Brand new 4-bedroom villa with a footpath to the sea — Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys, Morbihan

Plots like this one do not come up often. A serviced 638 m² parcel on the ocean side of Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys, with an old stone-walled footpath leading from the end of the plot straight down to the sea. The permis d'aménager has been granted, the services are already at the boundary, and the land is libre de constructeur — so the build can start without waiting on anything.

On it goes our four-bedroom villa: 115 m² over two floors with an integrated garage. The ground floor holds a bright open-plan living and dining room opening onto the terrace and garden, a fitted kitchen, a double bedroom with its own bathroom, a separate WC and a utility room — enough to live on one level if you ever want to. Upstairs there are three further bedrooms, a family bathroom and a second WC. The layout can be adapted to suit you.

About Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys

Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys sits on the ocean side of the Presqu'île de Rhuys, the long peninsula that closes the southern edge of the Golfe du Morbihan — the Atlantic on one shore, the sheltered gulf on the other. It is a commune of around 2,000 people that swells gently in summer and stays a working Breton village the rest of the year.

The abbey is the heart of it. Saint Gildas founded a monastery here in the sixth century, and the church that stands today keeps Romanesque work from the eleventh. Pierre Abélard, the most famous philosopher of his age and the other half of the Héloïse story, was abbot here in the 1120s and hated every minute of it — he wrote that the monks tried to poison him. The building has outlasted the argument.

What people come for now is the coast. The commune's shoreline runs through beaches, low cliffs and coves, with the GR34 coastal path threading the whole way along it. Port du Crouesty at Arzon, one of the largest marinas in Brittany, is a short drive west, and Port-Navalo at the tip of the peninsula looks straight across the mouth of the gulf towards Locmariaquer.

Everyday shops, bakeries, restaurants and a medical practice are in the bourg. Sarzeau, the peninsula's main town with supermarkets, schools and a weekly market, is around 8 km away. Vannes — its walled old town, its port, its hospitals and its TGV station with trains to Paris in about two and a half hours — is roughly forty minutes by road. Nantes airport is around an hour and a half.