2026-03-19 France: May 21

Our day trip today is to the town of Pont Aven. One of it’s claims to fame is a picturesque water mill that Paul Guigan painted. And since he was there it soon became a destination for other painters.

We found street parking quickly and headed down a narrow path that led to the River Aven. The river flows through town and has a rather wild (in some places) and beautiful appearance.

We were on the lookout for the many mills that were reported to be in the town. We eventually figured out that streams off of the river were diverted under buildings in which the mills were situated. Consequently, we couldn’t see most of the mills. But the river walk was wonderful.

And the town was lovely.

We did find this mill. It is famous as a subject for a Paul Gauguin painting.

Beyond the mill the river widened where there was a marina with many small pleasure craft.

With Gauguin spending time here it eventually became a mecca for painters. And there are still a lot of art galleries in town.

We also visited the Church of Pont Aven. Another pretty church with some wonderful stained glass.

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More Pont Aven
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From there we headed out of town to see the Henan Tidal Mill. This mill is run by the tide waters moving in and out and sits on a bridge that is partially a dam. When the tide comes in it runs the mill. Behind the dam is the reserve basin. Once the tidal waters are in, the gates are closed off leaving high water in the basin. Then, when the tide goes out they can open gates and the water will flow out, turning the mill.

There was an oyster farm in the tidal side of the bridge.

The ocean side...

and the tidal basin side of the dam.

From here we decided to go looking for Chateau de Rustephan a couple miles away. We knew it was in ruins but, it was really in ruins. And covered almost completely with vegetation. Pretty hard to see and no paths up to it.

Once back in Concarneau we found some parking and lunch. Then we caught the Petit Train to see what it would show us that we hadn’t already seen. Turned out it was a lot. The train took us along the coast. We could see across the harbor area, and it looked like a long beach on the other side. And there was beach on this side as well.

And we passed the Useless Pier. It had been built to help shelter the harbor from the tides and storms, but it turned out that it did a very poor job of sheltering the harbor.