Saint-Malo drunk by an XXL Rum Route

“It looks like they are preparing for the Football World Cup,” creaks a fifty-something in front of the Saint-Vincent gate. Behind it stand the ramparts of Saint-Malo and, in front, a cloud of white tents and a ballet of construction machinery around the port. Organizers are setting up the 70,000 square meter Rum Route Village, which will depart from the city’s port on November 6.

The village has never been so extensive. This 12e edition of the transatlantic race, which joins Pointe-à-Pitre, in Guadeloupe, is that of all records: 138 skippers, 15 more than in 2018, more than 2 million visitors expected from October 25, a restaurant of 800 seats. Like every four years, the “Road” occupies all the discussions and the Saint-Malo city is adorned with the colors of the Antilles – Madras fabrics adorn the windows, barrels of rum line the terraces.

Too big, too greedy

However, this year, the same criticism is spreading, that of too big, too greedy. “I have seen all the Routes, but there is still an exaggeration”, regrets an octogenarian on the quays of the port. For the first time in forty-four years, Malouins, skippers, environmental NGOs, all attached to this emblematic race, denounce, at the time of sobriety, an event that has become a commercial celebration “destructive” of nature.

At the center of the debates, the Pointe du Groin, that of the Varde and Cap Fréhel, the front row seats to watch the start of the crossing, but above all the protected natural areas. From the top of its pink sandstone cliffs, from its vast plateau of windswept moors, Cap Fréhel offers one of the most beautiful panoramas in Brittany. Exceptional terraces, classified Natura 2000, where “any trampling causes considerable damage, in a hostile environment where the vegetation has difficulty growing back”, summarizes Gwenal Hervouët, deputy delegate at the Ille-et-Vilaine coastal conservatory.

Following a requirement from the prefecture aimed at reducing the impact of spectators on these areas, the organizer OC Sport Pen Duick, a subsidiary of Groupe Télégramme, asked, in July, environmental associations such as Bretagne vivant or Al Lark . They all refused to act as guardians of these protected sites. “They privatize everything that is profitable, boast of attracting 2 million people to areas that are not planned for and would like to leave the responsibility to NGOs to manage the problem”, storm Thierry Buanic, president of Al Lark.

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