The Sabbaticus Line: Brittany Coast Walking Tour - Day Five—Epilogue

While in Dinard, we stayed at the Hôtel Printania. During the evening of Day Five, the Hotel management invited us to attend a traditional Breton Festival.

So what is a traditional Breton Festival? As you might expect, it involved traditional Brenton Food, traditional Brenton Music and traditional Brenton Dancing with a few guests thrown in for good measure wearing a traditional Brenton Costume.

So what do Brenton's eat? It included an entrée of smoked mackerel on toast together with a selection of cured meats, brawn, pasta, pickles and a seafood salad thrown in for good measure. But the main thrust of the meal was the traditional dish Galettes Bretonnes. Just about every restaurant in Brittany, and—sadly—Paris, includes Galettes on their menu. So what are Galettes? They are crêpes, or what we would call pancakes in NZ. Unlike our humble pancake, however, the traditional Galettes Bretonnes is not made of a dough made from the ingredients of wheat flour and milk; but a locally grown product called buckwheat and milk. It turns out that buckwheat—despite the name—is not a species of wheat at all and, much to Julies delight, is gluten free! This fact explains why they are so thin, yet solid, compared to the humble pancake. The Galettes is cooked on a billig: a griddle or rimless round hot plate and filled with savory ingredients. We were given a choice, and I included ham, cheese, onions and mushrooms in mine.

So what do Brenton's drink? An apple theme! We started with a cocktail: the traditional Mojito, which included calvados brandy—this is Apple Brandy, topped with Breton Cider and finely chopped pieces of mint and cucumber. We finished with glasses of Breton Cider.

And for Dessert? We had—or more correctly Julie had—traditional Breton Cake. Sweet crêpes—this time made with wheat flour—were also being offered to the famished guests, but I was only going to indulge if the pancakes were served with whip cream or ice cream, which sadly, as it turns out for me, is not the Benton Way. So I passed over the dessert, giving me more time to savour the delights of Brenton Dancing.

What is Brenton Dancing? The best way to describe Brenton Dancing is a form of Scottish Highland Dancing that has been specifically designed to enable elderly rest home residents to dance their way between breakfast and lunch. Firstly, a dancer locks arms with their dancing partners to form a long line like a snake. Once the music starts, they make a series of very small repetitive movements with their feet and follow the snake around the dance floor until the music stops—which only happens infrequently. In this way, it becomes more of a dance of endurance, rather than skill, technique or elegance. Because of its low entertainment value, you are unlikely to see Brenton Dancing added to the next TV instalment of ‘Dancing with the Stars’.

Post script, what about Brenton Music? Brenton Music has a Celtic flavour. Traditional instruments included an accordion accompanied by a couple of Breton wind instruments. The tunes can be best describe as very simply, very repetitive and very long.