Quiberon is a former island that sand has joined to the mainland by a slender isthmus, the Penthièvre tombolo. On one side, the Côte Sauvage and its granite cliffs, protected by the Conservatoire du littoral, where heather and gorse moorland drops to coves battered by the Atlantic. On the other, the sheltered, luminous bay of Quiberon, with its beaches and harbours: Port-Maria, where the boats leave for Belle-Île, Houat and Hoëdic, and Port-Haliguen, where the émigré royalists landed in 1795.
The peninsula itself has no golf course: you have to head back up the isthmus to play. Saint-Laurent, at Ploemel, is half an hour away, and Baden, on the Auray river, three-quarters of an hour. Rhuys-Kerver, on the far side of the Gulf of Morbihan, takes more than an hour by road: keep it for a full day, with lunch at Port-Navalo. These are three courses of around 6,000 metres, more technical than long, where the sea wind often decides the score.
Quiberon's real distinction lies elsewhere: it was here, in 1964, that one of the first thalassotherapy institutes in France was born, founded by Dr Raymond Denniel with the cycling champion Louison Bobet as its first director. A round in the morning, seawater baths in the afternoon, a walk along the Côte Sauvage at sunset: three to five nights are enough to settle into that rhythm.
