Quiet hills and and hidden historical gems: Discover Brittany

I’m standing in front of a tour guide. “Voici votre iPad,” she smiles, then nods at the ruin. iPads and ruins? Intriguing. 

As I venture further, I find I’m no longer in the 21st Century. I’m in an old abbey, roof open to the sky. Crumbling stone walls lean over an ancient courtyard, and swallows flit in and out of empty rooms.  

The Abbey of Bon Repos was built 800 years ago by the Rohan family, one of the most powerful dynasties in France, and survived a tumultuous history until the Revolution swept through in the late 18th Century.

The building fell into ruin and jungle choked the courtyard until the 1980s, when some plucky locals part-restored it. Today, you can point an iPad at the walls and get virtual reality footage of the medieval interior. But if you close your eyes, I reckon you could almost hear the sound of old knights clinking down the corridors.

The Abbey of Bon Repos is in Brittany but if you’re familiar with the region and haven’t heard of it, there’s a good reason for that. Most Brits tend to think of this as a seaside destination, but Bon Repos is in inner Brittany, the central spine that locals call “Kalon Breizh”. 

It’s a place with a different kind of charm: a land of quiet hills and valleys, and hidden historical gems.

Lake Guerlédan is a decent spot to explore it from. We were based in Bot-Ponal, a self-catering-with-B&B place about a mile from the shore, five miles from the Abbey. It has a beautiful view over sloping woods, and the first thing you notice is the stillness. The roads curl lazily through deep forest and sleepy farms and it’s quiet. Super quiet. 

I drove for 20 minutes one morning and saw two cars.

The action hots up a bit when you reach the water. Lake Guerlédan is the largest lake in Brittany, and they call it the dragon because it looks rather serpentine from the air.

The tourists here are predominantly French, and many of them come to Guerlédan to exercise their lungs: you can water-ski, rock climb, kayak, quad bike, or simply hike the seven-mile-long shoreline. Or you can forget all that and enjoy a crêpe at one of the lakeside restaurants.

The lake feels primeval, but in fact it was bone dry until the early 20th Century. 

In the 1920s they built a dam in the valley and flooded it. Everything below the line was swamped, including some housing. Once a generation they drain the lake for cleaning (this was last done in 2015), and the valley comes back into view, pocked with skeletal homes and trees, before returning to its watery grave again a few months later. A guided tour of the surprisingly interesting (and family-oriented) Musée de l’Electricité in Saint-Aignan gives you the lowdown, as well as a pocket history of the area.

That theme of the past washing up unexpectedly in the present seemed to be everywhere in Kalon Breizh – perhaps nowhere better illustrated than at a newish attraction called the Vallée des Saints.

Forty minutes from Guerlédan, in Carnoët, it’s best described as a sculpture park. Around 10 years ago, someone had the idea of reviving the tales of the missionaries who converted Brittany to Christianity.

So they hired some sculptors, bought large chunks of local granite and started recreating the saints by carving massive statues of them. Today there are about 90, scattered over the landscape, staring moodily across the hills. But more arrive every year.

Ultimately they plan to have a thousand.

There are plenty of other good places worth visiting nearby; try the local website for pointers (brittanytourism.com). You can tramp in Napoleon’s footsteps in Pontivy (one of the Emperor’s “new towns”) – we hired bikes and wobbled them down the canal path that takes you out into the countryside. Or you can trek further east to the medieval towns of Malestroit and Rochefort-en-Terre (the latter was recently voted France’s prettiest village).

As the close of our stay beckoned we headed to Josselin, where streets wind up to a gothic castle. Three of its sides were demolished by Cardinal Richelieu, but what remains is beautiful. And one wing is still occupied by the Rohans, who survived the Revolution. It seemed a fitting place to complete our journey, the present overlapping the past.

Way to go

Brittany Ferries (brittany-ferries.co.uk, 0330 159 7000) offers routes to five ports within striking distance of central Brittany – Roscoff, St Malo, Cherbourg, Caen and Le Havre; approximate fares for a car plus two people are around £250 return. Rooms at Bot-Ponal (botponal.fr, +33 6 33 92 63 65) start at €60 per night.

Ten things you must do in hidden Brittany

1 Go kayaking, waterskiing or hiking around Brittany’s largest lake, the beautiful Guerlédan.

2 Let the boat take the strain with a lake tour, then flop onto one of its sandy beaches.

3 Head to the ‘Chaos’ of Corong, a boulder-strewn gorge near Carhaix-Plouguer.

4 Check out the slowly-expanding Vallée des Saints sculpture park.

5 Hire bicycles in Pontivy and then freewheel along the banks of the sleepy Nantes-Brest canal.

6 Refuel with a galette: crêpe meets cheese, ham and other savoury delights.

7 Tour the romantic remains of the semi-ruined Abbey of Bon Repos.

8 Go back in time at the Forges des Salles, a perfectly preserved 19th-century forge and village in the Quenecan Forest.

9 Take the kids to the illuminating Musée de l’Electricité in Saint-Aignan.

10 Hire a car for a day trip to Rochefort-en-Terre, voted France’s prettiest village in 2016.