The approach to Perros Guirec is straight forward and attractive.  Like almost all of Brittany’s marinas, there is a window of around 2 to 3 hours either side of high water when there is enough water to enter or leave.  What is different here, however, is the actual entrance.  Perros Guirec is similar to many other marinas in that it has a retaining wall that prevents the marina drying out when the tide drops, with a section, (cill), that can be lowered and raised to allow boats through.  The problem is that the width of the cill here is only 5 metres and, as you can see, you have to pass between two raised granite abutments.  With the tide running and even a little cross wind, things get interesting when your beam is 4.4 metres with the fenders down!

The two pictures above were taken as we left Perros Guirec for Roscoff.  The narrow cill can’t be avoided as the wall on either side is only covered by shallow water and so is not passable in anything other than a very small boat.

With the tide in and the wind blowing at 90 degrees across the gate, it took some gentle use of our twin engines and a few bursts of the bow and stern thrusters to get through without a scratch.

We explored the coast on both sides of the Marina on our bikes.  Everywhere you go around here there are hills.  Steep hills.

Everywhere you go around this area, you can’t help but notice just how many rocks there are.  Everywhere.  There are a lot of them, even for Brittany!

This picture was taken at low water but not on a spring tide when there’s little more than a stream left.

This corner of Brittany has some unusual rock formations, with huge boulders balanced on top of the other.

On our walks up into the main part of the town, we came across the Cloarec name several times, both from the past, on a war memorial outside the attractive church: –

and the present, outside a insurance agency: –