National Geographic Traveller (UK)
THE WILDEST WEST
As a habituated ferry passenger, I rarely bother with anti-sickness meds, antinausea wristbands, or keeping my eyes on the horizon. But as my family and I prepare to take the ferry to Ushant — or the Île d’Ouessant as the French call it — I’m not taking any chances. What I’ve read about metropolitan France’s westernmost landmass is that it’s wild. Cast out in the Atlantic, numerous lighthouses are poised on its peripheries to protect traffic in the busy Ouessant strait shipping lane. It’s where thousands of sailors have perished.
As we set sail on the small foot-passenger ferry — which is packed with fellow daytrippers — from the quayside at Le Conquet, I realise I might have over-thought the potential for nausea in August. The sea is as flat as a pancake. We cruise past the many other islands in the Ponant archipelago, including the luscious, green Île de Molène, with hundreds of sea birds gliding above us in the clear blue summer sky.
After an hour, we approach Ushant, its blond, craggy cliffs embracing ships into the harbour. Our boat bobs and jerks against the sea wall as we step up and onto the dock. In winter, I’m told, waves here can reach almost 50ft, making it impossible to disembark. We pick up rental bikes and pedal off up the hill, keen to find out more about this mysterious island, a place that attracts the curious
— just like us — who want to discover what France’s western frontier is really like.
A tumultuous grey sky threatens overhead as we push on across moorland whose fragrant bracken and gorse is redolent of Dartmoor. It’s then an easy freewheel down the hill into the village of Lampaul, as the sun peeps out of the shadows and the mighty Créac’h lighthouse towers in the distance.
The restaurants are busy in the village, but we manage to grab a table on a prime terrace and tuck into moules-frites. But all the while I’m craning my neck to glimpse the coast; I can just about hear the roar of the waves. Soon enough, we pedal out beyond the church and whitewashed houses of the village, towards Pointe de Pern, the westernmost point of the island, and thus Metropolitan France.
The smooth, open road wends between crumbling stonewalls, golden grassy meadows, small windmills and memorials to anonymous sailors who perished in the region’s many shipwrecks. Ahead: the Créac’h lighthouse. As we approach, the landscape becomes wilder, with swaying grass and purple heather, a gravel path down to the sea with outcrops of granite that the children stop to climb. The sound of the waves crashing against the tumbling expanse of dark brown rocks is deafening. The lighthouses look on like chess pieces, protecting us pawns. There’s nothing to do but sit and be still in the blazing summer sun, watching as the Atlantic proves that this is the wildest west there is.
When Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled to the island of Saint Helena, he stood on deck for several hours and watched as the island of Ushant disappeared into the distance; it was his last sight of France