The beauty of the Breton countryside completely took my breath away during our drive from Pointe Saint-Mathieu to Paimpol. The allure of the lush greenery and meandering hills were such a vast contrast to the sunbaked ochre desert plains my eyes are currently accustomed to. Once we’d stopped freaking out about driving on the “wrong side of the road” we really began to enjoy the peaceful scenery. Occasional golden canola fields punctuated the endless green with their surprising pops of happy yellow, and tiny towns whizzed by on the way to our destination.

I have to mention that our experience with our GPS was very hit-and-miss. We were on more than one occasion led down a lane that was clearly through someone’s private albeit very pretty farm and also had to very scarily reverse out an unbelievably narrow street when we directed straight into a dead end. Good one GPS. I wasn’t aware there was a “scenic route” option!

That aside, I would highly recommend staying at Pondervann, a lovely family-owned bread-&-breakfast in Paimpol. The hotel is situated on a large plot of land with its own stream, vegie patch, and friendly dog! Make sure you have a good set of muscles if you’re staying on the top floor as, like many French hotels, there is no elevator! (Thanks Jinn, my muscle man!) Interestingly we found a tiny piece of home in the B&B’s garden – a gum tree! See if you can spot it in the pictures…

Photos by Jinn