Qui voit Groix, voit sa croix

Trip to the Ile de Groix in very bad weather yesterday. Whilst walking for hours in sodden clothes is not my favourite occupation, it turned into a great day thanks to my companion, a geologist - an essential on this island once tortured by tectonic plate movements that have left the most spectacularly dense folding and the coloured stones for which Groix is famous. Garnet dust turns many sands red, and tiny garnets stud the deep blue/green glaucophane.

My other goal was to visit the haunts of one of my favourite poets, Yann-Ber Calloc'h, a tragic loss to Breton literature at the age of 28 in WWI. To hear his moving lines about his beloved native island read aloud in Breton beside his memorial on the cliff-top was an experience that saturation could not spoil.

We left in a brief of spell sunshine, past the very unusual convex beach of Grand Sables, Groix gleaming greenly in our wake.