Cross-Channel Connections Britain and Brittany

Each summer time in the midst of August, the black and white flag of Brittany flutters for 3 days over a area within the English countryside. Beneath it stands a snug campervan belonging to Dave Pegg, bass guitarist with legendary folks rock band Fairport Conference, and round it, the annual music competition that’s Fairport’s Cropredy Conference. Gillian Thornton chats to Dave Pegg about his cross Channel connections and life in Brittany…

A Briton in Brittany

Launched almost 40 years in the past, initially as a fundraiser for Cropredy village church, this relaxed competition has all the time welcomed an eclectic mixture of artistes from 10CC to Nile Rodgers, Ralph McTell to Robert Plant, with opening and shutting units all the time by the Fairports themselves.

So why the Breton flag? Nothing, it appears, to do with the band’s 1969 hit single, Si Tu Dois Partir, a French language model of the Bob Dylan basic, If You Gotta Go. The Brittany impact started within the mid-70s when celebrated Breton harpist Alan Stivell invited the late, nice fiddle participant – and Fairport member – Dave Swarbrick to play with him on the Royal Albert Corridor. Beside them was Breton musician Dan ArBraz, who so impressed the Fairports that they recruited him on the spot.

‘Dan rented the subsequent cottage to me in Cropredy and says it was me who taught him English, sadly with a Birmingham accent,’ laughs Peggy as he’s affectionately recognized to household, pals and followers. ‘When Dan returned to Brittany, we visited him on vacation and shortly fell in love with the area and its musical traditions.’

For 15 years, Peggy owned a vacation home at Penthièvre on the narrowest a part of the Quiberon peninsula. He cherished pottering around the tranquil Baie de Quiberon to the east in his catamaran and strolling beside the Côte Sauvage on the wilder western shore, however finally the summer time visitors down this slim finger of France turned an excessive amount of. So in 2005, Peggy and his accomplice Ellen started home looking.

I’ve loved many a glass of French wine beneath that backstage competition flag in rural Oxfordshire and heard French conversations across the picnic desk from visitors equivalent to Dan ArBraz and Anglo-French folks band The Churchfitters. So it’s an actual deal with to lastly meet Peggy on residence floor within the Breton division of Morbihan.

As we speak he and Ellen divide their time between Oxfordshire and a standard 18^th century longhouse with lashings of interval attraction complemented by a shiny trendy extension and secluded backyard. Barely half an hour from his former seaside residence, Peggy’s inland pad stands in a farming hamlet so small that the deal with begins merely ‘Lieu dit …’ (often called). Head west for the bustling port of Lorient and east to the tranquil Ria d’Etel, a drowned riverbed with picturesque inlets and historic villages.

‘And we’re nonetheless near unbelievable seashores like the large arc of golden sand that stretches from Port Louis and Gâvres to the Quiberon peninsula,’ says Peggy, who fortunately admits to being an enormous fan of Breton seafood.

One of many very first thing they did on arrival was organise an apéro for his or her new neighbours, lots of whom had by no means met one another. As we speak, it’s an annual ticketed occasion with meals and reside music within the true spirit of Breton musical occasions or ‘festnoz’.

‘I’ve all the time cherished the way in which that conventional music is a part of on a regular basis life in Brittany,’ says Peggy. ‘Youngsters begin enjoying in a bagad – or pipe band – from an early age, and the music evolves as they introduce modern devices like bass guitars.

‘There’s nothing like a Breton music competition and there’s a fantastic one in Lorient each August, however sadly it’s the identical weekend as Cropredy. So I deliver a little bit of Brittany again to Oxfordshire with me!’

By Gillian Thornton, one of many UK’s main journey writers and an everyday author for The Good Life France Journal and web site.

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