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BELLE-ILE. In front of the Brittany coast, not to forget please, it would be a big miss!
It may not unveil its French charms right away, but if you are a bicycle freak, you will simply go mad and fall in love forever with this island. Like Mitterand, Sarah Bernhardt, Monet and many other painters.
Take now this woman-peasant, wearing trendy shorts, a modern cute blouse and tennis sneakers. Her nice, short cut hairdo waves in the wind when she shouts:" Do you see that sailboat? Almost doesn't move, because the sea is too calm there."
And 15 meters below, blue-green house-high waves thunder towards the beach up to the dunes. Like small children we observe the foamy dance of the water. "Undercurrents in this bay are very dangerous, " she says, giving me the creeps, "Juts an hour ago an helicopter saved a tourist stranded on one of the reefs."
The Donnant beach on the west coast is one of Belle Ile's most beautiful spots, Belle-Ile, which wears its well-earned name of "Beautiful Island".
It is a desolate beauty not attracting as a postcard ansicht, it has to be conquered. Belle-Ile is like a capricious Diva, letting her visitors bake at 30 Celsius already in June, and blowing everything off the roofs of the summerhouses in the fall. Winds can go to 160 km an hour.
The island is 20 km long, 9 wide and an almost unbuilt coastline of 90 km. It has incredible prairies, cornfields, a superb forest, far stretching moors, mimosa and fig trees in protected gardens, a few palm trees and the luxuriant hortensias.
This rough beauty refuses stubbornly to give in to mass tourism. It's only during the school holidays that the population increases from 4,700 to 35,000. Island experts will come in the spring, when the spring flowers are blooming. Or in the fall, when the island is covered with a sheet of rust brown, ceased blossoming moor, green fern and spreaded yellow spots of fall brooms.
How to get to Belle-Ile? Simply over the water from Quiberon in 45 minutes, entering Le Palais, the capital. Left of the pier, small hotels and their terraces are there to welcome you. The right side of the pier is completely overshadowed by the huge Citadel, built by Vauban, architect of Louis XIV. 10,000 soldiers lodged here, on alert day and night, because of its perfect location Belle-Ile is a good bridgehead for any invasion. I stayed at Port Goulphar, at the hotel Santa-Clara, when I decided to take a splurge and not look too much for costs. I was very satisfied, like Mitterand was (he came often to this hotel), for its magnificent views and quietness. Visit Port Goulphar, a fjord and one of the most attractive places of the isle, where the panorama of the beaches were transformed to a fantastic landscape by the high Atlantic western winds. Cliffs fall from 75 meters into the sea. A mall path winds along the coast, an advise for fearless adventurers!
A second part will follow.
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