Dawlish's twin across the Channel - what's life like in Carhaix-Plouguer?
By Will Goddard
20th Jun 2021 | Local News
![Image: The 16th century house of the Seneschal, now the tourist information office. By Moreau.henri - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15669332 Image: The 16th century house of the Seneschal, now the tourist information office. By Moreau.henri - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15669332](https://storage.googleapis.com/nub-news-files/nub-news-file-storage/112345/61_n_6_469_1.jpg)
![By Moreau.henri - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15669798 By Moreau.henri - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15669798](https://storage.googleapis.com/nub-news-files/nub-news-file-storage/112346/61_n_6_469_2.jpg)
Since we're all stuck in Blighty due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we thought it might be a good idea to go on a virtual trip abroad.
Dawlish is twinned with a place in France called Carhaix-Plouguer (pronounced something like Caray Plooger!) - an excellent destination for our brief holiday.
With a population of 7,000, it has fewer than half the residents of Dawlish.
It also has a nearby river called the Hyères, which can sometimes cause serious floods.
The town is situated in the most westerly portion of Brittany called Finistère - just like a French Cornwall.
The climate is quite cool there, unlike the rest of France, as it has winds coming in from the ocean to keep the temperature more mild.
It's well known as a holiday destination and many people from all over the country go there to relax in summer.
Carhaix-Plouguer also has a huge national park nearby, much like Dartmoor, complete with granite outcrops, forests, and a rugged coastline.
What makes this region interesting is that they have their own language - Breton - and it's very similar to the Celtic languages of the British Isles.
In fact, it's most similar to Cornish, both in its structure and vocabulary, but also the fact that it's not really used much in daily life.
The town also hosts an annual music festival called 'Vieilles Charrues', 'Old Ploughs'.
It attracts more than 200,000 people, making it the largest music festival in France - bigger even than the UK's Glastonbury Festival.
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