The audiophile friends travel blog - Who was where ?

A couple of friends from Germany, France, Chicago and Canada were at Erdeven, a small town close to the Quiberon peninsula at the French Atlantic coastline in the Brittany region.

 

Day 1
Present: Peter, Tom, Frisby & Isis (the Canadians – Nova Scotia & Labrador)

The history:

When the dates for the Munich Hi-End 2023 were announced the year before, I have sent out mails to Chris, my contributing colleagues and some selected audio friends about the opportunity to spend a couple of days in some well-equipped houses close to the peninsula of Quiberon at the Brittany coast in Western France. Even there had been some welcoming interest, it just didn’t work out for that specific date, but Gloria and her SO Dave (@botrytis) were so much excited from that option, that we arranged a common holiday trip at the end of August in one of these houses called Ty Josephine. With us had been my lifelong friend Peter from my hometown in Germany, a master carpenter who build the woodwork of active speaker system, which will occur at another place in another story on this site.

For anyone on the invite list of this year’s MHE after party at the Atlantic coast, if your interest is revived, just contact me via PM or through the old mail thread. We might get another chance next year ;-).  

Alternatively, French and other European Audio lovers could unite there as well easily at a point. Just contact me via PM.

Our place to stay:
Ty Josephine, Gites de Kervac’h – Erdeven - A range of fully equipped traditional houses, to be rented for a reasonable prices, dog friendly  & no pool - but the Ocean only 5 km away.

Here are the technicities:

Nearest airport is located close to Nantes, however you need to rent a car to arrive at Erdeven, which is a 2h drive from airport parking place. Direct connections to Nantes from European cities are rare and often only during high season. Thus, you may primarily go through a Paris-Nantes connection, which in the light of climate saving measures are getting more and more expensive as they are substituted by train connections.

From Paris CDG airport, including a stopover at “The petit sommelier” for lunchtime” the trip to the Brittany coast (Stop at Auray) was about 8 hours (3:15 in the TGV about 1:15 in the metro to Montparnasse and 1:30 in the airport checkout system). For a group of 4 or five, renting a car could be an option, too, having a lot more independence, however, it’s a 5:30 drive from Paris.

Audio System: System One

Q Acoustics 3030i w. Ayima 08Pro TPA 3255 Class-D Power Amplifier -  SMSL D-6 Balanced DAC - RPI4b with Volumio 3 (USB) - WIIM Pro (Coax)

We had two different audio systems with us, one passive budget system and another active setup, costing about 3-4 times the price. The first one left us already after 5 days, back to Germany with Peter where it was ought to be shipped to my oldest son in Hamburg.

Weather:

The first day was actually cold and windy  - however - we then enjoyed a serious heatwave with an average peak temperature of 29°C or 85°F, in a week where the region has usually an average monthly temperature of 65°F or 18°C.

This outlier was well utilized for beach fun and sitting outside most of the evenings. The music and the systems became therefore more an afterthought as dining, chatting and enjoying French wines & chees took over in the evenings …  Nevertheless, we have created a playlist of music we have learned to love & listened to during our rides, in the morning or when we played favorite tunes for each other.

The Canadians:
There had been one caveat to our trip, I came with my oldie dogs – 10 and 13 years -  and even managed to be the chauffeur, the guide and a sommelier to my friends, the needs of the furry friends were my primary concern, as I would never know if they will enjoy another trip next year. But they slit in nicely, enjoying a couple of hands more for cuddles, more friendly faces and even more people who would seriously never feed them from the table and in the kitchen with cheese and cookies.

Given these limitations by the heat and them dodgy demands, we made only a couple of longer trips, and stayed mainly in an hour range of our house. However, we visited an island off coast of Quiberon, a beautiful city with an Arboretum and a couple of significant places, like dog beaches almost every day … Gloria and Dave provided an astonishing number of superb pics, panos and some videos, too.

Beverage:

There had been some imports from the US, like a Rye whiskey and two bottles of delicious Ice wines origin from Ontario. We tasted the Ocean and had a bottle of Ice wine, but finally concentrated on a bouquet of French wines in rouge, rosé and blanc.

This was part 1 of our Brittany coast travel log. The 2^nd part will introduce the house called Ty Josephine and the small city of Erdeven.

Song of the Day (YT): 16 Tons – Geoff Castellucci