Centuries of battle leave their mark.
Between the industrial conurbation of Lorient and the ancient walls and turrets of Vannes lies the medieval town of Auray. Auray has everything you’d expect of a historic town in Morbihan, and more. It has a summer tourist train to Pontivy ( see Pays du Pontivy ) and a tranquil harbour where, in 1776, Benjamin Franklin landed to seek help from the doomed Louis XVI in the American War of Independence.

Historically, Auray’s importance lies in its being the site of the battle that ended the Breton civil war, in September 1364, a conflict that ran in parallel with, yet also formed part of, the Hundred Years’War. In the Battle of Auray, the English backed faction won.

Just outside Auray, Sainte-Anne-d’Auray is a little town clustered round an enormous basilica. This is reckoned to be Brittany’s most important place of pilgrimage, visited, in 1996, by no less a figure than the late Pope John Paul II, along with tens of thousands of pilgrims.

The church, in neo-Renaissance style, was built in the late XIXc on the site of a former chapel. The truly devout climb the 1,872 scala sancta – sacred staircase – on their knees, within sight of the basilica’s rose window.

West of Auray, the similarly historic town of Hennebont still bears traces of the suffering it incurred from being close to the Lorient pocket, the area around the port defended to the bitter end in the World War II. (Besieged, it held out until after the armistice.) Artillery bombardments aimed by the Germans in Lorient at the approaching Allied forces set fire to the half-timbered houses in the walled city of Hennebont. The destruction was widespread.

Today, you can walk on part of the restored walls enclosing what is now purely a residential district and look out on the bustling commercial centre of the town and the ornamental gardens beside the Blavet river ( see Valée du Blavet ).

No one with the slightest romantic sensibility can fail to thrill to the wind-blown, spray-swept coastline walks around the town of Quiberon – the last few centimetres of solid ground on a stilettolike peninsula driving south from the mainland as if striking at the heart of the Bay of Biscay.

From Plouharnel, the jumping-off point on the mainland, the road takes you straight south past woodlands, golf courses and the military-operated Fort de Penthièvre on its low hummock, into the little town, clustered in on itself for warmth and comfort against the elements.

From the sea front hotels (book early to get an ocean view balcony for summer) you can look down on a golden crescent of beach, and the jetty that serves the regular ferries to and from Belle-Île – a holiday destination in itself, and a real, live, functioning community the year round.

Quiberon town is small and friendly, with a wide choice of hotels, campsites and restaurants. But if you want a walk on the wild side, the town is small enough to get you there on foot – to the Côte sauvage, literally ‘wild coast’: the west-facing flank of the peninsula, which takes the full brunt of the prevailing wind every winter. (So it’s no surprise that most of the town has grown up on the east flank and the south-facing tip.)

The Côte sauvage is half a dozen miles of low cliffs, fretworked with intricate bays and scarred with narrow, vertical ravines (don’t try this at night coming home from the pub).

When the wind blows up in spring or autumn, the entire surface of the bay turns white, seething with breakers and spindrift. Bathing is recommended, instead, on the beaches on the east and south of the peninsula.

Apart from boat trips to the islands in the bay, Quiberon makes a handy base for visiting the dozens of tiny, flowerbedecked villages on the crazily serrated Golfe du Morbihan and Quiberon Bay.

As you head out of Quiberon towards the Golfe du Morbihan, one of the first oceanside villages you come to is La Trinité-sur-Mer, with its sweeping, modern bridge and its yachting haven.

La Trinité is the port from which the then unknown Éric Tabarly set out in 1964 on the solo Atlantic crossing that was to make his name one of the most famous among French maritime adventurers and record breakers.

It is also home to the studio of Jacques Vapillon, who settled in the village after completing photography studies at Plymouth College of Art and Design, in England. Vapillon made his name covering nautical events and races, and his art photography is justly acclaimed (and correspondingly expensive).