This large, traditional "lavoir" – an open-air pool or basin set aside for clothes to be washed – is located on Île Grande and dates from the nineteenth century. Two sources supply it and can be seen at the foot of the retaining wall. At spring tide, it was filled with seawater, but, very quickly, the salt water was replaced with freshwater and washing could resume. Opposite the wash-pool is the Toëno peninsula, whose contours have changed significantly as a result of quarry mining. You can see the traces of this activity at the old quarry sites.
Be sure to visit the rural hamlet of Saint-Samson, a quiet spot in the country with a chapel, a menhir and a fountain. The chapel, constructed between 1575 and 1631, is a superb example of the...
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The Toëno area, which shows evidence of the granite extraction work of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, is also a marshland of outstanding ecological value. If you visit at low tide, you will...
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The guardhouse, TyGward in Breton, is an imposing block of granite which stands at the highest point of Île Grande. Right around the periphery of the island, grey and blue granite was mined for...
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The Radôme, a technological jewel in the crown for France during the 1960s, a symbol of the modernism of Brittany and an iconic image of Pleumeur-Bodou, is composed of a dome 64 m in diameter and 50...
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