Île de Batz: The Delaselle Garden and the Great Lighthouse
Brittany, France
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200
XP
+100 France
= 300 total
1 day
Île de Batz: The Delaselle Garden and the Great Lighthouse
200 + 100 XP
The Île de Batz lies off Roscoff — a little over a kilometre from the nearest point of the mainland, though the boat from Roscoff's old port covers about 3.5 kilometres through a narrow channel of strong currents; its fields grow vegetables like the Léon mainland, and ripen earlier, because the mainland shelters the island from the south-west wind. From 1896 the insurance director Georges Delaselle spent forty years making a colonial garden of exotic plants here, now named after him and held by the Conservatoire du Littoral. On Creac'h Glidi, the island's high western point at 23 m, stands a lighthouse lit on 10 October 1836, designed by the engineer Jean-Sébastien Goury: a tower of 40 m whose light sits 68 m above the equinoctial high tide and flashes once a minute, visible 50 km out.
Required Activities
1
of 4
On the 3.5 km crossing from Roscoff's old port, watch the water in the narrow channel: the currents here run hard enough that the boat takes a long dogleg to cover a strait barely a kilometre wide, and divers working this channel in the early 1990s brought up Roman amphorae and pottery from its floor
2
of 4
In the garden, go down into the hollow Delaselle had dug five metres deep so that his palms would stand in eight metres of shelter, and name the five he got to grow — Trachycarpus, Chamaerops, Phoenix canariensis, Washingtonia and the Chilean Jubaea — then find the Bronze Age necropolis he turned up while excavating it, where more than forty burials have been identified
3
of 4
Climb the 198 steps of the great lighthouse and from the gallery name four things: the Sept-Îles to the east, the île Vierge to the west, the mouth of the bay of Morlaix between them and the ridge of the Monts d'Arrée on the southern horizon — then work back down through the eight rooms in the base, which are given over to an exhibition about wind
4
of 4
Walk the lanes between the vegetable plots to the fort du Chenal on the island's south-west point, built in 1862 and turned into a German strongpoint on the Atlantic Wall in 1943 before the Wehrmacht blew parts of it up on leaving in August 1944, counting the semaphore and the old mill stumps on the low hills as you go
On the 3.5 km crossing from Roscoff's old port, watch the water in the narrow channel: the currents here run hard enough that the boat takes a long dogleg to cover a strait barely a kilometre wide, and divers working this channel in the early 1990s brought up Roman amphorae and pottery from its floor
In the garden, go down into the hollow Delaselle had dug five metres deep so that his palms would stand in eight metres of shelter, and name the five he got to grow — Trachycarpus, Chamaerops, Phoenix canariensis, Washingtonia and the Chilean Jubaea — then find the Bronze Age necropolis he turned up while excavating it, where more than forty burials have been identified
Climb the 198 steps of the great lighthouse and from the gallery name four things: the Sept-Îles to the east, the île Vierge to the west, the mouth of the bay of Morlaix between them and the ridge of the Monts d'Arrée on the southern horizon — then work back down through the eight rooms in the base, which are given over to an exhibition about wind
Walk the lanes between the vegetable plots to the fort du Chenal on the island's south-west point, built in 1862 and turned into a German strongpoint on the Atlantic Wall in 1943 before the Wehrmacht blew parts of it up on leaving in August 1944, counting the semaphore and the old mill stumps on the low hills as you go
Before you go
The Delaselle garden opens only from the start of April to the first of November, from 11h, with last entry half an hour before closing, so an early boat gets you nothing before eleven. The lighthouse is about thirty minutes' walk from the port and the garden is at the other end of the island, so allow a good half day and check the last boat back to Roscoff before you set out.
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About Brittany
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Challenge Location
XP Breakdown
Challenge XP
200 XP
France country bonus
+100 XP
Potential total
300 XP
Country bonus earned on completion of your first challenge in France.
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