Douarnenez
Great little seaport (well 3 ports actually), now home to lots of luxury yachts and a relatively modest fishing fleet. Like Concarneau, the heyday for Douarnenez was the late 19th century when the sardine industry was in its prime. The region developed the technology for preserving the fish in tin cans and numerous supporting industries such as shipbuilding, fish canneries, rope making and net weaving sprung up around the fishing industry.
They were so “successful” in exploiting the resource that the fish stocks became disastrously depleted at the beginning of the 20th century leading to a sharp decline in the industry and in the wealth of the area. Today the fishing industry mainly revolves around the tuna catch.
I visited the Port Musée which was home to numerous designs of (mainly) fishing boats from all parts of the world. There were also videos and informative displays about the sardine industry and the canneries. There was also a great exhibition of photographs by Michel Thersiquel who I later learned is a close colleague of Jean-Jacques Banide: great portraits of the people of the area going about their daily industry.
I took a beautiful coastal walk from Port Rosmeur through the area of Plomarc’h. First I happened across an old lavoir, which was still being used as the communal laundry facility into the 1960s. But the highlight here is the ruin of a 2nd or 3rd century Gallo-Roman garum factory further along. This was clearly quite an enterprise and shows how the region has grown with the fishing trade from very early times.