Which beach area in Brittany?

For nice sand and swimming I would go to La Baule-Escoublac, west of St-Nazaire. I visited it 30 years ago and remember it still as one of the finest places for a beach holiday along the French Atlantic coast, think it hasn’t changed much in the meanwhile. For things to do you can go to historic Guérande with it’s medieval walls and Le Croisic for it’s seafood restaurants,

Nowadays I would look for the Airbus factory near St Nazaire and the WWII submarine base. Still on my list would be a daytrip to Nantes for a visit to the Jules Verne museum and “Les machines de l’île” there. https://www.lesmachines-nantes.fr/en/
With a few hours driving from La Baule historic themeparc Puy du Fou is maybe a bit too far from La Baule, but hugely popular, depending the age of your teenager maybe of interest, just an idea. http://www.puydufou.com/en?language_content_entity=en

Close to Mont St Michel, you may find beautiful small sandy beaches from Cancale / St Malo / Dinard and further west. Some are surrounded by rocks, which is the typical coastal landscape on the north coast of Brittany. The tides are quite strong around here.
Or in Normandy (département "La Manche"), from Carolles and further north.
There are beautiful beaches on the south coast of Brittany too, usually the temperature is about 2-3°C more there. Around La Baule and further south, beaches are longer, and flat.

While walking the wall at St Malo we saw a saltwater pool built into the beach. It was a stormy day but looked like a fun place on a sunny day.

I agree with Renee. Saint Malo and a very lovely, sandy beach. It was on the side of Saint Malo with the view of Dinard. Speaking of Dinard, it has a very wonderful, huge beach. In fact, I really like Dinard for a few days. The charming town has a has a retro beach resort vibe. We stayed in Dinard and from there we day tripped to Saint Malo and Dinan which is an historic walled city.

I wouldn't promise weather conducive to actually going in the water, though. It can be very overcast and quite cool. I loved the area precisely because of that, having practically sizzled in southern France.

On the timeanddate website, you can see day-by-day (really hour-by-hour) actual historical temperature graphs. I've linked to July 2018 for St. Malo, but the stats go back ten years so you can get a pretty good idea of what you may have, and you can find info on other places as well. This year there were only five days when the temperature ever exceeded 75F. On the other hand, there were only two days with highs below 70F (they hit 68F).

Yes, true and the U-Boat base and pins were at Lorient too.

@acraven, do you have an idea how reliable has your time and date website been with forecasts? I have accuweather and Yahoo. Yahoo has really pretty pictures but their forecast seem to be pretty unreliable!

I've only started looking at timeanddate very recently, and only for historical data rather than predictions. When I remember to do so, I ask the desk staffer at my hotel what website he or she uses for local weather. On some occasions it has seemed to me that I get better precipitation predictions by using those sites. Here's a French-language site you can try: MeteoFrance.

I don't think any predictions are terribly reliable more than a few days out. Beyond a certain point (and I don't know what that point is), I suspect that all you're seeing is the historical average for that particular day.

There are some areas where I have learned to carry a hooded rain jacket every day, and maybe also an umbrella, no matter what the sky and the forecast look like. Normandy/Brittany was one of those areas for me. However, my practice as a tourist is to head out of the hotel in the morning (typically not very early) and not return until after dinner, so I don't have an opportunity to pick up or drop off outer garments or an umbrella if the weather changes. It makes considerable difference that I do not ever have a rental car at my disposal.

with a car you could easily visit the island ile de brehat, just spectacular place to visit. IMO. we visited there last year ( after spending time driving around brittany. it was our favourite.

we only had a day on the island, so we hired electric bikes and toured the beautiful laneways and numerous beaches. the ferry to the island is very interesting as the tides in that part of brittany are huge, so there are numerous wharfs. every time we turned a corner on the island you saw another great view.
http://www.brittanytourism.com/discover-our-destinations/saint-brieuc-bay-paimpol-les-caps/unmissable-sites/brehat
hope this helps.

Yep, we tend to be gone all day, too, so we carry everything we need on our backs or in the rare instances we have a rental car, we will put in clothes for different contingencies.

Being a numbers person by education, I always wonder if the best predictor of tomorrow's weather, is the weather today. In math models, we called that a lagging variable. And I wonder if when they say there is a 60 % chance of rain, if that it means there is a 40% chance I can go through my day without getting wet, or if it means at any time during the day there is a 60% chance of rain, in that case, once you add it all up, it would be pretty certain you'd get wet sometimes during the day.

We did get a fair amount of mist and clouds in Brittany, but when we were in Dinard/Saint Malo, we were blessed with warm weather and sunny skies. Probably a lucky aberration.

Over the last three summers I've spent quite a lot of time in areas not known for getting a lot of sunshine: the northern coast of Spain, Normandy/Brittany, southern and central England, Wales. It must add up to at least three months, maybe more than four. I've been rained on but haven't really gotten totally soaked in any of those places--though I do spend a lot of time inside museums, which obviously helps reduce my exposure to the elements. By comparison, in 2017 I got soaked to the skin north of Nice (May) and in Montpellier (June). This year I was hailed on in Budapest (May) and L'viv (June). There's a lot of luck involved, but in my experience it's true that a lot of the places with the bad-weather rap are mainly overcast and misty rather than total washouts.

The fact that I can remember some specific occasions of weather that actually affected what I was doing is indicative of my overall good luck, I think. I'm going Scotland next summer, and I can see the chickens coming home to roost even now. I'm currently planning to take two sets of long johns rather than the usual one.

St. Malo's and Les Baule beaches are nice, plus they are walkable to the downtown/market area/cafe areas. I'd pick St. Malo if I was going to be going back.

Wow, thanks everyone! Such great advice!

Hi,

Traditionally, Brittany is the area in France which has the coldest weather. I have never been in Brittany so no personal experience on that score, but I've been numerous times in northern France, ie from Amiens to the Belgian border, ie the Somme and Nord Pas-de-Calais and those beach areas and cities/towns up there...Liile, Arras, Douai, Lens, Cambrai, etc. and Paris obviously in July too.

My point is if you're warm to hot in Paris, in Nord Pas-de-Calais it will be a bit cooler, almost always. I would assume even more so in Brittany than in Nord Pas-de-Calais. .

St. Malo has a nice beach. The water should be reasonable in July. There is a resort across the river but St. Malo has a nice beach, a wall, lots of tourist oriented things (shops, restaurants) inside the wall, a museum. At low tide you can walk to island fortifications from the beach.

Dinan, like most ports in the area, is a ways up river from the sea. The incredible tides make upriver ports a good option.

The next best option is to go to the south side of the peninsula where there are nice beaches on the bays.

Things I'd want to do as a teenager in the area include: The guided walks into the bay from MSM at low tide. Walking to the islands from St. Malo at low tide. Seeing the tides around MSM, Cancale, St. Malo or in the south around Morbihan Bay. Seeing the prehistoric henges and neolithic monuments around Carnac; my favorite is Cairn Gavrinis (reached by boat, tour in French, from Larmor-Baden).

I'd also try to visit a Pardon in the area. I believe every village hosts one and they go through the entire summer. They are local church related festivals that feature local food, music, costume and dance.