Catching a Rainbow

Charles Lindbergh owned a holiday home on the Isle de Ileac at Bugéles, not a stone throw from the restaurant Le Gouermel.
It is a sad reflection of the times, as the general response so often appears to be...who was Charles Lindbergh!


Lindbergh Does It! To Paris in 33 1/2 Hours; Flies 1,000 Miles Through Snow and Sleet; Cheering French Carry Him Off Field
New York Times, May 21, 1927

Early in the morning on May 20, 1927 Charles A. Lindbergh took off in The Spirit of St. Louis from Roosevelt Field near New York City.
Flying northeast along the coast, he was sighted later in the day flying over Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. From St. Johns, Newfoundland, he headed out over the Atlantic, using only a magnetic compass, his airspeed indicator, and luck to navigate toward Ireland. The flight had captured the imagination of the American public like few events in history. Citizens waited nervously by their radios, listening for news of the flight. When Lindbergh was seen crossing the Irish coast, the world cheered and eagerly anticipated his arrival in Paris. A frenzied crowd of more than 100,000 people gathered at Le Bourget Field to greet him. When he landed, less than 34 hours after his departure from New York, Lindbergh became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

As to his living near Buguéles, the Lindberghs had first become aware of the area through Charles's friend, Dr Alex Carrel, who had won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1912.
He and his wife had settled on Isle Saint-Gildas, the largest member of the archipelago, facing the small seaside resort of Port-Blanc and with the village of Buguéles a little to the east. A few kilometres inland is the market town of Penvenan while on the coast to the west is the bigger and smarter resort of Perros-Guirec and the beautiful rose red cliffs of the Cote de Granit Rose.

The Ile Illiec, a small island off the north Brittany coast of France which was owned by the Lindberghs during their stay in Europe between 1936 and 1939. It is a tiny archipeligo of miniature islands.......... . Most of the time, these rock formations sit as islands dotting the coast line; but twice a day the tide recedes, pulling so much water out........that the islands stand as weird, craggy hills among tidal pools- a wet desert, dead-quiet except for the birds and the constant winds.

They were both profoundly affected by the atmosphere. A few islands away, and at low tide connected to both Saint-Gildas and the mainland, was Iliac barely four acres but big enough for a three storey, slate roofed stone house with a dozen rooms including a chapel and a conical tower.
In March 1938 they were able to purchase it for $16 000. Charles wrote,
"I have never seen a place where I wanted to live so much."
The Lindberghs lived on Iliac from early June to early December 1938 but the worsening situation in Europe, leading to their decision to return to the US in April 1939, meant that they never lived there again.


Reference: Charles Lindbergh, an American Aviator as cited @ http://www.charleslindbergh.com/
Donations for the Lindbergh site

The Breton flag is called Gwenn-ha-Du, which means 'white and black,' in Breton.
It was created by Morvan Marchal a founding member of the nationalist movement Breizh Atao (Brittany forever).
The movement had links with both the Irish Republican Movement (IRA) and the Basque separatists. There is still an underlying nationalist trend in Brittany but it is certainly not as focused as the Irish and Spanish examples and unlike the Basque does not transcend national borders, (There is also a Basque region in France, Biarritz).
Although the Breton language links people of the region, that same language is also a divisive factor. Bretons in adjoining villages speak a different version of the same language and certainly believe that they are different from those in adjoining villages. Indeed the language is so insular some have said that it cannot be classed as a distinctive language at all.
The eleven ermines are for the kings and dukes who governed independent Brittany. The stripes are symbols of the nine old bishoprics. Black representing the dioceses of Gallic language (Dol, Nantes, Rennes, St Malo and St Brieuc). The white represent the dioceses of Breton language (Trégor, Leon, Cornwall and Vannes). We live in Trégor. Some Bretons believe that the eleven ermine spots represent the phrase Breizh dieuh or Free Brittany.

In a recent poll for the Le Telegramme newspaper 62% of people felt that Breton Culture was in danger of being lost. The Bretons should take courage from the Welsh example.
In the 1960's Welsh culture was all but dead but with the re-introduction of the language and a fiercely independent nature the Welsh some forty years later have safeguarded their patrimony for the future by the creation of the Welsh National Assembly in Cardiff.