus €23 each for breakfast, we felt that €271 before a top notch dinner and wine was just too pricey for us in these times – but it is a destination spot in Cancale so you might like a little splurge. Another hot Cancale restaurant is, Cote Mer www.restaurant-cotemer.fr being tipped for a Michelin Star – book in advance – we didn’t! However, we dined very happily, not for the first time, nearby at Le Grand Large www.hotel-restaurant.hotellegrandlarge.com a bustley spot specialising in seafood platters, really decent fish, plenty of French life and really well behaved doggies. At €20 for mussels followed by half lobster salad, this is the sort of place I really like over fine dining. They also have very good value rooms and it is easy to park.
We moved over to nearby Dinard, a sophisticated seaside town with a Casino. We had a very good lunch at a smart restaurant in the centre on Place de la Republique called L’Abri des Flots www.abridesflots.fr – 3 courses for €15 starting with a salad of Bayonne Ham on celeriac with orange and tomato segments, followed by salmon and a lovely apple tart Tatin, but we could have had the salmon as the plat du jour at €7.90! That night we stayed in Hotel L’Ecrin www.crouzil.com at Plancoet an inland town down the road which we chose as it is in the Michelin Guide and the Tables and Auberges booklet. It was pleasant and comfortable with a big bed but not cheap at €120 for a double room these days in a quiet local hotel but the real killer was €15 a pop for continental breakfast! That annoyed us. There was no sitting area except by the reception desk and was really more a restaurant with rooms. Dinner had starters at €20/€35 and mains €30 +. Table d’hote menus were €65 or €85 each and wines were very expensive. We paid €39 for a pretty rough vin de pays and with a bill in the morning of €336, which was more than our two nights at Auberge du Terroir, we felt it was a place that needs to adapt to the times we are in, particularly as I understand a lot of such establishments and restaurants in France are also feeling the pinch in a big way.
Not everywhere in France is wonderful and sometimes “quirkiness” is just “run down”! We drove up around the Emerald Coast looking at two hotels at Trevou-Tregannic and Tregastel, both of which looked tired, and later saw it had been described by a French tourist as being like the Bates Hotel in Psycho! I could see what she meant with its broken signage – we had been attracted by the smiling faces sitting at a dining table overlooking water in the Logis Guide. Perros Guirec is worth a visit because it is a smart holiday town with lots of good shops, restaurants and hotels. If you want somewhere really nice and upmarket try Ti Ar Lannec www.tiallannec.com at Treburden, which is lovely with stunning views and excellent food.– look out for their special offers – or try negotiating – we did! We also went up hill and down dale to look at two rural places Au Charabanc www.aucharabanc.com which we passed on, and La Grange at Coatelan www.lagrangedecoatelan.com whose restaurant is mentioned in Michelin Guide. At La Grange we were offered a fusty smelling broom cupboard sized room in an attic in a converted stables with a bed almost on the floor, and from which we departed with considerable rapidity!
We headed for the eponymously named Hostellerie De La Point Saint-Mathieu www.pointe-saint-mathieu.com outside Brest, which is literally beside a lighthouse and across the road from an ancient monastery. This is owned by the Corre family and they have certainly kept up with the times with very smart bedrooms and beautiful food. A lovely spot. Go and also look at the little neighbouring town of Le Conquet which has restaurants and shops. <ep>
For our last night or two we always move up to the Morlaix area and do our shopping! Here we do book accommodation as being close to Roscoff it gets often heavily booked and accommodation is limited. Morlaix is dominated by a splendid Town Hall and a vast viaduct which the Germans unsuccessfully tried to bomb during WW2. The old cobbled streets and half timered houses have nice little artisan shops. Here you can also visit the house of Duchesse Anne of Brittany who went on to marry three Kings! There are two excellent supermarkets in Morlaix, Geant which is very convenient at St. Martin des Champs near a roundabout on the way to Roscoff, and Leclerc Hypermarche beside McDonalds on the other side of the town with a more than helpful and enthusiastic Wine Department Manager. “We will have a great wine sale in October”, he old us. Check “Les Promotions” on www.e-leclerc.com
We have stayed in a number of places in the area. Top of the range would be the eponymously named l’hotel de Carantec www.hoteldecarantec.com overlooking the Bay of Morlaix, which featured in the old 1953 Jacques Tati movie Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday. Now a smart spot, the main attraction is owner Patrick Jeffroy’s 2 Star Michelin restaurant. Expensive but definitely an experience. A pleasant place is Auberge Saint-Thegonnec www.aubergesaintthegonnec.com not far from Morlaix which has been taken over by a young eager couple Anne-Laure and Matthieu Perroud who have replaced its previous grumpy owner. It offers comfortable rooms, nice food, and decent prices. From recollection, Anne-Laure worked in Ireland for a year. A great B & B is Manoir de Roch ar Brini www.brittanyguesthouse.com – a beautiful tall house in vast grounds run by Etienne and Armelle Delaisi and their four children with considerable style – straight out of House & Garden but very friendly and with goats and horses in the grounds. This year we stayed in Hotel de l’Europe www.hotel-europe-com.fr behind the Town Hall with a big oak carved staircase. The Germans took it over during the war. They were very pleasant. the room was dark and a bit cell like, but reasonably priced at €70, and they did a jolly good breakfast for €8.50. There is a cute cheap little Vietnamese restaurant across the road called Saigon. This year we went Morroccan at Le Marrakech where a charming man with no English served us delightful lamb and chicken tagines with preserved lemon and green olives at €15 each. On our last night we moved up to St. Pol de Leon, a stones throw from Roscoff, a very pretty town where we stayed at Hotel de France www.hoteldefrancebretagne.com This struck me as perhaps having been a 1930’s holiday home for some wealthy industrialist. It basically just does bed and breakfast – very efficiently – functional clean rooms – and a good breakfast. Our room was €64 plus a good breakfast at €10. At the end of the street, there is an excellent auberge La Pomme d’Api www.aubergelapommedapi.com but we were foodied out by this stage and headed for a Chinese Vietnamese Restaurant called the Dragon Phenix where Monsieur had chicken curry for €6.60 and I had ‘calamari piquant’ for €8.90 and a bottle of Muscadet at €12.50 - and we were looked after like royalty! There is also a big Leclerc here now – it has increased in size.
We really have to get our Tourism up and running. Ireland now has every bit as good to offer when it comes to comfortable hotels and food - a message that is not being got across out there. There was a Tourism ad running on French Television, which we saw on a few occasions, marketing Connemara showing briefly lovely scenery and then morphing into a group of grim faced people in historic, nay hysterical, costumes whilst a fella banged a bodhran or something. The French love to eat – it is their lives – lunchtime, dinnertime, unbelievable – was their a mention of food in the ad promoting Ireland – NOT ONE WORD OR PICTURE – JUST SOME IDIOT BANGING HIS BODHRAN.
THIS ARTICLE WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE SUNDAY INDEPENDENT ON THE 4/7/2010.