Travelling the World in Pursuit of Cider

ST LUKE'S: Like I said, I probably need to note what I did in Brittany, both for your enjoyment and my memory, before I get on to the long saga of my week and a half in Italy. The task is complicated by the fact that we spent most of Easter blinded by local cider and the sun glinting off the ocean opposite our accommodation.

I might have mentioned that we were staying in Elerig's family's holiday house in Kerity on a southern tongue of Brittany. The place was across the road from the ocean. The shore was littered with rocks and little pools so there wasn't a beach (it was too cold to swim anyway) but the view was stunning.

Our visit coincided with some of the best spring weather of the year and we were able to sit around in shorts and skirts sunning ourselves and imbibing the local beverages. For wine lovers in France this generally means endless bottles of cheap, but gloriously quaffable, muscadet. For variety we had Kroenenburg and bottles of Breton cider. It was the cider that made the trip. Not mass produced Magners or Strongbow, stripped of the earthy flavours of its production. But not that thick, undrinkable West Country crap. Instead it's a deliciously sweet brew, highly reminiscent of apple juice, but with a definite alcoholic kick. I should know. I got pissed on the stuff. Just about every village we'd drive through

Of course where there is booze, there's food. And it is France. So we enjoyed some fantastic butter ("the best butter in the world"), spread across some fresh bread, a lovely dish of mussels, plates of galets and crepes, fresh mackerel bought from the local market, salads, chocolate and the various other fruits of Brittany. We had crabs at a local restaurant and ham on the beach. We stopped at various boulangeries for pain au chocolate and Elerig introduced the Antipodeans to a wonderful French speciality... steak and chip baguettes.

Aside from the food and drink, we had an Easter egg hunt with eggs cunningly stashed by yours truly, a couple of abortive games of Scrabble, long scrambles over rocks, a ridiculous attempt at pedalling some type of stupid tourist contraption and some long, contemplative beers watching the sun set. To the bemusement of the natives there was also a game of beach cricket with a fence post.

It might be true that I spent most of Brittany in a cider haze and other things happened. But I don't remember them. Only the endless fields of tulips and rapeseed rolling by the windows.