Simon Pocock

Breton Names

The name of our place, Coat Aillis, is interesting. Being in Brittany, all the place names are in Breton. Our neighbour’s house is Poul Ranet, which means Frog pond, whereas Coat Aillis doesn’t really mean anything. ‘Coat’ is a wood or copse, but ‘Aillis’ annoys my Breton speaking friends. The reason is that the previous owner was a communist. The original name (there are several variants) derives from a local pre-Christian temple situated two fields away.

So, in french,  a church is an eglise but in Breton it’s Iliz, so before the communist owned our property, its name was Coat an Iliz, but he changed as he didn’t like the church aspect in the title. Its also interesting using a GPS or google map – the original name finds us, but not the current name.

Plestin Ruins Exposed

The Plestin commune has decided to expose the ruins more this year. They already have the ruins of a Roman villa at Toul Hery, so they sent a tractor /digger to do some ‘subtle’ digging and clearing the site, also connecting it to the VTT (mountain bike) track, so this summer there will be more bikers and hikers passing in the distance.