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Over the Summer we had a wonderful Family Holiday in Brittany as guests of Visit Brittany.

It’s so close to the UK, being a short hop across the English Channel, but the variety of places you can visit will take your breath away.  You can watch what we did on our 6 nights in Brittany in this video (but be careful it will make you want to book!) or you can have a look at the itinerary we did and read some of the posts in more detail! The choice is yours:

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I’ve written about most of our time in Brittany on separate posts and so I’m going to link through to these in this post for those of you who want to find out more detail on what we did but our trip went like this:

We took the slow ferry from Portsmouth to Caen at 8am.  The benefits of the quick ferry versus the slow ferry can be found here, but my girls really did enjoy the entertainment put on by the Brittany ferries team – my husband and I less so!

 

We arrived into Caen at around 3pm (local time) and made our way down to Josselin around 3 hours away.

1 Night in Josselin –Le 14 Saint-Michel.

Our accommodation for the evening Le 14 Saint-Michel.  This guest house was just off the town square and picture perfect for our first stop in Brittany. With just 5 rooms, a walled garden with space to play and a very welcoming host it was a welcome site to behold after a long day travelling.  There was dancing in the square whilst we ate a wonderful dinner and it was the perfect place to start our trip.  You can read more about our 24 hours in Josselin with Kids here.

1 Night in Vannes –  Hôtel La Marébaudière 

Following our 24 hours in Josselin with Kids we made our way to Vannes just in time for lunch. We found our hotel Hôtel La Marébaudière easily and it was very conveniently located to the Centre of Vannes with a huge free car park.  The room wasn’t ready as we were very early, so we left our bags in the car, grabbed a map from reception and wandered through the town to find a restaurant for lunch.

Vannes for us was mainly about wandering about and seeing what we could spot and it is the perfect city for that.  On our way back from the harbour towards the hotel we wandered past the restaurant we were booked into later and realised it was right opposite a really pretty Chateau with an art exhibition on.   The Chateau was made even more stunning by the glorious flowers in the gardens.  We had a beautiful dinner that evening and loved our time in Vannes. You can read more about our 24 hours in Vannes with Kids here.

2 Nights in Belle-Ile – Cardinal Hotel

Belle-Île is 9 miles (15km) off the coast of the Gulf of Morbihan and is Brittany’s largest island.  Belle-Île means quite literally a “Beautiful Isle at Sea”. We had a superb weekend on around 10 of its 60 gorgeous beaches. Secluded beaches and sheltered coves are literally around every corner on Belle Ile.    If you drive down the road that runs the length of the island and take a random left or right turn you will more often than not find a stunning cliff lined golden sandy beach with crystal clear turquoise waters.  Why not take a look at some of our photos of Belle-Ile and find out some more about what you can do here.

2 Nights in Redon –  Gîte de la Riaudaie

During our two nights in Redon, we cycled, swam, ate beautiful crepes and stayed at a gorgeous French Gite. We also spent an early evening in St Just, not far up the road from redon, on a tour of the Maison de la Nature et des Mégalithes. You can read my full review of the tour here, but we actually had a really lovely time despite the girls tiredness and the heat, due to the excellent story telling ability of Emanuel our guide.  For the full write up of our 2 nights in Redon click here.

We left Brittany that morning with a heavy heart sad to be returning to work and school but vowing to be back.

We stopped off at Utah Beach on our way to the ferry at Cherbourg and had a really interesting afternoon. Read more on Utah Beach D-Day Museum here.

We absolutely loved our time in Brittany and can’t wait to explore more of this area of France.. maybe next year.

You can read about another area of Brittany and a two week itinerary Travel Loving Family enjoyed here – 2 Week Brittany Road Trip with Kids

Why not PIN this: