Today I am showing you some things we saw in Morlaix. Morlaix is in
Brittany in France. Its Breton name is
Monrouleaux. It is a particularly
interesting town. As you can see there
is a huge viaduct which goes right
over the top of the town. The viaduct (which is still in use by trains) was
built in the early 1860's. A real
engineering feat. It was heavily damaged
by bombs in the Second World War (with 80 people killed) but was quickly repaired.
Looking towards the river from the Viaduct you also see a really high bridge – it is a
road. It is quite spectacular too but
only really of interest from afar. We
tried to find our way onto the bridge over several days only to find once we
had, that it felt no different to any other bit of road – there was no outlook
from the bridge really.
In between the Viaduct and the bridge there is a Port. It is actually just
about half a kilometre long and boats can only get in or out when the lock is
operated.
We were not sure just how often the boats moored there can actually put
to sea – there was no chance in the time we were there. We expected to see more water at some stage
but we never saw more than a small non navigable channel.
The port at Morlaix was traditionally a wintering port – which I assume
is a nice sheltered place to tie boats up over the coldest months. There are spaces for almost 200 boats. The lock is operated 3 times a day – an hour
and a half before high tide, at high tide and an hour after low tide. It does not operate at night. The marina is 6 miles inland and apparently
it is very tricky to time getting your boat up the river to the marina.
I wouldn't have thought it very appealing to boaties – but there were
lots of boaties there. Perhaps it's a
place for boaties that just like sitting on their yachts and partying rather
than sailing!
Not that many appealing restaurants but 2 that we ate at were good - Le Viaduc and Restaurant L'Evidence - which was very
good indeed. I am preparing a separate post about it.
We parked in the Place des Otages
and found a plaque there telling us that it was named this after WWII
because the Germans took 60 hostages there on Boxing day 1943 and deported to Buchenwald
in Germany from there. Very few ever returned.
The hostage taking was a retaliation for a resistance attack in which
wounded a number of soldiers. When we
were there, it was a bit surreal to find some German tourists enjoying
themselves – I wonder whether they even knew?
Hi, Carole! What a beautiful, full of history place. One of my former culinary instructors was from Brittany, France. I don't know exactly his city. Thanks for sharing us this place and also a bit of its history.
ReplyDeleteHi Carole. We went there last week, beautiful Autumn weather. I also saw the memorial to the 60 hostages - very sad, very sobering.
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