It’s a characteristically understated sort of name for a very understated kind of place. If you relish windy walks on the beach, wonderful food, memorable sunsets and a clean break from traffic, noise and people, look no further. Monsieur and Madame le Coz are the hosts here, the third generation of the family to run the hotel since Monsieur’s grandparents founded it 70 years ago. Relais-et-Château membership ensures an international clientèle: guests come from France, Britain, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland, with a sprinkling of customers from Italy and the U.S. 

One of France’s great hiking trails (les Grandes Randonnées) goes past the hotel: Douarnenez is 2¼  hours one way, the Menez-Hom landmark a more ambitious 4½ the other. Or you can indulge in some gentle bucket-and-spading, take a brisk dip (in the ocean or the hotel pool), play tennis or go for a sail. The attractive market town of Quimper, the beautifully austere granite village of Locronan and the Crozon peninsula are all within easy striking distance. 

You can have lunch on the terrace in front of the hotel, right beside the beach; at dinner the main restaurant, with its legendary view out over the beach and bay, comes into its own. Save room one evening for the Menu Neptune: on a recent visit we had lobster (for which a magnificent bib-and-tucker and sundry weaponry are provided), followed by a choice of turbot or pigeon with foie gras, and an impressive selection of cheeses and desserts. 

Blue glass beads lie on the tables like pebbles on the beach; for most guests, they serve as almost irresistible worry beads. Marie-Thérèse, a sympathetic waitress-housekeeper-nanny figure of many years’ standing at the hotel, takes infant French gourmets through their paces with the cheese trolley, initiating them into the delights of camembert au lait cru. (Out on the beach, infant Brits are taken through their paces with cricket bat and ball, and feast on Marmite sandwiches. It’s all a question of focus.) At around 9.30 p.m. in mid-summer the waiter moves to the window, the blinds are raised and the curtain goes up on an show-stopping performance of the setting sun. 

The sunsets are also superb up on the north coast at Cancale, with the added bonus of views over the bay of Mont Saint Michel. Here Olivier Roellinger’s Maison de Bricourt makes another great destination for a get-away-from-it-all gourmet weekend. There’s a top-class restaurant in a little eighteenth-century town house (their former home) and two hotels from which to choose: Les Rimains in town and the Château Maison Richeux further round the bay. The former (with only six bedrooms) is cosy and intimate, the atmosphere a bit reminiscent of a private house party. Guests are looked after by Madame Annette. Trivial Pursuit, decks of cards and newspapers in various languages are scattered languidly about the house. There are stunning views over the bay and the Cancale oyster beds below, and the restaurant is within walking distance.

The Château Maison Richeux, set on a clifftop with distant views of Mont St Michel, is the crowning ‘folly’ of the Roellingers (as they themselves, rather disarmingly, describe it). Built originally in the 1920’s it is reminiscent of the sort of timbered and turreted mansions you see at Deauville and Trouville. The hotel has its own restaurant, Le Coquillage, where the food is somewhat lower key than in the town restaurant, though provisions are centrally purchased and the cooking overseen by Roellinger. The garden has also been restored to its former splendour: planted with numerous old varieties of fruit trees (complete with bees to pollinate them), it also boasts a purpose-built wood-fired oven in which all the house breads are baked. 

Roellinger is known as the Roi des Epices, the Spice King. Following in the wake of the great seagoing adventurers of Saint Malo who went in search of the spice islands, yet true to his Breton land and its superb local products, he practises a cuisine which is a harmonious combination of the native and the exotic.  There's a good-value four-course lunch menu, strong on fish and local veal, and a more ambitious tasting menu which takes you on a trawl through seven or eight courses in which shellfish, John Dory, sole and saddle of lamb from the salt marshes all play a part, with a final crack at the cheese trolley and some wonderful desserts. The fragrant house pain aux algues (seaweed bread) fresh from the garden oven, is served with soft, salty Breton butter.

Both the Maison de Bricourt and the Hotel de la Plage are havens of peace, essential bolt-holes for the busy. The next time the heat gets too much, clear your desk, stow the mobile phone, hop on a plane to Brest and pamper yourself for a long weekend (or longer).