Rocks of the Apple-brandy

The Rocher of the apple-brandy is a rock bench located off the coast of the Département of the Apple-brandy (Basse-Normandie) on which it gave its name.

Situation

The Rock extends to broad from the Bessin (Côte of Mother-of-pearl), not far from the communes of Arromanches-the-Baths and Asnelles. He is discovered only at the time of the spring tides. The charts of the 18th century show a long rock bench of ten kilometers. It represented a danger to navigation. Nowadays, the rock is only one small island (400m on 1 km).

Etymology

The origin of the name “Apple-brandy” is hypothetical. It was believed a long time that it was a Spanish word pointing out the shipwreck of a boat of the Invincible Armada in 1588. This tradition had much success since one even indicated the arm of the sea between the coast and the Rock by “Pit of Spain”. The professor of linguistics Rene Lepelley brings another explanation. The etymology of the name would be apple-brandy - dorsa , i.e. the backs or heights ( dorsa ) bald people or stripped ( apple-brandy ). However, always according to the professor, the word did not indicate in the beginning the rock but a sector of the coast deprived of shrubs. Indeed, one can see on a chart of the 17th century that Calvados indicated two portions of the cliff which extended on 17 km between Holy-Honorine-of-Losses and Saint-Like-with-Fresné. By extension, the name of this coastal sector was transmitted to the rock the broad one.

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