All hands on Hoëdic

And his family find their sea legs with a relaxing break around the scenic Gulf of Morbihan in Brittany

SOMETHING very strange happened on our last family holiday.

Lying back on the deck of the wooden sail boat gliding us across the Gulf of Morbihan, my 13-year-old son Heath rolled over and said to me: “You know, you don’t have to do anything to have fun.” This was odd, coming from a teenager who is usually as attached to his devices as he is to oxygen... but very true.

Along with fellow passengers, we were on our way to Hoëdic, one of the tiny islands that pepper the Gulf of Morbihan on the south coast of Brittany.

The Krog E Barz is a 66ft modern replica of a traditional wooden Breton lobster boat, originally built in 1910. It has three sails, an engine and a crew of two.

I was expecting to be a simple passenger during the three-hour journey to the island. But that wasn’t on the crew’s agenda; it turned out we had a first-hand taster of the art of seafaring.

Just beyond the harbour, first mate Alan handed over the tiller to one of our number and told them to stick on a course of 375 degrees by the compass slap bang in front of them.

Others were enlisted to raise the sails using a complicated series of ropes and pulleys. I pored over the boat’s charts with a freshly brewed coffee, with the warm breeze blowing over me as we closed in on Hoëdic and our picnic of cheese, bread, crisps and fruit on the beach.

The island is one of 40 in the Gulf of Morbihan. It’s tiny at just 1.5 miles long and would only take an hour to do a complete circuit. But it still has much to offer. Around the coast, there are lovely sandy coves and rockpools teeming with hermit crabs, prawns, clams and other shellfish.

Inland, there is a fort with an exhibition on Hoëdic’s history, there are two Neolithic sites – a standing stone, the Menhir de la Vierge, and a stone tomb, the Dolmen de la Croix – which date back to 5,000BC.

Our holiday in Brittany turned out to be entirely centred around water, particularly at our accommodation at Les Castels Manoir de Ker An Poul campsite near the small town of Sarzeau, set in the grounds of an old manor house.

The area feels a little like the Suffolk countryside – quite flat, wooded and agricultural – yet everywhere we went, there were references to the coast.

Boats were planted in the centre of every roundabout and it seemed that almost every other shop sold yachts, sailing equipment or fishing tackle.

There was a fabulous swimming complex with an indoor heated pool, a couple of slides which the children loved and another larger pool.

At the end of a country road dotted with open fields and white bungalows was the beach, where sand yachters