Morlaix makes an excellent base for visiting the countryside towards Brest, where parish closes, or enclos paroissiaux (walled churchyards incorporating cemetery, calvary and ossuary), celebrate the distinctive character of Breton Catholicism – closer to the Celtic past than to Rome – in elaborately sculpted scenes. Stone calvaries are covered in detailed scenes of the Crucifixion above a crowd of saints, gospel stories and legends; in richer parishes, a high stone arch leads into the churchyard, adjoining an equally majestic ossuary, where bones would be taken when the tiny cemeteries filled up. Most of the parish closes date from the two centuries either side of the union with France in 1532, Brittany's wealthiest period.The most famous enclos are in three neighbouring parishes off the N12 between Morlaix and Landivisiau, on a clearly signposted route that's served by an SNCF bus. At ST-THÉGONNEC, the entire east wall of the church is a carved and painted retable, with saints in niches and a hundred scenes depicted, while the pulpit and the painted oak entombment in the crypt beneath the ossuary are acknowledged masterpieces. At LAMPAUL-GUIMILIAU, the painted wooden baptistry, the dragons on the beams and the suitably wicked faces of the robbers on the calvary are the key components. Poor Katel Gollet (Katherine the Damned) is depicted as being tormented in hell at GUIMILIAU – for the crime of hedonism rather than manslaughter. In the legend she danced all her suitors to death until the reaper-figure Ankou stepped in to whirl her to eternal damnation. Further on at LA ROCHE (15km or so on towards Brest), where the ruined castle above the Elhorn estuary is said to have been her home, it is Ankou who appears on the ossuary with the inscription "I kill you all". A five-kilometre detour southeast of La Roche brings further variations at LA MARTYRE (where Ankou clutches his disembodied head) and its adjoining parish PLOUDIRY, the sculpting of its ossuary affirming the equality of social classes – in the eyes of Ankou. In St-Thégonnec the Auberge de St-Thégonnec, 6 place de la Mairie (tel 02.98.79.61.18, €55–70; closed Sun evening & Mon, mid-Sept to mid-June), has a superb restaurant, while the Moulin de Kerlaviou, 2km west of St-Thégonnec (tel 02.98.79.60.57; €40–55), is a ravishing farmhouse B&B in an almost absurdly pastoral riverside setting.
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