Our choice of Névez as a hub for somewhere to ‘settle’ was entirely accidental – it just happened to be the nearest small town to what we were really focussed on – the campsite and its adjacent beach! It’s probably fair to say that this is pretty much always the case unless we are planning on visiting a town or city in and of itself – as we are planning later in this trip with Concarneau, for example.
So we had clearly struck lucky with the centre being an easy cycle ride away, as was the local supermarket; a market planned for the weekend we were staying; a very helpful tourist info centre; enough bars, cafés, patisseries and shops to make the trips in more fun, and, as we discovered by accident, some excellent entertainment on one of our visits!
Like all the other towns and villages we have visited, Névez has its traditional and distinctive Breton style church…
...and after much hunting, a bakery that sold Kouign Amann – one of our buttery delight discoveries from the autumn…
...the weekly market with its mix of clothing, crafts and delicious food stalls…
...and, also on market day, a full-on Breton choir that kept us entertained for longer than we expected!
As a hub for exploring this part of Cornouaille, Névez and Camping Raguénez Plage make a great base. A bit like Cornwall in the UK, if you are minded, nowhere is actually very far in distance (although it might be in time!) so although we could easily have stayed and driven to the rest of the places we fancied visiting, we decided instead to drift along the southern coast and find a site near to Concarneau, a medieval walled city on its own island. It’s meant to be a much less intensive and touristy experience than, say, Mont St Michel in Normandy, so fingers crossed …
S&J xx.06.25
NB – a footnote for fellow dullards from Mr B about van wheelbase lengths…
One of the reasons we chose an Iveco Daily as a base van for building Evie, was that as well as being available in large cubic capacity models, with twin wheel options that can be uprated to carry more weight (as we did with Evie), it had a reputation as having an excellent turning circle, with the distance between the front and back wheels shorter than other panel vans from Fiat, Citroen, Ford etc. Which means that the consequence of this slightly shorter wheelbase, is a much larger overhang at the rear – requiring a fair bit of concentration when manouevering in tight spaces! Mr B can often be heard waxing lyrical about this to other converters of vans, but he was especially excited when we parked up alongside a couple of other campers that allowed this photo explanation! He says it’s important to understand that all three vans had their rear wheels against the curb, and that Evie’s front wheels were more inside the front of the bays than the other two…
You were warned!!
