Île d'Ouessant

Beyond the lighthouse there is nothing but the Atlantic until America. Ouessant is the westernmost inhabited point of metropolitan France — a windswept island where storms are spectacles, the grass grows horizontal and a black bee makes honey that tastes of heather and salt. No cars to speak of, no shelter from the gale — just the moor, the sea and the light.

Ouessant lies some twenty kilometres off the tip of Finistère, the outermost of the islands off Brest, and the lighthouses define it: the Créac'h, among the most powerful in the world, throws its beam over the entrance to the Channel and its shipping, and the Jument stands in the sea off the western point, the famous photograph of a wave breaking over it taken in a storm here. The island is treeless — the wind allows nothing above shrub height — so it is moor, stone walls, granite and the small dark sheep of the Ouessant breed grazing to the cliff edge. The island's black bee, kept as a pure strain here for decades and protected, makes a dark honey off the heather. Boats and bikes are the transport, the crossing from Le Conquet can be rough, and a winter storm, watched from the Créac'h with the sea white to the horizon, is the reason some people come.