French Letter: Lakeside living in the land that time forgot

A ten minute walk from our house in rural Brittany is a lake, or étang, created by the neighbouring commune 50 years ago in the hope that it might become a tourist attraction. 

The river that feeds the lake, with the improbably grand name Le Ruisseau de la Fontaine de Guervilly, used to mind its own business as it made its way towards a confluence with l’Hyére, a somewhat larger waterway that itself discharges into the Aulne, finally reaching the Atlantic a little south of Brest. 

To create the lake, an entire valley was flooded, with sluice gates at one end through which, depending on the volume of water entering the system, the Guervilly was permitted to resume its interrupted journey.  

The expected influx of visitors never materialised. If they’d asked me, I’d have told them it was never a runner. Le Circuit de l’Argoat, a nominal tourist route that takes in much of central Brittany, basically bypasses our neck of the woods and the lake has ended up as an essentially local amenity. 

Then, three years ago, with the resource now under the watchful eye of the newly-formed Guingamp-Paimpol Agglomération, they pulled the plug. In a matter of days, what had been a fine body of water was reduced to no more than a muddy swamp through which the Guervilly slowly and regretfully meandered.

If this had taken place in England, one result would have been a harvest of supermarket trolleys, old tyres and the occasional mattress. Here, what was exposed was mainly fishermen’s lures that had got caught in the reeds as well as the bleached shells of freshwater oysters. 

We were told not to be alarmed. The raised embankment holding back the water at one end of the lake was in need of attention and the machinery regulating water levels had worn out. But the necessary repairs would be completed in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, at which point normal service would be resumed. 

We should have known better. In fact, after a series of false starts, it was only last month that the lake, known locally as the Plan d’Eau, was once more filled to the brim. The ducks are back, though not yet the frogs, and the Heron must be pleased that he no longer has to scavenge for morsels in the mud, his long legs squelching with every step. Now we have to wait to see if the otters will return. 

On Wednesday, a flotilla of Swallows and Amazons-type sailboats appeared, as if by magic, as did a group of not-necessarily enthusiastic schoolchildren being taught to kayak by a teacher who barked out his orders from the shore while stripped to the waist. Further along, an elderly fisherman proudly showed off the two-and-a-half kilo trout he had caught, its dorsal area speckled brown, its underside a bright silver.

The trees around the étang — my New England wife calls it a fake lake — are in full leaf now, filled with birdsong. Mayflies are hatching, to be followed by dragonflies (libellules), and everywhere the inevitable uproar of the butterflies. Stretching up from the path next to the water’s edge, beneath the trees, bluebells in rich profusion have seized the day. My mother would have loved them. In fact, all is as it should be. 

If you were to follow the path away from the lake, by way of the new outdoor concert area and basketball courts, you would pass the ever-expanding maison de retraite, home to some two hundred well-heeled retirees, before arriving in downtown Callac, dominated by what Americans might call its overstuffed church, Saint Laurent, built 200 years ago when Sunday morning mass regularly attracted a congregation of more than one thousand of the faithful. 

Today, a good turnout at St Laurent, outside of feast days and funerals, would barely fill a mini-bus. But not all is lost. On Wednesday, Louisa — that’s the wife — and I were pleased to observe, while making our way back to the car from the weekly market, that the steeple clock had been repaired after an interval of many years.

Not only that, but the church bell, inscribed with the names of both the donor and the foundry, had just been lowered by pulley to enable repairs to be made to the belfry. Given that the bell weighs in at one-and-a-quarter tonnes, this must have been quite a trick, but the small team of workers seemed to know what they were doing. With any luck, we’ll see them in the pub tonight. 

Callac is not a showpiece. Before the War, it was a moderately important and prosperous town, known for its cattle market, connected by rail to St Brieuc in the north and Quimper to the southwest, with a full range of shops, hotels and small businesses. But by the 1970s, the cattle business had moved on and the retail sector was in sharp decline, giving way eventually to a “profit” of supermarkets and out-of-town box stores.

Today, with the population down from 3,500 to just under 2,000, the chief attractions are a tiny gallo-Roman bridge, a nineteenth-century horse trough and a museum, located in the one-time Hotel du Centre, dedicated to the Breton spaniel. Oh, and a handsome bronze statue opposite the mairie of Naous, the most celebrated — certainly the largest — Breton horse in living memory. 

But, touch wood, we still have two boulangeries, three bars, braces each of restaurants, banks and hairdressers, and a butcher’s shop, even if, sadly, no newsagents. So I’m not complaining. 

Did I mention that it has been sunny and warm every day this week and that we have had no rain to speak of for nearly a month? And would you be interested to know that we had a bat in our bedroom last week that, fortunately, allowed itself to be guided out of the window without injury?

I tell you, it’s all happening in central Brittany.