one thing a day | 8 nights | from $2,460 per person
Brittany Vacation Package, One Thing A Day
Eight nights on the coast with one tide-timed thing in the diary each day. The rest of this Brittany vacation package is left unbooked on purpose, because the water decides the hour and nobody else needs to.
What one thing a day means here
The sea here moves more than thirteen meters on a big coefficient. Sand you walked at nine is under two meters of water by noon. So the trip carries one appointment a day and the water sets the hour: a causeway open for 100 minutes, an oyster bed that dries a few days a month, a current in an estuary that runs one way for six hours and then turns.
Everything else is unbooked. Your Brittany vacation package is a car, two beds, breakfast, and eight meeting times printed against the tide table for your exact dates. The other nineteen hours belong to you.
- Hours already spoken for
- About three hours of an average day: the activity itself, plus the drive out and back. Two of the eight days run nearer five, because the water gives a long window and it is not worth cutting short.
- The earliest you must be somewhere
- 6:40 am, once, for the low-water crossing in the middle of the week. Two other mornings meet at 8:15. The remaining five have no clock on them at all.
- The longest stretch that is yours
- Days four and five sit back to back with nothing timed between them: 41 hours from one afternoon's return to the next morning's meeting point.
- Who chooses where you eat
- You pick every meal and every road. A local guide holds the timing on the eight activity days, and even the guide is following the tide table rather than a preference.
- What happens if you skip a day
- Say so the evening before and nothing else changes. No money comes back: each activity is paid to the operator per booking rather than per head, and the beds and the car stay booked either way.
- Who this shape of day does not suit
- Anyone who wants all eight days planned end to end, and anyone unwilling to drive. Six meeting points sit 20 to 50 minutes from the beds on single lane roads, and no transfer is included.
The last row costs this company bookings and stays on the page anyway. A shape of day that does not suit you is far cheaper to find out about here than on the third morning.
What the $2,460 pays for
- Eight nights in two family-run places: five on the north coast between Paimpol and Cancale, three near the Golfe du Morbihan. Doubles with private bathrooms. Two rooms are up a narrow stair, no elevator
- Eight tide-timed activities, one a day, each fixed at the hour the water allows rather than the hour that suits a diary
- A low-water crossing to a tidal island, a morning on a working oyster bed, a sail on the Rance as the current turns, and a walk out along a 3 kilometer gravel spit
- A compact car for all eight days, unlimited mileage, collected and left at Saint-Brieuc
- Breakfast each morning and four dinners where you sleep, placed on the nights the drive back is longest
- A printed tide table for your dates with all eight meeting points and times marked, and a local number answered by someone who knows the roads
Costs that stay on your own card
- The flight in and out of France, which we do not book. Round trip from the east coast has run $690 to $1,180 per person, and above $1,400 in July and August
- Fuel and tolls, about $90 and $25 across the eight days on our route
- Lunches, and the four dinners that are not covered. A galette and cider is $14 to $20; a seafood platter starts at $45
- Whatever you add in your own hours: bicycles at about $22 a day, small museum entry at $6 to $11
- Coverage for the trip. Buy it on your own account before you leave, because it is not something we handle
What it costs
from $2,460 per person
- Covering
- 8 nights, one fixed appointment a day, set by the tide.
- Assuming
- Two people to a room, unless the six rows above say otherwise for your case.
- Pushed up by
- The month, the grade of room, how late you leave it, and how many of the hours you want somebody else to hold.
- Fixed when
- An operator puts it in writing with its own name on it. Until then it marks the bottom of a range that genuinely happened.
You settle with the operator, through whatever system they run. This site gathers nothing and no card ever arrives at this company.
Which months the tide table gives you
May, June and September are when this shape holds. Daylight is long enough that a 6:40 am start still leaves a full afternoon, and the coast roads are not full.
April is cold and wet and half the kitchens along the coast are shut. From November to March the gales come in off the Atlantic, ferries stop, and island crossings get canceled outright.
Two weeks we would talk you out of: the two weeks sitting either side of August 15, when every car park on the north coast fills by 10 am and beds cost a third more, and any week where the tide coefficient stays under 60, because the flats do not dry far enough and three of the eight days turn into ordinary walks.
Four things settled at confirmation
Which base runs first, north or south, since that follows where the biggest tide falls in your week. Which day carries the long island crossing, decided by the tide table and by nothing else. Whether the car is manual or automatic, since an automatic adds about $190 over eight days and there are fewer of them on the lot. And whether the four covered dinners sit where we put them or move to the nights you would rather not drive.