promenade à Paimpol et Ploubazlanec

Paimpol, a city of icelandic just 4 Km from the Hotel le Relais de Launay.

Although Paimpol enjoyed its greatest period of prosperity in the mid-nineteenth century, during the heyday of the Icelandic fisheries, it has always been a maritime city. Like other Breton ports, it was once a haven for corsairs and privateers.

Immortalized by Pierre Loti in his novel of life among Breton fisherfolk, Pecheur d'Islande (An Iceland Fisherman), the annual summer cod fishery off the Iceland banks was an event of epic proportions that left a profound mark on the history of Paimpol, Ploubazlanec and the inhabitants of the region. A history that lives on at La Croix des Veuves (The Widows' Cross) where wives of fishermen would keep an anxious vigil for any boat late on the homeward-bound passage; in the vaults of chapels with their moving commemorative plaques; at the Mur des Disparus (Wall of Those Lost at Sea) or in Paimpol Maritime Museum.

Every year, from 1852 down to 1935, some forty or fifty schooners, each with a crew of 20-25 men, would set off from Paimpol to fish for cod off the coasts of Iceland.

A couple of miles along the coast road from Paimpol, the Domaine de l'Abbaye de Beauport is a listed 170-acre site that bears witness to five centuries of monastic--and three centuries of no less eventful secular--history. For further information you can visit these two websites: www.paimpol-goelo.com www.ploubazlanec.com
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