Benodet August 2017: Deuxieme Poste

The holiday continues with visits to a market and some Breton towns.

A yacht leaving the harbour at Concarneau. To the left is the wall which encircles the old town. We went there on a Sunday afternoon which, in retrospect, was not the best day to visit as it was so crowded. A place for a return out of season?

Flowers of the Pink Silk tree. Not something you'd routinely come across in a UK garden but it is quite hardy so it might be worthwhile giving it a go in ours.

A row of canoes waiting to be taken to sea.

Looking down the Odet towards the sea on a very calm morning.

A colourful stall in the weekly market at Benodet selling, guess what, spices. The colour was matched by the aromas. Most of them I was familiar with but there were a few that defeated me.

Charcuterie, in which I took a proprietary interest. As well as finding out how, and at what stage, they get the herbs to stick to the outside of the salami, I also came away with a cracking idea for a future mincing and stuffing exercise. A triumph for pigeon French, gesticulation and my low embarrassment threshold.

After a long time pondering and consulting my pocket dictionary, I finally came to the conclusion that this stall was selling tea. I did not test the hypothesis by sampling the goods.

My feet enjoying being at a Foam Party. And why not? They were on holiday after all.

The cathedral in Quimper is dedicated to Saint Corentin, its first bishop. Of course,we bilingualists know it better as La Cathédrale Saint-Corentin de Quimper. Construction started in 1239 but was not completed for several centuries as events in the outside world impacted on the building work. The photograph above was taken from as central a point as I could and, if you look carefully, you'll be able to make out a curvature, which, admittedly, is more obvious 'in situ'.The cathedral is notable in that, unlike any other cathedral, it slightly bends to match the contours of its location and to avoid an area that was swampy at the time of the construction. In a way it reminded me of St David's Cathedral where, building on a boggy area, caused subsidence and has resulted in the nave sinking. Do we conclude that Celtic cathedral builders were not very good at their jobs?

The single door at the north end of the nave is surmounted by a triangular pediment and the arch beneath is decorated with carvings of acanthus leaves. And here's a snippet for collectors of odd facts: above the door is an ornate finial above which is a "hermine passant" (a "stoat passing" in heraldic terms). If you care to magnify the image, you'll be able to make it out.

The interior of the cathedral is jam-packed with stain-glass windows, ranging in date from the mediaeval, as above, through many Victorian ............

....right up to more modern times. This one clearly has African influences. Collectively, the windows offer a display which is not matched by many other cathedrals and Quimper is worth visiting just to see these.

The old part of Quimper was a very pleasant surprise. I don't think we had expected three to be quite as many of the wooden framed houses as there were.

Looking down the main street towards the cathedral, trying hard to avoid getting any tourists in the frame.

A detail of the slate hanging on the building to the left in the preceding image. One can only hazard a guess at the weight these add to the building and the amount of timber necessary to support them.

The Breton Folk Museum in Quimper was well worth a visit. It is housed in the old Bishop's Palace and that in itself was interesting. Lots of folky exhibits and material from around Brittany, which included these column heads from an archaeological site. I amused myself by using an 'art decor' setting on the camera for this shot.

I liked this collection of alabaster statuettes, collectively entitled Prayer for the Shipwrecked. I show just a detail with the reflections adding a ghostly depiction of those the prayers are destined for (in my humble opinion).

As someone whose wood working skills never extend beyond the level of an enthusiastic bodger, I'm always in awe of what a skilled woodcarver can achieve. For example, take this oak spiral staircase from the Rohan Tower in the Bishop's Palace. It is one Palace’s most important decorative elements and dates back to the building’s completion in 1507. It's a type of joinery named 'palm-tree' and might have been painted originally (Can you imagine how pleased the carver would have been? All that work covered with a coat of paint). The circular ceiling is held up by 24 radiating joists and the whole is supported in its centre by a twisted column decorated with the Rohan heraldic symbol and the Breton ermine. As I said, awesome skill.

Common or Great Egret. Not at all common in the UK but becoming increasingly so. About twice the size of the Little Egret we see in Cornwall on a regular basis.

Les nuages Francaise et beaucoup de ciel. I told you I was bilingual, didn't I?