Roscoff

From 1828 growers around Roscoff began shipping their pink onions to Britain and selling them door to door, wearing berets and carrying strings of onions on bicycles; at the peak in the 1920s around fifteen hundred men crossed each season, and they became so familiar that Onion Johnny turned into the British stereotype of a Frenchman. A small museum in Roscoff covers the trade, which still continues on a much smaller scale. The town itself is granite corsair architecture around a harbour, with the Notre-Dame-de-Croaz-Batz church carrying ships carved on its tower, and an exotic garden growing subtropical plants in the mild air.

What you actually see

• The Onion Johnny museum - the story of the growers who sold across Britain.
• The corsair houses - granite merchant buildings around the old port.
• The church tower - carved ships on the Renaissance belfry.
• The exotic garden - subtropical planting in the mild Gulf Stream climate.

When to go

April to October; the onion harvest runs from summer into autumn. The Ile de Batz is a short ferry hop offshore. Ferries to Britain and Ireland operate from the modern port.

Honest expectations

The onion museum keeps limited seasonal hours. The town is small. The modern ferry port is separate from and less attractive than the old harbour.

Nearby

Ile de Batz lies offshore; Morlaix is south.