Because Lorient got bombed flat in the Second World War, then rebuilt with more haste than taste (a bit like Plymouth, Devon), it tends to get overlooked in the tourist guides.
But the port city built to face east – the Orient – in the XVIIc has treats for those who persevere.

Prowl around the town and you can find shops, fish restaurants (Lorient is France’s second-biggest fishing port after Boulogne), crêperies, and traditional markets every day at Les Halles de Merville and Les Halles de Saint-Louis.

But perhaps the town’s most interesting facet is on its edge: the wartime German submarine pens.

From 1940 right up to 1945, British prime minister Winston Churchill’s worst nightmares of losing to the Nazis arose from the Battle of the Atlantic, in which German U-boats came close to strangling Britain’s supply lifeline from the US.

The principal base for the sea raiders was Lorient – and the colossal, bomb-proof shelters (the biggest Allied bomb developed in time to be used on them, the 10,000-pound Tallboy, hardly cratered the roof) kept the submarines safe for repair and re-arming.

Today the U-boat pens are open by arrangement for visits by groups of fifteen or more. They occupy a massive square and very ugly concrete building erected by the Todt Organisation using slave labour.

Inside, there is an eerie feel: black, empty water where once half a dozen boats were moored; echoing shadows stretching forever in damp dereliction; the slow drip of unseen rain water.

You can also arrange a boat tour of the harbour. With the recent departure of the French Navy, which used Lorient as a base for, among other vessels, nuclear submarines, much of the harbour has a sad, neglected air, emphasised by the melancholy of the rusting hulks of old fleet warships.

There’s no atmosphere of neglect along the bustling fishing wharves, where short, broad, big, beefy Biscay trawlers nudge up against the quays as if psyching themselves up for another confrontation with the worst the Atlantic can throw at them.

And it’s worth it for a glimpse of the sooty terns that flick and dart above the water.

Due in June 2007, the Cité de la Voile Éric-Tabarly, an ultra modern glass building designed to resemble a yacht, will give a dramatic change to the former submarine base, expanding the sailing facilities and activities developed in the region.