Europe > France > Brittany > Roscoff > Articles > Rain, roof-racks and pirates: a family holiday in France

Half the value of a family holiday is the expectation that mounts in the months leading up to it. When the car was fitted with a roof-box, clinging crustacean-like to the luggage-rack, departure day was imminent. I had no trouble spotting the car in the supermarket carpark, its hump peeping up over other car roofs like a beacon. At Rosslare no car was without its roof box. It was if an alien convention of mutant vehicles had been called. They all lined up in front of their ship, 'The Normandy', the latest on the Irish Ferries Brittany route.

As the waiting time lengthened, doors opened and families emerged onto the tarmac, fathers in shiny new tracksuits, kids in bright white trainers, mothers in old t-shirts. Footballs were retrieved from among the luggage and impromptu games began. Other things to do included finding the IRL sticker that came in your holiday pack and sticking it onto the back of your car. Afterwards, there would be a ceremonial step backwards to admire the alignment and indulge in a quiet moment of national pride.

Gradually it dawned that there would be no access to the cars during sailing. Cases were dumped on the ground and unpacked as people dug for nightclothes and changes of underwear. Several families had to untie bikes from the backs of their cars before they could gain access to the boot. And at just this point, each car surrounded by a scattering of open luggage, the queue started to move.

On board, bewildered passengers were deftly directed by smart hostesses. This was my first indication that ferry services had improved since my student summers working on the Newcastle-Bergen line, when it was every man for himself and you were lucky to get a sick bag. Rows of tiny, identical cabins gleamed with crisp white sheets and fresh towels, each ingeniously incorporating its own sink, toilet and shower. With three boys aged six, four and three in tow, the biggest bonus was the children's play area, the cartoon cinema and the children's show, which kept them amused until way past their bedtime.

The ship boasts a cabaret area with balconies, tiered seating and a full-size stage. Settled here with a pint of Guinness while the children watched a pantomime, I was engaged in conversation by two leather-clad French bikers. So eager were they to tell me of their love of Ireland and their sadness to be leaving that I didn't like to tell them I was from Reading. “The atmosphere here is great,” they said indicating the packed bar area. “On the way out it wasn't so good, because there weren't so many Irish.” Their two-week stay had been plagued by non-stop rain. “It did not matter,” they assured me. “We love the people. We will come back every year. We met people in pubs in Galway who let us camp in their gardens.”

As the pirate pantomime warmed up, the bikers from Grenoble were enthralled. “It is a shame Pierre is not here. He would love this,” one said. Pierre, it turned out, had skidded off his bike the day before on the road to Dublin and gone under the wheels of a car. For a while, his two friends thought he was dead. Luckily, only his leg was injured and he was flown back to hospital in France. “Everybody was so good to us, the police and the people who stopped. A passing lorry took his bike on to Dublin for him. In France it would not happen like that,” they agreed.

More Guinness was bought and a conversation ensued about the Irish character and how a booming economy and immigration may change it. It's a question of size, we agreed. In a small place you have to be nice to people as you may come across them again. Somebody sat down at the table next to us. I turned round to see a neighbour from Stillorgan, which proved the point. As the shenanigans on stage caught our attention again, the neighbour pointed to one of the pirates. “Hey, I know that guy,” he said. “I was at college with him.” The French boys were impressed. The last we saw of them was in a Roscoff car park, which we were busy circling. “Le soleil,” they shouted, pointing upwards with glee.

Le soleil hit us with a vengeance. It was 35 degrees for the first three days then, for the next 11, a wet, windy, 16-18 degrees. The north coast of Britanny has many of the attractions of the west of Ireland, rugged coastline, clear sea and beautiful beaches, but weatherwise it is just as unsettled, with a tendency towards the bracing. Our campsite, Le Ranolien in Perros-Guirec, was only an hour's drive from Roscoff. We travelled in late June and the roads were clear, but in high season the Breton coast is the most popular in France after the Cote d'Azur, with French and foreign tourists alike.

For families with young children it's hard to imagine a better holiday than camping on a four-star site where pools, waterslides, children's clubs, playgrounds, shops, bar and restaurants are all at hand and where the sparse traffic travels at three miles an hour over ramps. Young, unaccompanied children in flip-flops and shorts wander round safely with sticks of bread over their shoulder. Our children shot out of their sleeping bags every morning to head for the Tiger Club, run by the indomitably enthusiastic Vicky and Sam. They were part of the Haven team. Each holiday company has its own uniformed army of couriers who emerge daily from a cluster of tents christened Couriernation Street. Many of the Tiger Club activities involved the children roaming round the campsite shouting their allegiance. We would duck out of sight as they appeared dressed as cutlass-wielding pirates on the trail of Captain Smellybelly. For people without young children it would be hard to imagine a worse holiday.

Pirates were a recurring theme. The camp site and the whole of this area of coast is skirted by a smuggler's path, lined with pink granite rocks smoothed by wind erosion into Henry Moore-type sculptures. The locals give them names, such as The Lovers, The Witch, The Devil and the Pile of Pancakes. We would walk along the path to the beaches at Ploumanach and Tregastel. The medieval ports of Lannion and Treguier are short drives away, each with picturesque timbered houses and ancient churches. An overnight trip to St Malo gave the children the chance to explore a real pirate city by walking all the way round the ramparts and then taking a model train through the narrow, cobbled city streets. Destroyed in the second world war, the old town was put back together and is now, in fact, a reconstruction, but a convincing one.

On a country road inland from Perros we were surprised to see a giant white balloon, looking like the big bubble that follows villagers around in the Sixties TV series 'The Prisoner'. Located at Pleumeur-Bodou it covers a famous satellite dish, the first to receive a live broadcast from the United States in the early 1960s. It is now part of a telecommunications museum and 'son et lumiere' shows are put on inside the bubble.

On the way back to Roscoff after leaving the camping village bubble world, we stopped for lunch in a rustic restaurant. A long table was laid out with thick hunks of bread, bottles of black wine and plates of fresh prawns, cold meats and bright red tomatoes. There was no menu, just the plat du jour then as much fruit, desert and cheese as you wanted. The children, without being asked, had a giant bottle of Orangina placed in front of them. The bill came to a fraction of what we had paid in creperies and pizzerias and the camp snack bar. I was left with a nostalgia for the real France which had passed us by this holiday. The children cried for Vicky and Sam and played the Tiger Club tape all the way home.

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