St. Thegonnec

Afterwards, we drove to St. Thegonnec, a little town in the heart of “close country.” The distinctive feature of Bretagne’s compact little towns—other than utterly NO urban sprawl, cobblestone streets, ancient-looking houses and creperies and pubs with huge oaky-beamed ceilings and cozy nooks by the fire where you can read a book and drink your weight in cider—is the parish close. Churches (often dating from the 1200’s or 1300’s) are surrounded by a circular wall that encompasses a graveyard, an ossuary (which I think is a kind of mausoleum, but most we saw had been converted to gift shops), and an elaborate edifice called a “calvary.” The calvary is like a huge stone coffin (except twenty times larger than a coffin) carved all over, with towering representations of Christ on the cross on top. It’s really just easier to show you a picture:



Anyway, touring the little towns in this area and seeing the parish closes is a major tourist pastime. Which we did, fitting it in as we went from place to place. The coolest visit was to an ancient church that looked like it hadn’t been used in years, and had been left unlocked by accident.





But first let me tell you about this inn we stayed at. It was actually in a tiny town called Luzec (or Luzeg, depending on the sign) outside of St. Thegonnec, which wasn’t on any of the maps we had. When we spoke to the innkeeper on the phone, she told us “just follow the signs to Luzec once you get to St. Thegonnec, and you can’t miss it.”

Turns out, we did miss it. First off, there were no signs in St. Thegonnec—or anywhere else—leading to this town. Second, it wasn’t adjacent to St. Thegonnec—it involved driving down a tangle of dirt roads with no names, marked only with standing stone crosses that had been there for centuries. Third, there wasn’t a town at all that we could discern—just a few widely-spaced houses set among the back roads. Fourth, there was no sign—it looked like any fifteenth-century stone farmhouse—so we certainly could miss it. Luckily the innkeeper was nice enough to meet us in the center of town and lead us there.

The innkeeper was a wonderful lady who spoke very slow, clear French. We spoke in French the whole time and I managed to carry my end of relatively simple conversations—a huge point of pride for me. Partway into the visit, I discovered she was an author who wrote historical fiction and short stories—so we had a lot to talk about.