"The Gateway To Brittany" a Roscoff Travel Page by johngayton

I've borrowed this picture from the Roscoff tourist office's site. I am sure they won't mind me using it especially once they read what I've got to say about the town.

Roscoff is stunningly beautiful, stunning is perhaps an underexaggeration. If Roscoff was a woman she would be Sophie Loren, Brigitte Bardot and Naomi Cambell fused together will all their best attributes brought to the fore.

The reason for my trip is that I'm a terrible smoker and for the last twenty odd years my poison of choice (or addiction if you want to call it that) has been Gauloises rolling tobacco which I normally go over to Calais for.

Having recently moved back down to Devon from Essex, one of my work colleagues suggested Roscoff as an alternative, crossing with Brittany Ferries. I visited their site brittany-ferries.co.uk and found that they do an overnight "day-trip" for the amazingly cheap price of GBP 12.95. The ferry goes from Plymouth leaving at 2300 hrs, docks at Roscoff 0800 and then returns 1630 that afternoon getting back to Plymouth about 2130. It is only a 45 minute check-in and this gave me the best part of the day in Roscoff itself.

I hate to say anything against a place I visit, but Calais is a port of transit, a place to buy cheap booze and tobacco and then go home, Roscoff is entirely different, it is a destination in its own right.

The crossing itself, I sailed on the "Bretagne", was perfectly comfortable, good friendly staff, the dj was a bit naff - but then that's a personal opinion. When the bar closed at 1 am several of us took our drinks into the lounge and leisurley finished them off there.

Crashing for a few hours in one of the reclininmg seats, coffee, cigarettes and croisant for breakfast we disembarked about 8 am.

And now Roscoff:

Another pic from the Roscoff tourist office, I've only put it here cos I'ts 5 am and i'm at work in 4 hours.

to be continued..................