If you’re going to build a house on a windswept peninsula jutting out into the North Atlantic, you’re going to have to find some way of making sure that it stays safe when those North Atlantic storms come rolling in.
I found reference to just such a place on the internet today. And how cool is the protection in question?
Obviously, that’s not the North Atlantic in the foreground. You wouldn’t need too much protection from that.
No, the ocean is behind the house, which is situated on the North coast of Brittany:
Castel Meur, a small stone cottage in Plougrescant, France, was built in 1861 in a precarious position at the tip of the peninsula. To protect it from the frequently violent coastal weather, the house was positioned with its back to the sea and flanked on either side by two giant boulders.
Just as well, really, because the next stop due west from here is the coast of Canada. And that’s a lot of Atlantic to have to hide from. The house itself faces South-South-East, meaning that the rock on the left (as we look at it) is doing the hard yards as far as storm protection goes. The one on the right is clearly just there for the photographers. Although, its unique setting did become a problem at one point:
The unusually located cottage became known as the House Between Two Rocks. It has been passed down through the generations and is currently a private home. Its use in tourism campaigns to attract visitors to Plougrescant – specifically one world-famous postcard – became a problem when the house gained fame as a tourist attraction and tourists treated it as though nobody lived in it, some even climbing on it and damaging its roof.
The owner took legal action and won image rights for the house, which can no longer be used in advertising to draw tourists to the region. This is a private residence, and visitors are not welcomed onto the property.
Found via Atlas Obscura dot com, whose lead story (at the time of writing) is:
[link]
…and includes Passages in the Isle of Man, but not Meisho Maru 38 at Cape Agulhas. And that’s a bit odd, given that they have already written about the Meisho Maru 38 previously on their site. Surely just click the ADD button for a nice round 19, no?
