'Chapter 5 - Brittany'

In the year 1924, my parents decided that we ought to have a change from Penally, as I have said. They said that we girls were getting "insular", which no doubt was true. So they took us abroad to a little fishing village (as it was then) called La Trinite, on the south coast of Brittany not far from Quiberon. We went there for four consecutive years, from 1924 to 1927, and we kept a boat there, in which we sailed every day.

In the spring of l928 my father died, from cancer, and in the summer before that he was too ill to travel to Brittany - it was a long and tedious journey across Brittany by train, with three or four changes. So the last of the four French holidays was spent without our parents. With the callousness of youth (it's true, we didn't realize the seriousness of our father's illness), Buv and I thought it was great fun to be on our own in a party of young people, whose ages ranged from about eighteen to twenty-two. The party consisted of Buv and me and Joan, together with two boys: a friend named Hugh Webster, and Tony Clark, a cousin, who were entrusted with the care of the boat and of the girls.

We enjoyed all the holidays at La Trinite, but the last one most of all, I think, because we felt free, and made friends with quite a lot or French people who were on holiday there. Chief of these was Robert de Kersausan (who liked to be called Bob) - a French vicomte, with whom both Purefoy and Joan were more or less in love. 1 liked him, but I was more interested in books than in men at that time, and was discovering Russian literature in translation. I remember reading "Anna Karenina, Chekhov's Letters to his wife, and Prince Mirsky' s "Russian Literature", all at La Trinite, and of course other Russian translations at home or wherever I happened to be.

I've heard that La Trinite is now (1979) a fashionable yachting centre, but in the 1920's it was largely unknown to English people and to yachtsmen. The Gwel Moor was a small open boat with blue sails. She measured about 23 feet from bow to stern, was broad in the beam and weighed about two tons. We had bought her from Hugh Webster's parents when they had to give up sailing for health reasons. We adored that boat. The name means "Queen of the Sea", which she was far from being, but she was sturdy and reliable, and virtually unsinkable.

Joan loved all things French and could speak the language quite well, so she was very happy at La Trinite. Buv, for some reason, spoke it very little, and I spoke it very little because I was shy even about speaking English, and how much worse was a foreign language! However, as I have said, we made friends with some of the French holiday people, who spoke English more or less well. More than the language, I enjoyed the un-English countryside with its aromatic scents, the look of the little white houses with their shutters and black corner-stones, and, of course, the sea and the river.

La Trinite was on the estuary on the river Grach. If the tide was right you could sail up the river quite a long way, and have a picnic on the bank near the top of the navigable part, but more usually we sailed down the estuary and out to sea. Round the corner on your right was a good bathing beach called La Grande Plage, unfrequented of course; nearer the village, on the estuary, was La Petite Plage, which we rather despised because French families with small children used to go there, and the water wasn't real sea, and nobody swam - only paddled.

We used to spend about a month in Brittany during those four years. Nowadays that seems a fabulously long time for a holiday abroad. At times, I must admit, I got bored, because my parents were very fond of sticking to a routine: Grande Plage every morning, lunch at the hotel, then a long rest in our bedrooms which was more or less obligatory because my mother needed it - I used this time for reading. Then we would go sailing every afternoon. We had occasional breaks, when we went to look at the prehistoric stones at Carnac (my father loved these) or made some other expedition. Joan and I would have liked to do this sort of thing more often.

There was a regatta every August, when "balancoires" were set up on the quayside: a sort of cross between swings and roundabouts. Peasants would arrive on Regatta Day dressed in their beautiful national costumes, and would stroll around enjoying themselves. I wonder if national costume is ever seen nowadays. Probably, if it is worn at all, it is put on for the benefit of the tourists, but in those days it was simply Sunday Best.

All in all these were very happy holidays, and it was sad when we had to sell the Gwel Moor after my father' s death, and spend our holidays more cheaply in England.

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