Vannes are making a fight of it in their debut French Top 14 season. Raphaël Jucobin was there for Rugby World to savour the first-ever top-flight game played in Brittany
Any Breton worth their salt will tell you that their homeland, far from a reputation for dreary weather, basks in warm-weather microclimates dotted all around the north-western peninsula. It was an intermittent deluge, though, that greeted Toulouse fans arriving in Vannes for their Top 14 season opener – an early sign that this would be anything but a typical away day for the southerners.
Tucked away from the Gulf of Morbihan, the inland sea in the south of Brittany that lends its name to the département as a whole, Vannes is built around a port which serves as the starting point for excursions into the bay. The Île aux Moines and the Île d’Arz are the most popular of the 40-odd islands, freckled with bronze-age megaliths, artisan outposts and seafront…
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