You can get a measure of my life this year when when you realise two things: my trip to Brittany was the first time I took much more than a week off work in two years; and we went in June and July this year. It’s taken me nearly six months to even start to write this. And not even I know how many times I had to revise that last sentence so that it’s accurate now!

As we did a few years ago in Tuscany, we hired a villa. Unlike last time — when we were a long way from anywhere — were a few minutes walk from the centre of the biggest coastal town in the area, called Perros-Guirec (or Perroz-Gireg in Breton).

Both were great in their own way but the flavour and focus of the trip changed because of the geography. Rather than the culture of Florence we had the beaches. They both had more than their fair share of pretty little towns nearby and attractive walks.

Not that you had to go very far for a nice view. Perros-Guirec has a bay and a small town centre. The house overlooked the bay and from there you could see that the water went out a long way between tides, leaving a large collection of boats slumped on one side.

“Our” side of town didn’t have a great beach — and it was quite hard to access — but there were other, better areas only a short drive away. As we came with two toddlers, we spent a lot of time on Trestrignel beach.

Ploumanac’h’s beach was so large, if irregularly shaped, that you couldn’t even see the sea from the point nearest the town.

On the other side of the bay we stumbled across a beach near Trélévern which was pretty much deserted. While the car park was easy enough to find once you braved a long, slow and winding journey from the main road, finding the beach itself proved tricky. In the end there was a small bridge that you had to walk under.

Other than the beaches, the area is most famous for its Pink Granite rocks and a winding trail that passes along it, past some of the more attractive coastal towns. The trail is part of the GR34, one of the many long distance walking trails in France. (I did part of the GR20 when I was in Corsica.)

Fortunately the 34, at least the part we did this time, was much easier that the very challenging GR20. The rock formations and colours were very impressive and not spending most of the time wheezing and trying to catch my breath certainly helped in that assessment!

But one of the great pleasures of travelling to areas like this and spending time in them — rather than darting from location to location as we have done on a number of other holidays — is that you can aimlessly wander around, stumbling across towns that you’d never plan to visit.

Coming back from Lannion we found some stone circles and near to them where what I assumed to be some photographic dilapidated, abandoned farmhouses. It turns out I was only partly correct. They were actually being used and someone poked their head out just as I was about to push past the rusty gate…

Overall it was a low-key holiday, mostly geared around toddlers and other family. But we never let that get in the way of some good sight-seeing.

Finally, note that I wasn’t able to put all the pictures into the “narrative” so there are more to see on Flickr.