Product Description

Brittany and Normandy is one of France's most visited regions with its outstanding scenery, picturesque villages, remarkable history and fine French produce. The Rough Guide gets under the skin of the area with informed coverage of all the sights from the magnificent abbey of Mont-St-Michel to the evocative medieval city of Rouen. There are practical tips on a host of activities including trips to Brittany's stunning off-shore islands and cycling the backroads. In each chapter there are critical reviews of the best hotels, cafes and restaurants, in every price bracket. Finally a detailed contexts chapter covers the history of the region, further reading and an essay on Breton music.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #332144 in Books
• Published on: 2005-06-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

About the Author
Greg Ward has written eight previous editions of the Rough Guide to Brittany & Normandy, as well as eleven other Rough Guides including US destinations such as Hawaii and Las Vegas, as well as the History of the USA and Travel Online.

Excerpted from The Rough Guide to Brittany and Normandy by Greg Ward. Copyright © 2001. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
ROUTES Individual highlights in each region are detailed in the chapter introductions throughout this book. Although hard-and-fast itineraries aren’t given – much of the fun in both provinces consists in rambling off on side roads – the text is structured as logically as possible in continuous routes or definable areas. Ways to get around are set out on p.27 onwards. If you read this before you decide how to travel, consider cycling; both provinces are ideal, with short distances between each town and the next. Otherwise, a car is probably the best alternative. Unless you plan to stay within a limited area, public transport can be frustrating.

CLIMATE AND TIME OF YEAR Every French town or district eagerly promotes its own micro-climat, maintaining that some meteorological freak makes it milder or drier or balmier than its neighbours. On the whole, however, the bulk of Normandy and Brittany follows a fairly set pattern. A genuine summer, more reliable than in Britain, begins around mid-June and lasts, in a good year, through to mid-October. Spring and autumn are mild but sporadically wet. If you come for a week in April or November, it could be spoilt by rain; the rainy spells seldom last more than a couple of days, however, so a fortnight should yield better luck. Winter is not too severe, though in western Brittany especially it can be damp and very misty on the coast. Sea temperatures are not Mediterranean, and any greater warmth felt in the Channel waters off the Norman coast as opposed to the south of England is probably more psychological than real. The south coast of Brittany is a different matter – consistently warm through the summer months, with no need for you to brace yourself before going into the sea. The other factor that may affect planning is the tourist season. On the coast, this gets going properly around July, reaches a peak during the first two weeks of August and then fades quite swiftly – but try to avoid the great rentrée at the end of the month, when the roads are jammed with cars returning to Paris. Inland, the season is less defined; highlights such as Monet’s gardens at Giverny and parts of the Nantes–Brest canal can be crowded out in midsummer but, in August at any rate, some smaller hotels close to enable their owners to take their own holidays by the sea. Conversely, those seaside resorts that have grown up without really being attached to a genuine town take on a distinctly ghostlike appearance during the winter months, when they can often be entirely devoid of facilities.

Customer Reviews

Everything in one book!
This Rough Guide contains all the usual historical and tourist information you would expect on these two areas of France. What distinguishes the book from its competitors is the information on restaurants, particularly good and helpful, and the historical information, which is given with a quirky and insightful style that I really liked.(Greg Ward picks out the odd and memorable events!) The only thing which could be added is a listing of weekly markets. If you only want to buy one book to take with you, make this the one.

Excellent, no-nonsense guide to Normandy & the French!
This is the most down to earth guide I've ever seen. It doesn't just tell you where to go, more importantly it tells you where not to go. What not to eat. What not to bother queueing for. We found this book spot on, right down to general atmosphere, in every town we visited.