www.tourisme.perros-guirec.com During the summer season, Perros-Guirec is the busiest resort along the Côte de Granit Rose. Yachts jostle for space in the two harbours, cheap and cheerful beach cafés and family restaurants are packed to the gills, and there is hot competition for space on the lively golden sweep of Plage de Trestraou. Around a headland, the sheltered sandy beach of Plage de Trestrignel is rather smaller; up on its eastern flank there are grand views from Pointe du Château, off boulevard de la Mer. After the sun goes down, nightbirds can flock to the casino, or disport themselves in the half-dozen local discothèques.

If you want to escape the wall-to-wall crowds on the beach, you can set off on foot along the Sentier des Douaniers, the old customs officers’ path. It skirts the cliffs west of town to the port of Ploumanac’h and some of the most extraordinary rock formations along the coast. Another option is a three-hour round-trip boat ride (no landings) out to Les Sept-lles, an archipelago-cum-bird-reserve with a wing-tip to wing-tip scrummage of wheeling, screeching gulls, auks, and a few (rare) peregrine falcons. The islands have slowly recovered from the disastrous oil spillages of the 1960s and 70s, and between March and July around 200 pairs of jolly little puffins come to breed here and entertain visitors with their deft fishing forays – certainly not just a pretty beak.

Back on dry land, there is a pleasant diversion at La Clarté, just off the Trégastel road (D788). The squat, pink granite Chapelle de Notre-Dame was built in the 16thC, by the Marquis de Barac’h in fulfilment of a promise made to the Virgin Mary after the Marquis and his ship were delivered from thick fog by a shaft of sunlight. The chapel’s interior has a distinctly nautical air with its wooden barrel roof, model ships hanging from the ceiling, and wealth of woodcarvings including a delightful 17thC painted retable, the flowery gallery at the rear, and beams grasped in the jaws of toothsome monsters. The statue of Our Lady of Clarté, on the left of the retable, descends from her niche annually to take part in a traditional Breton pardon (saints day procession) on August 15. The Stations of the Cross around the church are the work of Maurice Denis, who had a holiday home at Perros-Guirec.