North Brittany is the part of France most British sailors meet first and respect most. The tidal range is enormous, the streams run hard, and the coast is studded with rock. None of that should put you off. It just means the anchorages here are earned, and the ones that reward the homework are some of the finest in Europe. I have cruised this coast from the Channel Islands down to the Rade de Brest, and these are the bays I would send a visitor to, with the figures that decide whether you sleep or you drag.
Before anything else: do the tidal arithmetic. Saint-Malo can see the water rise as much as 13 metres on the biggest springs, the largest range in Europe, and even the gentler corners of this coast routinely give you 6 to 10 metres on springs. Some anchorages here dry completely at low water. Calculate your scope against the high-water depth and your under-keel clearance against the next low, every single time. If that is new to you, the groundwork in anchoring in Brittany is the place to start.
A second thing to internalise before you read on is that this coast is buoyed to IALA Region A, the opposite of North American practice, and the rock-strewn approaches are pilotage rather than point-and-shoot navigation. Almost every anchorage here is reached through a marked channel between drying ledges, and the channels assume you are reading the transits and the buoyage, not just following a chartplotter line. None of the bays below is a casual drop. They are all worth the care.
La Chambre, Ile de Brehat
Brehat is the jewel of the Cotes d'Armor and La Chambre, in the narrow channel between Brehat and the islet of Logodec to the south, is its classic anchorage. It is well sheltered from north, west and south-west. Two warnings the pilot books all repeat: the tide runs hard through the gap so it is awkward to lie to, and the big ranges demand more scope and more swinging room than you would think. And the sea goes right out at low water, so check what you will be sitting on or in. Get the timing right and you wake to one of the prettiest islands in France a dinghy ride away. The island itself is car-free and threaded with footpaths, so the dinghy ashore is the start of a proper morning's walk, not just a bread run. I rate it the single most rewarding anchorage on the north coast, with the caveat that you must arrive on a fair tide and reckon on the depth dropping away dramatically by low water.
The Trieux river
If La Chambre feels too exposed, run up the Trieux. The river that leads towards Lezardrieux gives you proper all-tide shelter once you are inside, and the run up past the Chateau de la Roche Jagu is one of the loveliest pieces of pilotage in Brittany. Lezardrieux itself is an all-tide marina if you want to lie afloat. I treat the Trieux as my bad-weather retreat for the whole Brehat area: when it blows, you go up the river and forget the forecast.
Port Blanc
West along the coast, Port Blanc sits among an archipelago of granite islets and is accessible at all states of the tide, which on this coast is a rarity worth noting. There are visitors' moorings and usually room to anchor, with an inner area suitable for boats that can take the ground. The catch is that it is open to the north, so a fresh northerly makes it uncomfortable and you would move on. In settled weather, threading in through the rocks at half tide is one of the small pleasures of cruising here. I like Port Blanc because it is the kind of anchorage that looks impossible on the chart and turns out to be straightforward once you trust the marks, the sort of pilotage that makes you feel you have learned the coast.
Les Sept Iles
A few miles offshore from the Pink Granite Coast lie the Sept Iles, France's oldest seabird reserve and home to one of the largest gannet colonies in Europe, with tens of thousands of pairs nesting on the rock of Rouzic. You cannot anchor everywhere, because the reserve restricts access to protect the birds, but there is anchoring in settled weather off Ile aux Moines, the largest of the group, in sand. It is strictly a fair-weather, daylight visit, fully open and no place to be when the wind gets up, but on a calm morning the spectacle of the gannet colony from the cockpit is one of the great sights of cruising France. Treat it as a lunch stop and a wildlife pilgrimage, with the run back to Trebeurden or Perros-Guirec as your shelter for the night.
Treguier river
Treguier is a half-timbered town up a long estuary, around 7 miles inland of the outermost rocks. The marina is a fine all-tide berth, but the cross-tides across the entrance make the approach daunting in anything other than slack water, so plan your arrival around the stream rather than the clock. Once up the river you are in flat, sheltered water whatever the weather is doing outside. For visitors nervous about open anchorages, a night up the Treguier is a gentle introduction to the region.
Trebeurden and the bay of Lannion
Trebeurden marina, in the bay of Lannion, is protected from the prevailing westerlies by the island of Milliau. The sill sits well below half tide, so on neaps you can get at least eight hours of access, generous for this coast. There is anchoring in the bay in settled conditions, but I rate Trebeurden mainly as a comfortable, modern base from which to day-sail the surrounding bays of the Pink Granite Coast. The granite scenery here is the most photogenic on the whole north shore.
Saint-Quay-Portrieux
For an all-weather, all-tide refuge that needs no tidal gymnastics at all, Saint-Quay-Portrieux is hard to beat. The deep-water marina lets you berth afloat at any state of tide, which after a few days of timing everything around the stream feels like a holiday. It is not an anchorage in the romantic sense, but it is the security blanket of this coast, and I have ducked into it more than once when a forecast turned ugly.
The Bay of Morlaix and Roscoff
Further west, the bay of Morlaix is a wide, rock-strewn bay with anchorages tucked behind its islands and a buoyed channel leading up to the old town of Morlaix at its head. Roscoff, on the western side, has a modern marina behind a sill that opens around half tide, and it is a useful staging point because it is also the ferry port, which makes it a natural crew-change stop for British crews flying or sailing across. The anchorages in the bay are settled-weather affairs, sheltered by the islands but open to the north, so I use them on quiet days and fall back to Roscoff or up the channel to Morlaix when it turns. The approach threads between drying banks and is classic Brittany pilotage, rewarding on a calm day and not to be attempted casually in poor visibility.
Reading this coast
The thread running through every one of these is tide. The streams set up the gates you have to pass, the range decides your scope and your clearance, and the two together govern when you can move and when you sit tight. Visitors who come from tideless water and treat north Brittany like the Med get into trouble; visitors who learn to read the tidal coefficient, which runs from around 20 at neaps to 120 at the biggest springs, find a coast of granite islets and empty bays with almost nobody in them.
My approach is simple. I carry a sheltered river (Trieux or Treguier) and an all-tide marina (Saint-Quay or Lezardrieux) as fixed refuges, then anchor off the islands (Brehat, Port Blanc) when the weather allows and retreat to the refuges when it does not. That way the open anchorages are pure pleasure rather than a worry, because the bolthole is always within reach. If you want the bolthole side of the equation in detail, I have written it up separately as Brittany boltholes.
And if north Brittany whets your appetite, the south coast is gentler and the bays emptier still. My round-up of quiet anchorages in south Brittany is where I would point you next, once you have the tides of the north under your belt.
