Voie de Morlaix

At a glance

• Start / Finish: Morlaix (Finistère) / Quimperlé (Finistère), where it joins the Voie de la Pointe Saint-Mathieu
• Length: 131.5 km
• Duration: 6 stages (Camino Ninja system), just under a week
• Elevation: ↗ 1,737 m / ↘ 1,743 m — the lion's share on the first two days over the Monts d'Arrée
• Highest point: 310 m at km 25.3 on the ridge of the Monts d'Arrée between Le Relecq and Trédudon; lowest point 7 m in the valley before Quimperlé
• Feeder routes: Voie de Locquirec (30.2 km) and Voie de Moguériec (35.3 km), both ending in Morlaix
• Landscape: heath and bog of the Monts d'Arrée, stream valleys and chapel country of Centre-Bretagne, the Aulne valley with the Canal de Nantes à Brest, Montagnes Noires, Ellé valley
• Waymarking: yellow shell on a blue background, laid out and maintained by the Association bretonne des Amis de Saint-Jacques de Compostelle
• Traces of Saint James: window of Saint James from around 1548 in Notre-Dame-du-Crann (Spézet), Saint James in the Tree of Jesse window of Saint-Fiacre (Le Faouët), 19th-century paintings of the apostles in La Feuillée and Le Cloître-Saint-Thégonnec
• Accommodation: a few gîtes, accueils jacquaires in private homes, the odd hotel; book at least 48 hours ahead, credencial required
• Best time: May to June, September to early October

Overview

This route had a hospital before it had a Camino. In 1160 La Feuillée first appears in the records, and on the old Roman road from Carhaix to Brest the Knights Hospitaller set up a commandery there, a house “destiné à secourir les voyageurs pauvres franchissant l'aride passage des monts d'Arrée”. Eight hundred years later you walk exactly that pass: from Morlaix, up under the railway viaduct and through Le Cloître-Saint-Thégonnec, over the heath ridge at 310 metres, through the hamlet of Trédudon-l'Hôpital, whose name still carries the commandery today, to La Feuillée. After that it's downhill into chapel country: Saint-Herbot, where farmers offered the saint the tail hair of their cows, Landeleau on the Canal de Nantes à Brest, Spézet with a window showing the body of Saint James arriving across the sea, Gourin, Le Faouët and Saint-Fiacre. In Quimperlé the route ends — or rather: connects.

To be honest, the continuous line is the work of the Association bretonne, which has been waymarking the Breton Camino routes since 1996, not a pilgrim road handed down through history. What is documented are the stations: the Hospitaller hospital at the Arrée pass, Saint James in glass and paint in four churches along the way, a fair on Saint James's Day in Quimperlé. What makes the route strong is something else: six days through the interior of a peninsula most people only know from its coasts.

Other names

"Voie de Morlaix" is a Camino Ninja name. The Association bretonne does not list the section as a route of its own but together with the two starting points on the north coast: its guide is called “Voie de Locquirec & Moguériec”, and this route has two “kilomètre zéro”, one in Locquirec and one in Moguériec. The two branches meet in Morlaix, and from there it is one route to Quimperlé. So that you don't have to plan the shared 131.5 kilometres twice, we have set them up as a route of their own on Camino Ninja and named it after its junction. That's why you won't find the name out on the trail.

There's one mix-up you should know about: the Couvent des Jacobins in Morlaix, founded in 1236 and lodging of Duchess Anne in 1505, has nothing to do with Saint James. In France, Jacobins is the name for the Dominicans. The traces of Saint James on this route are elsewhere — in Spézet, in Saint-Fiacre and on the church walls of La Feuillée.

Who it suits – and who it doesn't

Ideal if you have a week and want to see Brittany from the inside: heath, peat bog, granite chapels, villages with pardons and processions, hardly any traffic and even fewer pilgrims. Ideal as an opener, too — if you start at the sea in Locquirec or Moguériec, you'll have a good 160 kilometres in your legs by Quimperlé and stand on the great Voie de la Pointe Saint-Mathieu, which carries on to Clisson. And ideal if church art speaks to you: on this route there are more rood screens and calvaries than benches.

To be honest, though, it's not for you if you need hostels every ten kilometres. The association's accommodation list for the whole section fits on one page, many beds are private rooms with members, and some hosts pick you up by car because there's nothing else in the village. And it's not for you without good rain gear: the Arrée ridge is bare, windy and without shelter.

Route & landscape

You start in the valley town of Morlaix beneath the 292-metre-long, 62-metre-high viaduct of the Paris–Brest railway line, and climb out of the valley via Plourin-lès-Morlaix. At kilometre 15.9 you reach Le Cloître-Saint-Thégonnec, named after the Cistercian abbey of Le Relec, which you pass at kilometre 22.9. Then comes the ridge: heath, rocky spines, peat bog, and at kilometre 25.3 the highest point at 310 metres. Via Trédudon-le-Moine and Trédudon-l'Hôpital you reach La Feuillée, whose village centre lies at 275 metres.

After that the land runs downhill. Via Kerfernon you come to the chapel of Saint-Herbot, through Collorec and Le Rest to Landeleau, and just beyond it, at Pont Trifen, you cross the Aulne valley with the Canal de Nantes à Brest. From Spézet the Montagnes Noires lie ahead of you; their highest summit, the Roc'h Toullaeron (318 m), stands on Spézet's land, while the route stays below it. Gourin sits on their southern flank; after that it becomes hilly and wooded via Le Saint to Le Faouët. The last 24 kilometres follow the Ellé valley south via Saint-Fiacre and Pont-Saint-Mélaine; Querrien stays 1.4 kilometres off the route. Via Tréméven you reach Quimperlé, almost at sea level. Surface: farm and forest tracks, heath paths, small roads.

Stages, terrain & difficulty

The Association bretonne's guide could not be accessed for this page; the following six stages are therefore the Camino Ninja system, laid out according to the accommodation towns on the association's list for the Locquirec/Moguériec – Quimperlé section. Kilometres from the Camino Ninja map, calibrated exactly to 131.5 km; elevation calculated from our waypoints. Nothing is technically difficult, but the first two days have climbs, and on the Arrée ridge there's neither village nor shop.

1. Morlaix → Le Cloître-Saint-Thégonnec (15.9 km) — climb out of the valley via Plourin-lès-Morlaix, ↗ 295 m / ↘ 93 m; short first day, gîtes and chambre d'hôtes in the village.
2. Le Cloître-Saint-Thégonnec → Saint-Herbot (26.0 km) — Le Relec abbey, the Arrée ridge with its high point of 310 m, Trédudon-l'Hôpital, La Feuillée; ↗ 325 m / ↘ 398 m. If you want to split it, stay at the gîte in La Feuillée after 15.4 km.
3. Saint-Herbot → Spézet (24.6 km) — Collorec, Landeleau, Aulne valley and canal at Pont Trifen; ↗ 296 m / ↘ 329 m. There's also a gîte in Landeleau after 17.3 km.
4. Spézet → Gourin (18.3 km) — at the foot of the Montagnes Noires, ↗ 248 m / ↘ 222 m.
5. Gourin → Le Faouët (22.8 km) — via Le Saint (gîte in the old presbytery after 8.5 km), ↗ 300 m / ↘ 297 m.
6. Le Faouët → Quimperlé (23.9 km) — Saint-Fiacre, down the Ellé valley, Tréméven; ↗ 270 m / ↘ 404 m, lowest point 7 m before Quimperlé.

If you want shorter days, turn stage 2 into two (Le Cloître – La Feuillée 15.4 km, La Feuillée – Saint-Herbot 10.6 km) and stay overnight in Landeleau and Le Saint; that makes it eight to nine days. If you're fast, you can walk Morlaix – La Feuillée in one day (31.3 km), but then you have the whole climb and the ridge in a single day. In Quimperlé itself the association's list for this section has no accommodation — the town's beds are on the list for the Voie de la Pointe Saint-Mathieu.

A hospital for the Arrée pass

The Monts d'Arrée are no high mountains, but they were a feared crossing: bare, boggy, without villages, with wolves — Le Cloître-Saint-Thégonnec has run the only wolf museum in France since 1991. The Roman road from Carhaix to Brest ran right through them, and right on it, in La Feuillée, from the 12th century stood a commandery of the Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem. The Hospitallers were to look after the “voyageurs et pèlerins de passage”; you could eat and sleep with them, “avant ou après le franchissement des landes des monts d'Arrée”. That one hospital grew into an estate covering 82 parishes in six dioceses; from Pierre de Keramborgne in 1433 to Alexandre-Louis-Hugues de Freslon de la Freslonnière in 1790, twenty-four noble commanders followed one another. Trédudon-l'Hôpital, which you walk through at kilometre 28.7, was one of the fourteen founding villages of the commandery.

What remains of it you'll see if you stop. The church of La Feuillée is dedicated to Saint John the Baptist, patron of the order, a new building from 1858–1860 incorporating parts of the previous church from the 15th and 16th centuries; the tomb of the commanders disappeared with the old church. On its walls hang twelve paintings of apostles and evangelists from around 1870, signed “JLN” for Jean-Louis Nicolas — and in them Saint James leans not on a pilgrim's staff but on a long-handled axe. On 24 June, at the Pardon de la Saint-Jean, a four-year-old child still leads the procession of the “petit mouton” today. Two kilometres earlier, at Trédudon-le-Moine, lies the ridge's other story: from 1942 the 32 households there hid Resistance fighters, downed Allied airmen and Jewish families; after the Liberation the hamlet received the title “premier village résistant de France”.

To be honest, no known source records a named Compostela pilgrim at the Hospitallers' house. What is documented is the mission and the place on the road — and the Association bretonne laid its route right over it. Anyone standing up at 310 metres on a wet day today understands, without any charter, what a house like that was for.

Highlights along the way

• Morlaix — viaduct of the Paris–Brest line (292 m long, 62 m high, completed 1864), pondalez houses on the Grand-Rue, Maison de la Duchesse-Anne from around 1530.
• Abbaye du Relec (km 22.9) — Cistercian abbey, probably founded in 1132 by monks from Bégard, church a Monument historique since 1914, today owned by the Finistère département.
• La Feuillée and Trédudon-l'Hôpital — Hospitaller commandery from the 12th century, Maison du commandeur, apostle paintings with Saint James and his axe.
• Chapelle Saint-Herbot (km 41.9) — south portal from 1516 with the twelve apostles, choir window from 1556, carved choir screen; next to it the granite tables on which farmers laid the cut tail hair of their cattle. Monument historique since 1902.
• Landeleau — at Pentecost the Troménie, a relic procession of around 18 kilometres around the parish.
• Notre-Dame-du-Crann, Spézet — chapel from 1535 with eight 16th-century stained-glass windows, among them the translation of the body of Saint James from around 1548 and the Nativity from 1546.
• Gourin — emigrants' town: in 1928 some 3,000 Gourinois lived in New York.
• Le Faouët — market halls, documented since 1542; home of the woman bandit Marion du Faouët (1717–1755).
• Chapelle Saint-Fiacre (km 111.2) — rood screen of painted wood with the inscription “L'AN 1480 FUT FAIT CEST HEVPVRE P[AR] OLIVI[ER] LE LOERGA[N]”; in the 15th-century Tree of Jesse window Saint James stands with a hat on his back, a bag and a pilgrim's staff.
• Quimperlé — Sainte-Croix abbey; in 1434 the town's fair was moved to Saint James's Day. Here you join the Voie de la Pointe Saint-Mathieu.

Saint James in glass, cows at the altar

Brittany has hardly any pilgrim accounts, but it has images. In Spézet a lord of Crann-Huel founded a chapel in 1535, and around 1548 a window was installed there showing what the legend tells: the body of the beheaded apostle being carried across the sea to Galicia. The inscription is only half legible, “…QUAMPION. FABRIQUE.”, and the window is cruder than its neighbours — made after popular print models, not court art. In the Association bretonne's iconography collection the same chapel appears with the martyrdom of Saint James: the executioner in Swiss costume, James with hat and pilgrim's staff to the very end. This is the moment where Compostela begins — and it hangs in the middle of Centre-Bretagne, far from any harbour.

Two days earlier, in Saint-Herbot, pilgrimage looks quite different. People didn't come here for their own sake but farmers came for their livestock. In 1897 Armand Dayot wrote: “Le pouvoir de saint Herbot consiste à guérir les bêtes à cornes.” Whoever's cow got well cut off a tuft of its tail hair and laid it on one of the two granite tables by the rood screen; butter and young animals were added too. Pardon and cattle fair are documented since the early 16th century. Between Spézet and Saint-Herbot lie 25 kilometres and two kinds of pilgrimage: one to the apostle at the end of the world, the other for the cow back home. On this route you pass both.

How pilgrims reach this route

Most come on foot from the north coast. Morlaix is not a “kilomètre zéro” but the point where the Association bretonne's two starting branches unite:

• Voie de Locquirec — 30.2 km from the seaside resort of Locquirec along the Bay of Morlaix; 161.7 km in total to Quimperlé.
• Voie de Moguériec — 35.3 km from the harbour of Moguériec near Sibiril via Saint-Pol-de-Léon; 166.8 km in total to Quimperlé.

If you only want to walk the inland stretch, get off the train in Morlaix and set off. There is no connection on our map to the Voie de l'Abbaye de Beauport from the Côtes-d'Armor.

Keep walking?

In Quimperlé the route joins the Voie de la Pointe Saint-Mathieu at kilometre 198.8 — or, as the French hiking federation put it in 2017, when brass shells replaced the signs in Quimperlé: “Tous deux se rejoignent à Quimperlé avant d'entrer dans le Morbihan.” From there it's another 330.4 kilometres via Hennebont, Sainte-Anne-d'Auray, Vannes, Redon and Nantes to Clisson, then the Chemin Vendéen takes over as far as Saint-Jean-d'Angély, where you meet the Via Turonensis. Across the Pyrenees, the Camino Francés takes you on to Santiago.

Preparation & practical tips

Best time: May to June and September to early October. In winter many private hosts can't be reached, the campsite in Le Cloître-Saint-Thégonnec is only open from 1 May to the end of September, and on the Arrée ridge it can be foggy and cold even in summer. The Association bretonne's waymark is the yellow shell on a blue background; the association provides its guide “Voie de Locquirec & Moguériec” as a free PDF and updates it every November, and it keeps the accommodation list for the section online. The easiest way to plan your stages and beds is directly in the Camino Ninja app, where you put together your stages and plan suitable accommodation right along with them.

As on all French Camino routes, you need a pilgrim passport (credencial); in the accueils jacquaires and many gîtes it is required. The Association bretonne hands it out free of charge to members at its delegations' office hours and only sends it by post to members outside historic Brittany — so it's best to bring yours from home. The association's house rule: book at least 48 hours ahead. Here that's no formality: several hosts pick you up in the next village, and that only works with notice. For stage 2 over the ridge, pack food for the whole day; a rain jacket and shoes for wet heath paths belong in your pack.

What the route costs you

Payment is in euros. The accueils jacquaires run on “libre participation aux frais”, i.e. a free contribution to costs — give what a bed, a dinner and a breakfast are worth. The association's list gives no rates, only a hotel in Gourin mentions a pilgrim rate with a credencial. Guide prices (as of October 2026): gîte dormitory €15–22, chambre d'hôtes €55–80 for a double room, hotel in Morlaix or Quimperlé €70–110, restaurant set menu €15–25, galette with cider €10–15. Realistic daily budget: €35–55 with gîtes and self-catering, €75–100 with chambres d'hôtes and restaurants — for six stages roughly €250–600, excluding travel there.

Getting there

To the start (Morlaix): Morlaix lies on the Paris–Brest railway line; TGVs from Paris Montparnasse stop here, and TER trains connect with Brest and Rennes. From the station up by the viaduct you walk down into the old town and you're on the route. If you start on one of the feeder routes, look up the regional buses to Locquirec or towards Saint-Pol-de-Léon and Moguériec on BreizhGo.

Along the way and from the finish (Quimperlé): between Morlaix and Quimperlé there's no railway station on the route; Gourin, Le Faouët and Spézet are only served by bus, so plan any early exit in advance. Quimperlé lies on the Quimper – Lorient – Nantes line with TER and TGV to Paris; the nearest airports are Brest and Lorient.

• French railways: sncf-connect.com — TGV Paris – Morlaix and Paris – Quimperlé
• Regional transport in Brittany: breizhgo.bzh — TER and buses in Finistère and Morbihan
• Association, guide and accommodation list: compostelle-bretagne.fr — Association bretonne des Amis de Saint-Jacques de Compostelle, list “Locquirec/Moguériec – Quimperlé”