Larmor-Plage - Kerguélen Cove Ocean Park

Protected from strong currents by the rocky banks of Kerpape and Locqueltas, the Cotéron rock and the island of Groix, the bay of Kerguelen is ideal for thrilling water sports!  Since the 1980s, it has housed a nautical centre offering numerous activities: sailing, kayak, diving, paddle board, sea swimming and free diving, sea walking and fitness. Aimed at everyone individually or as a group, to discover the pleasures of sea sports!  

 At the end of the 19th century, a lagoon in the Kerguelen marsh, closed by a sand bank, was closed in 1902 and drained for health reasons. The dune was raised using waste granite and tailings from the kaolin quarry. This wet zone was filled in in the 1960s using modified marble waste and was rehabilitated in 2006 to limit flooding and increase bird nesting sites.  Inshore, the freshwater lake and marsh have their parades of lake species. Floating on the surface of the ponds can be found water mint and marsh pepper. Eleven types of rushes grow in the wetlands, including toad rush that was once used to make ties. Here and there, wet woodlands alternate with the reed beds. Mud and plants help to purify the waters and regulate flow, creating a natural flood plain.

In 1981, the Coastal Conservatory joined forces with the greater Lorient area to create the Kerguelen Ocean Park. The Conservatory was created by the French state in 1975 to protect the natural areas along the coast and in estuaries. This land agency also helps towns in sustainable and concerted management of protected sites open to the public. The Kerguélen Ocean Park includes 82 hectares with 60 hectares protected as Natural Ecological Interest Areas for Fauna and Flora. The site has undergone ecological refurbishment: buildings have been removed and paths installed to protect the diversity of the natural environments, beaches, dunes, moorland, saltwater and freshwater marshes. 

This ancient pine tree with its knotty, gnarled trunk, is a testimony of how the Breton forest landscape has changed. Pine trees were introduced in the 17th and 18th centuries and have acclimatised well. They were intensively exploited from the 19th century. Scots pines were used for boat masts. Maritime pines were planted in inland moorlands and on dunes and were used to make 25 to 30cm diameter posts for English mines, exported from the port of Lorient. Cut rapidly every 25 years, they offered landowners a good return. Despite the decline in the industry, pine trees are just as much a part of our coastal landscape as a century ago, and tourism has promoted the introduction of more exotic species such as firs, rhododendrons, mimosa, etc. The resort landscape has replaced low-lying vegetation, creating an artificial environment.  

Dolmens, in Breton literally stone tables, are numerous in the Lorient area. These megaliths, built between 4000 and 2000 B.C., are the ruins of funerary chambers accessed by a corridor. Although damaged, two tombs can be seen at Kerguelen. The first is a transept or “T-shaped” dolmen; the condition of the second prevents architectural identification. Hidden in the vegetation, they can be discovered by turning right, then left twice before coming back on your steps.

At the edge of the marsh, dry moorlands alternate with fields surrounded by hedges where blackthorn, hawthorn and honeysuckle grow. No less than a hundred plants live there, favourable to insects. In May, asphodels edge paths and clearings with their pretty pink spikes. Poa, cock’s-foot and timothy abound, appreciated by the ponies which graze here, helping to preserve the habitat by limiting the progression of the forest. This environment is also great for woodland birds that find plenty of food and shelter: common kestrel, turtle and collared doves, green and great-spotted woodpeckers, robins, song thrush, jay…

Set apart from Ploemeur, Larmor-Plage was built in 1925. Since its creation, the population has continued to grow, from 1,670 inhabitants in 1926 to about 8,500 today. The surrounding villages have also changed. Once comprised of modest farms no larger than five hectares on average, inhabitants lived at the pace of farming activities, dominated by cereal and vegetable crops, livestock and dairy. After the war, Larmor-Plage gradually become a popular seaside resort. New houses were built, and the old farms were converted into modern residences. 

The Le Treuch fountain took its name from the village located on the other side of the road. Moved and reassembled when the road was built in 1990, it was located on the edge of the Le Treuch rural path connecting the villages of Le Moustoir and Kerguelen. Topped by an ancient cross, the fountain was part of a modern washhouse. It fed a granite tank and small pond.

Sunken paths and tracks are the signs created by humans over the centuries to link their villages to the fields, fountain and neighbouring villages. Marked by hedges and wooded banks, they are home to a wide diversity of trees and shrubs. Once planted, they provided peasants with fruit, wood and firewood and handles for making tools. In wetter areas, oak and chestnut give way to willow. These preserved spaces form ecological corridors, favourable to the wild animals; roe deer, foxes, squirrel and woodland birds inhabit these areas.

Just off the path in the middle of fields where horses from the Kerguelen riding centre pass by, sits the Le Boulouc’h fountain. Until the second half of the 20th century, it was used to provide drinking water for the livestock and inhabitants of six farms in the village of Kerguelen. Spring water rises in the pond of the triangular stone fountain. The overflow flows into a shallow rectangular trough, which in turn runs into a washhouse before forming a stream that flows into Kerderff marsh.

Present up until the end of the 18th century, Kerderff lake met the same fate as that of Kerguelen. In 1902, its owner received a state subsidy to dry it out. To do so, a dune had to be built to fill the old lake overflow and the dune to the west raised over more than one kilometre using sand. Today, the area is open to the sea and has become marshy. Freshwater from the marsh, fed by streams, flows into the sea, whereas saltwater flows in at very high tides. The brackish waters are favourable to the development of a small salt marsh and marsh samphire. The centre of the marsh which is naturally filling up with silt, is regularly cleared to preserve the diversity of reeds and rushes. The site, rich in insects and amphibians, is loved by birdwatchers who can spot reed warblers, sedge warblers, Eurasian reed warblers, or grey herons hunting for frogs and fish. In the winter, ducks find shelter and the white crane has nested here for several years in the favourable conditions.

Despite protestations from local farmers and fishermen in 1905, the draining of the Kerderff lake and the construction of the sand bank put a halt to fishing and wrack collection on Kerguelen beach. On the other hand, it did lead to the creation of a huge tourism and property project in 1919 with the Grand Hôtel and Casino: Lorient-Plage. Between Locqueltas and Kerpape, 500 plots of land were sold by the company Lorient-Plage. Roads and chalet construction started but rapidly ran into difficulties. The plots were located in the line of the Kercavès firing ground, which only closed in 1927. Above all, in 1924, a tsunami seriously damaged the dyke that protected the estate’s land. The property developer abandoned the project. The purchasers of the land however, in a defence union in 1925, had a concrete dyke built along 500 metres and had the dune on the Kerpape side fixed with tamarix plantations. The system was completed with gutters to rapidly evacuate stagnant water. However, all these complications put a halt to the Lorient-Plage project which never saw the light of day.

During the 1939-1945 war, a breach in the concrete dyke and sand extractions by the Todt Organisation in charge of building bunkers, weakened the dunes. They were gradually eroded by bad weather. After 1950, the dyke was repaired several times and building on the threatened plots of land continued. As part of the Kerguelen Ocean Park scheme, the coastline is reinforced. Lately, to limit erosion and the risk of marine submersion, the dune has been refilled with kaolin and marine sans and replanted.

The reconstitution of the Kerguelen dunes has promoted plant growth. Also helping to fix the sand in place, these plants are suited to this poor, mineral soil and to the moisture-sucking winds and salty air. Low-lying, creeping and in compact tufts, they often have thick, succulent leaves to hold water. Here there is hare’s-tail grass and marram grass, frosted orache and rock samphire, flat sea holly and spiny restharrow. These precious plants help biodiversity, such as the pink-flowered onosis, host to a small blue butterfly known as the common blue.