During my six-month stay in Lannion, I visited the island of Île Grande several times. While it’s not a major tourist destination like Perros-Guirrec, it holds far more cherished memories for me. This was where I first tried shellfish hunting in France, and the breathtakingly beautiful paths along the GR34 hiking trail that connects all of Brittany played a big part in making it special.
Located just a few dozen minutes by car from Lannion and Perros-Guirrec, you could easily explore all the nearby villages in half a day. My girlfriend and I loved making spontaneous trips there on lazy holiday afternoons or whenever we craved some sea breeze—just jumping in the car, soaking up the atmosphere, and heading back home.
So here’s my account of the tranquil island of Île Grande, with its fascinating coastal ecosystem and outstanding natural beauty—everything I saw, heard, and experienced there.
1. First Impressions of Île Grande
Since it’s not a major tourist spot, there are plenty of spacious free parking areas. We parked at a campground-slash-parking lot not far from the GR34 coastal hiking trail, though you couldn’t see the ocean directly from there. I’m not sure if it was officially a campground, but there were far more RVs than regular cars.
To reach the coastline, you have to walk quite a bit through grasslands, but along the way, a cheerful flower path welcomes you. It’s a modest greeting, but it lifts your spirits. The trees must be about 6 feet tall—beyond the flower path, you can only see tall trees stretching up into the sky.
It’s not exactly a bustling travel destination, but it’s not completely deserted either. You occasionally run into families out for a stroll and people dressed for hiking. Most visitors seem to be seeking quiet rest rather than tourism, people who want to naturally blend into nature.
The sea comes into view. Though the sunlight looks like it might be harsh, it was actually a pleasantly mild day. Even though it’s an island surrounded by water, the sea breeze isn’t too strong, creating a more cozy atmosphere. Walking along the deliberately maintained path, bird songs reach your ears before the bustle of people does. The distant sound of waves shimmers in the background. In this leisurely space and time, you naturally feel yourself healing.
2. Coastal Flower Paths and Ancient Trees
All of Île Grande’s coastal walking routes are part of the 2,000-kilometer GR34 hiking trail. GR stands for Grande Randonnée, meaning long-distance hiking route, and 34 indicates it’s the 34th route. This GR34 is also called Sentier des Douaniers (Customs Officers’ Path) or Sentier du Littoral Breton (Brittany Coastal Trail) in French, and the Brittany Coast Path in English.
If you’re interested in learning more about the GR34, check out these official pages: the GR34 official website and the Brittany tourism official site’s GR34 page.
An ancient tree we encountered on the island. Its trunk is twisted and looks precariously close to toppling over, yet it provides welcome shade for a rest. It reminds me of “The Giving Tree.” Thanks to the gentle sea breeze and the tree’s shelter from the sun, it’s refreshing and comfortable. The path is mostly flat, perfect for leisurely walks.
Île Grande, like most of Brittany, boasts a mild climate. Except for winter, it enjoys abundant sunshine. (In winter, like in England, most days are overcast, and rain or hail frequently pours down. Then suddenly, like in a cartoon, the sun bursts out brightly, only for gusts of wind and hail to return.) Thanks to this, plants grow healthy and strong. Even in areas that aren’t particularly maintained, the colors are simply gorgeous.
The same white flowers I saw on the path to the coast are blooming by the seaside too. I suspect they might be Blackthorn (Prunus spinosa). Below the flowers lies a shallow, blue sea, and beyond that, the mainland is visible. Looking for a path down to the water, I found small trails scattered here and there. Children were already playing in the sand on the beach below. I hurried down to join them.
The water is genuinely shallow. It’s so clean and calm that you can see the bottom clearly. When you wade in, the water only comes up to your shins. You almost feel like you could walk across to the mainland. I only imagined it—didn’t actually try.
Brittany’s seas have extremely large tidal ranges. The biggest ones have height differences of up to 15 meters (50 feet). I’ve covered this in my travel stories about Mont Saint-Michel and Cancale, so I’ll skip the details here. Île Grande is no exception. The shallow, expansive water drains away in an instant. You can see seawater that hasn’t completely receded yet in the distance. As soon as the water drained, countless traces of creatures that had burrowed into the mudflats appeared everywhere—rather creepily. I suspect they were lugworm tracks.
Something is running across those mudflats. What is that? It looked so small that I zoomed my camera in as far as it would go. It’s someone on horseback! Unexpected, but magnificent. I guess it’s not the kind of mud you sink into like the mudflats on Korea’s west coast.
The children who spotted the running horse stopped their sand play and started chasing after it. I almost ran over to ask for a ride too, but held myself back.
3. Limpets and Shell Collecting
During my first visit here, I noticed countless limpets clinging to massive rocks embedded in the sandy beach, their size impossible to judge. And while crossing the bridge to the island by car, I saw commercial fishers collecting shellfish with machines that suck up sand. Drawing on my experience catching various shellfish from both Korea’s East and West seas, I calculated: “Limpet and shellfish hand-torn soup” was on the menu.
Some time later, I returned equipped with shovels and various tools from Action (a popular European discount chain store. But when I visited at the same time, the water was high…? Maybe because I didn’t take Earth Science 1 and 2 during my junior and senior years of high school, I’d forgotten that high and low tide times change daily…
Getting burned once like that taught me to always check maximum low tide times carefully for future visits, even back in Korea. Sometimes you need to taste failure to remember it for a long time. For those planning to visit Île Grande, you can check the tide times here.
The photos above and below show shellfish and limpets caught from Île Grande on different days at slightly different spots.
First, the limpets are apparently European limpets (Patella vulgata) or Patella depressa. They’re traditionally cooked and eaten in France and some other parts of Europe.
Since eating the wrong shellfish could potentially be fatal, I consulted an expert through Naver Knowledge-iN, a Korean Q&A platform.
The clam-like ones seem to be called “daebok” (large fortune clams), and the cockle-like ones were identified as Clinocardium buelowi (curved cockles), according to the response I got.
From the follow-up question “I’m lightly blanching and eating them—are they safe to eat?” it seems I was risking my life to eat them. Since they looked similar to cockles, I boiled them and mixed them with soy sauce seasoning, but they weren’t as plump with roe as cockles, and the texture when chewing wasn’t cockle-like either—something was bursting inside. Anyway, the important thing is that I’m still alive.
The limpets and daebok clams went into hand-torn soup (sujebi, a traditional Korean comfort food). I bought flour and made the dough myself, letting it rest for several hours before tearing the sujebi by hand. My first hand-torn soup was made in France.
I made the broth using square dried seafood stock blocks I’d brought from Korea and Kikkoman soy sauce that you can commonly find in European supermarkets (authentic Korean soy sauce wasn’t available).
Cleaning limpets isn’t easy… especially their appearance… It suddenly filled me with newfound appreciation for my mother, who always hand-cleans and cooks abalone and other seafood. These days there are many pre-cleaned seafood options available, so I plan to make enough money to only buy the ones I don’t have to clean myself.
Anyway, it was a pretty decent meal.
4. The Irresistible Galette Encounter on Île Grande
I ate out once on Île Grande. Since dining out is so expensive that we rarely buy food, it was a big decision—but the day was so beautiful, everything was so perfect, that I made up my mind. Since it was early afternoon, too early for dinner, we decided to eat something light. The menu choice: Brittany’s traditional galette. (The pronunciation is closer to “gah-LET” than “galette,” but I’ll stick with galette for clarity.)
You’ve probably heard of crêpes—they’re commonly sold on Korean streets. Galette is like a cousin to crêpes. Both galette bretonne and crêpe bretonne are traditional Brittany foods, but crêpes are made with wheat flour for dessert, while galettes are made with buckwheat flour (blé noir, sarrasin) as a meal. Since they don’t contain wheat flour, they’re gluten-free.
The restaurant we chose was Les Triagoz, a “crêperie” with 1,218 Google reviews and 4.5 stars. Galettes cost around 3-10 euros, crêpes around 2-8 euros.
My girlfriend’s company sometimes serves a traditional Brittany sausage that’s so strong in taste and smell that even she, who eats pretty much anything, can’t finish half of it. It’s called Andouille de Guémené. I spotted this name on the menu. So I ordered it.
My girlfriend played it safe and ordered the basic galette with ham (jambon), egg (oeuf), and Emmental cheese, plus a glass of Cidre that pairs well with galettes. That’s Cider in English, Cidre in French—basically low-alcohol apple wine.
If you’re curious about the taste of Andouille de Guémené, I recommend trying it yourself. Since we live in a global era, I searched for it on Korean shopping sites, but no luck…
It has an indescribable taste. Though it looks like there’s just one piece in the photo, there were actually five pieces total including the visible one: one at each corner of the triangle, one in the center, and one on top (3+1+1). One piece would have been perfect for tasting, but they were generous.
It surpasses even the Tablier de sapeur I had in Lyon in terms of being revolting. (Tablier de sapeur is a pork cutlet-like dish made from the first stomach of cattle, the rumen.) When dining out in Europe, I usually force myself to finish meals even if they taste awful because I hate wasting money, but I couldn’t even finish two out of five pieces of this sausage.
I got so carried away describing the taste that I’m only now explaining the ingredients. Andouille de Guémené is mainly made from pig small intestines and large intestines, sometimes including pig esophagus. Unlike regular sausages, they don’t mince the meat. They roll the intestines whole. That’s why it has layers like in the photo. This sausage is slowly smoked for 2-3 weeks with oak (chêne) smoke to add flavor, then dried and aged for several months to concentrate the taste.
If you’re familiar with the famous pig innards from Moran Market (though I haven’t been there myself), you might find it edible. But it’s definitely not for me.
It was a disappointing meal after a long time.
5. In Closing
Just because the sea has large tidal ranges doesn’t mean there are only mudflats and sandy beaches. There are also many granite areas that Brittany is proud of. While not the pink granite of Perros-Guirrec, the sight of cube-shaped rocks jutting out in rough, angular chunks looks magnificent.
Anyway, I have many memories from Île Grande. I got to try shellfish collecting, something I’d only done as a child, and thanks to that, I made hand-torn soup from scratch. I also had my first taste of traditional galette with that peculiar sausage and a sweet, refreshing glass of cidre.
It’s not a major tourist destination, but I sometimes think back to walking there on bright, sunny days. For travel memories, that’s more than enough.