Chamber Pots and Candlelight: Meet the Families Who Live Off the Grid on a Remote French Island

An isolated bay in Brittany has been home to monks, a Nobel Prize winner, even Charles Lindbergh. Today, there’s still no electricity or running water and the inhabitants have no plans to change that.

This piece is the fifth and last in our series, The Ever-Present Liquid, a special collaboration from Narratively and Creative Nonfiction exploring the shape-shifting magic and destructiveness of water in all its forms. You can learn more about this series and experience the rest of the stories as we publish them here each week throughout September.

Illustration by Aidi Riera | Story edited by Jesse Sposato

Twice a day in a remote bay on the northern coast of Brittany in France, a massive tide recedes and returns, turning craggy clusters of granite outcroppings into islands. This stretch of the French coastline was formed by violent volcanic activity over 600 million years ago and remains a harsh, difficult-to-navigate environment to this day. 

The reddish and unforgiving landscape looks very much like the surface of Mars. When the water recedes, the entire bay empties. High tide happens every 12 hours, shifting forward an hour each day. Low tide occurs six hours after high tide. Sea creatures like razor clams and crabs live perpetually in two habitats — wet and dry — lying dormant just below the sand at low tide and reviving when the tide returns. 

Although Brittany is a well-trod tourist destination, dotted with famous cities like Saint-Malo and Brest, the northeast corner of the region remains well off the beaten path. Its isolated roughness has long appealed to those looking to escape the modern world, whatever century it may be. 

The islands in this bay have been home to several orders of Catholic monks, a Nobel Prize winner in medicine, and an early inventor of helicopters and airplanes, to name a few. Its most famous refugee was American aviator Charles Lindbergh, who retreated to the island of Illiec in 1938 following the infamous kidnapping and murder of his young son. Local lore has it that for hundreds of years, bandits found the hostile waters a ripe locale for business. Using flashing lights, they misdirected and sabotaged merchant ships, which would crash on the rocks, their goods spilling out of the wreckage for the taking.

Today, a handful of families inhabit this archipelago of islands in handsome stone manses that are equipped with neither electricity nor running water. Life remains as it was in the 19th century, with chamber pots and candlelight, gas stoves and cisterns of rainwater. The islands — about nine in total and all privately owned — range in size from two to 60 acres. They were all purchased over time from the Cuverville family, which still owns the Crec’h Bleiz châteaux that sits on a bluff on the coast overlooking the bay. 

Each family has between one and five small islands, shared amongst dozens or even hundreds of relatives, though not everyone stays at the same time due to capacity constraints. There are houses, farm buildings, dormitory-style buildings and, in several cases, chapels. The crumbling remnants of a refuge that was once used by monks for silent retreats looks out onto the English Channel on one island. The only way to reach these islands is by walking across the bay at low tide or by getting picked up by boat at high tide. Because of the muddy terrain, it is not possible to drive a car to the islands, even at low tide, unless you have an amphibious vehicle or a tractor, which most residents do not. Once a year on Saint-Gildas, the abode that used to belong to the aforementioned monks, the island is opened to the public for the annual religious festival Le Pardon aux Chevaux, or the Pardoning of the Horses.

The view from Île Marquer at high tide. (All photos courtesy the author)

Historically, some of the families lived on the islands in all seasons. They allowed farmers to use the fields on their land for free in exchange for a small percentage of the crops, which included potatoes, artichokes, beets, green beans, gherkins and wheat. The families of the farmers often took care of the properties and worked on the islands as cooks and caretakers, but that kind of staffing belongs to a bygone generation when labor costs were lower and wealth was more concentrated. Nowadays, the fields are only used to harvest hay and no longer have tenants. The frigid winter climate and lack of heating makes the cold months a tough sell, and the recent generation of inhabitants predominantly stays only in the summer months between June and September.   

I was first brought to this bay by my then-boyfriend and now husband, Augustin, in 2011. The invitation to a private island sounded glorious, but in addition to the warnings about the lack of electricity and running water, I was told to only bring what I could carry on my back. “It’s like camping,” said Augustin, who had been coming here since he was a baby, “but with a nice house.” I had been camping only once in my life, but I was an avid backpacker. It sounded appealing. 

In 1937, Augustin’s great-grandfather Henri Olivier bought the islands Île Marquer, Île Bihan (known as la ferme, or “the farm” in English), Île aux Moutons, Île aux Vaches and Île aux Escargots. He was seeking a refuge where he could deal with his shock and psychological distress following the forced nationalization of the aviation company he founded, Lioré et Olivier, by the new left-wing French government, Léon Blum’s Popular Front. As part of a sweeping reform package, the new ruling party passed many labor laws that are still in place today, including paid leave, the right to strike, collective bargaining and a 40-hour work week cap, while also nationalizing key defense industries, which included Henri’s company. Henri used part of the government payout to purchase the small islands. In total, the property is just under 10 acres in size, with the main island, Marquer, at two-and-half acres, Bihan at almost five acres, and the last three islands — piles of rocks — too small to inhabit. 

As Anne-Claire Pasquet, Augustin’s mother told me, “My grandfather was disgusted. He didn’t want to deal with people and thought that an island would be a great idea, just to be alone by himself.” Henri had the heart of an explorer, and for him the creature comforts of a well-appointed home were unnecessary for a life lived in the air, in the sea and in the mind. 

Arnaud Delmas, Anne-Claire’s brother, once wrote of his grandfather, who was the captain of a small cruising sailboat called Le Grondin, “On board and on land, he led a simple life. At 78, he was still sailing between the Sept-Îles, the Héaux de Bréhat and the Channel Islands,” a journey of over 150 miles roundtrip from the bay. The inside of the Le Grondin was ascetic, much like his islands, with “no winch, no electricity, a kerosene hurricane lamp, an alcohol stove.” 

Henri originally wanted to purchase an island that was even more remote, accessible only by boat or helicopter, but his wife put her foot down. “My grandmother said, ‘No, no, no, no, no, no. I want to be able to walk to the house,’” Anne-Claire recounts. “‘I want my friends, my family, my cousins to be able to come,’” and so Marquer was a compromise, accessible by foot during part of each day. It takes 15 minutes to walk to Marquer at low tide from the small hamlet of Buguelès on the coast. Growing up, Anne-Claire and her four siblings usually spent two and a half months on Marquer in the summer with their mother and grandparents, while her father stayed behind in Paris working for the French government. Throughout his childhood, Augustin, too, spent whole summers there with all of his cousins.

The bay during low tide when it’s safe to walk from the shore to the islands.

Owning an island there was never considered a luxury. They were inexpensive to buy in the 1930s, and you were considered a bit eccentric if you did. “You were not considered crazy, but a bit ‘original.’ It was absolutely not a matter of money,” explains Arnaud.

There have been times over the years when external factors necessitated full-time relocation. In World War II, Henri Olivier, his wife and his daughter, my husband’s grandmother, fled to Marquer during the German invasion of Paris. They stayed there for a year and a half from 1940 to 1941, and Augustin’s grandmother attended school each day miles away, which involved a canoe ride, a walk up the hill and a bus ride to a neighboring town. Paris was in the midst of a dire food shortage, but thanks to the plentiful fish in the bay, they had no problems acquiring food. They procured fresh water from a well on the property that is no longer in use and from a natural spring in a tree stump inside the bay, which still exists today. In 1943, the Germans decided to requisition the property, where they stationed soldiers inside foxholes to surveil the bay, fearing a possible Allied invasion on the north coast of France. 

The people who come to these islands live by the schedule of the tides and the setting of the sun and moon. The occupants fish for their food, and in low tide, they walk supplies like electric lamps, batteries, candles and tools over on their backs — or row them over at high tide. Some of the islands have small vegetable gardens. Drinking water — and of course wine and cider — must also be carried over, as are foods that cannot be fished or grown. There was once a small farmstand in Buguelès, but since its closure decades ago, the nearest grocery store and shops are in Penvénan, about 25 minutes away from Marquer, split between a 15-minute walk to shore and a 10-minute drive (Augustin’s family leaves a car parked on a small lane just off the shore). 

Penvénan has a large supermarket, two bakeries, a butcher, a post office and restaurants. For most who come to these islands, being isolated there is the purpose, so they go to town as little as possible, ideally once a week at most. “When I’m at Marquer, I stay at Marquer,” says Augustin, who considers the boundaries of the bay the confines of his world while he’s there. Delivery of large items — new mattresses, for example, or furniture — requires hiring an old-fashioned tractor. Water for cleaning is collected in roof basins, and the islands use septic systems for wastewater. 

Everyone in the bay has agreed, tacitly or vocally, to live off the grid this way since the advent of electricity. But why do these families continue such a tradition even as technology has completely pervaded society in the 21st century? Much like the flora and fauna in the bay, they live in two worlds too. In the colder months, most emerge and migrate to shore, or to their homes in Paris or elsewhere in France. In the summer, they return to be cut off from civilization, but only for a few weeks at a time now (more on that later).