A middle-aged man in a time-worn brown leather jacket just entered the pub. “Demat,” he greets in Breton, while he takes the remaining bar stool—they’re always the first seats to be filled. Before he even says another word, Élise Provost, the landlady, draws him a half pint of amber ale and places it in front of his seat.

She jokes with him in Breton, then warns other patrons in English: “No Guinness, only Coreff stout,” she says. While the nitro stout slowly pours in the glass, she dances a few steps of gavotte, a traditional Breton dance.

Bairds Malt

Strolling effortlessly behind the massive wooden bar, Élise is the first thing you’ll notice when pushing the door of Tavarn Ty Élise—Élise’s house if you translate it into English—in Plouyé, a small village in Central Brittany, France.

Her pub has been a staple for the community since 1978. That’s when Élise’s mum, Anna, bought the place for her daughter after the owner retired. “I was 21 and had no intention of tending a bar,” Élise says. “I was a seasonal worker and I liked my freedom, but I still said yes.”

Watching her doing her thing, you would think she’s been there her whole life. She hasn't.

For more than 40 years, the face of Ty Élise was Bernard ‘Byn’ Walters, Élise's ex-husband. Patrons probably already know the story of their first encounter on the pub doorstep, in Summer 1979, but as she speaks they’re deeply invested in its retelling, as if Élise reveals new details each time.

“A group of Welsh guys was vacationing in the area,” she says. “Byn was passed-out drunk on the pavement, then the whole lot made a mess in the pub, jumping everywhere.”

“Was it love at first sight?” a woman asks in a laugh.

Élise makes a face. “Not really,” she answers.

Even so, soon after Byn left, Élise visited Wales and came back with him. They got married a year later (“Welsh Nationalist finds the Breton connection” wrote one of the many newspapers recalling this unusual wedding), had two kids, and eventually divorced.

Byn never left Brittany nor the pub, until he passed away in February 2021.

***

In 2010, an accidental fire burned Ty Élise to the ground. The 150-year-old building next to Plouyé’s church was left with only four walls standing, and it took three years to renovate and reopen like nothing happened.

When Byn died, it felt more definitive and Élise, who had been retired for three years after a career as a social worker, was turning down requests to sell the place. “I was bored to death and people started asking me why I didn’t reopen the pub myself,” she says. “After all, my name is on the front door, who else but me could have taken it back?”

On the 3rd June, 2022, Ty Élise’s red shutters finally unlatched. Welsh friends crossed the Channel for the occasion and Plouyé’s inhabitants attended beyond the landlady’s expectations. “I sat there and cried all evening,” Élise recalls with emotion. “I’ve become a real night owl, I feel more alive now.”

In the pub, everything is as Byn left it. The traditional clay floor and open fire; the pub mantra, “Positive ambience accepted, negative ambience rejected”, firmly stuck on the fireplace beam; the Penydarren’s sign from his hometown hung on the outside; the countless Welsh flags on the walls and ceiling; the pictures and paintings of Byn brought by friends and regulars, and posters of decades of inter-Celtic events and concerts plastered all over.

““Byn got rid of Guinness, Heineken or Hoegaarden to only serve Coreff’s real ale and their other beer. Élise intends on keeping it that way.””

“I didn’t remove anything, I only added,” Élise says. Behind the counter, she placed a laminated picture of her and Byn from the mid-80s. Stuck next to the toilet door, a piece of paper thanks everyone for their kind words and support after his passing.

She didn’t touch the beer selection either. When Coreff, France’s first microbrewery, opened in 1985 near Plouyé, Ty Élise was one of the first ones to serve it. Progressively, Byn got rid of Guinness, Heineken or Hoegaarden to only serve Coreff’s real ale and their other beer. Élise intends on keeping it that way. “That’s what Byn would have wanted.”

Despite being separated, Élise and Byn stayed friends. When she was not living in England, Ireland or Wales, she still pushed the pub’s door for a pint, or helped Byn with some chores.

Élise doesn’t like to get too personal, preferring to stick to her endless witty and fascinating anecdotes, but there’s tenderness in her voice when she recalls Byn. “Byn’s soul is here,” she says. “Sometimes I can feel him right behind me.”

***

Local newspapers always wondered what a Welshman could be doing here, tending a pub in Central Brittany. For Byn, it was never a real question.

“A Welshman is not too out of place in Brittany,” he said in perfect French in a 2017 interview for a local news channel. “The country was created by the Welsh and Cornish. It’s not for nothing that we’re in Cornwall here.” In a press clipping from 1998, he was already making the connection: “Five of your seven holy founders, Pol, Brieuc and the others, were born in my home. We have the same culture. Gallois is just a word invented by the French to describe the Bretons across the Channel.”

From the very beginning, through word of mouth, Ty Élise built quite the audience from the UK.

Myrddin ap Dafydd, co-director of Tafarn Y Fic, a cooperative pub in Llithfaen, North Wales, recalls his friends visiting Ty Élise since the 1970s, before finally doing the same in 2022. There, he spent a memorable night reading poems in Welsh, then translated into Bretons. “It was great to see the Welsh flag and Welsh posters at Ty Élise,” he says. “It made us realise that we were very special friends even before we met them.”

Since then, Tafarn Y Fic and Ty Élise are twinned pubs. “Both are no-nonsense bars, hubs of the local community, being naturally Welsh/Breton in their conversations and activities,” Myrddin says.

““We were very special friends even before we met them.””

— Myrddin ap Dafydd, Tafarn Y Fic, Llithfaen

A dragon pinned to her chest and a Triskel ring on her finger, when she’s not blasting the Welsh nationalist anthem, Yma o Hyd, through the speakers, Élise keeps that Welsh-Breton connection very much alive. “There’s no Saint Patrick here,” she says. “We celebrate Saint Dewi on March first, with traditional Welsh music and a Welsh stew.”

English, Welsh, Irish and Scottish people make up a huge part of Ty Élise’s clientele, since at least 14,000 of them live in Brittany, mostly in Finistère, constituting the first origin of immigrants in the region. They like the closeness to the U.K. it provides, the more affordable housing and the general ambience.

That’s Adrien and Christine’s experience. The retired couple left Leicestershire twenty years ago for Central Brittany and have been regulars at the pub ever since they got here. They say they feel right at home: “This is the closest I can get to a beer I could get back in the UK,” Adrien says as he points to his pint of Coreff real ale, served in perfect condition by handpump. “I’ve never had a bad pint here.”

Her vodka tonic in hand, Christine is not really into beer, but praises Élise's kindness and attention. “She always says ‘Hello Christine’ when I arrive and not bonjour,” she says. “She never makes you feel like you’re an outsider.”

***

You never know what sort of evening will play out at Ty Élise. You could spend a cozy and quiet time by the fire, sipping a pint of cask ale and gorging on scampi fries—a rare treat to find in France. You could debate passionately with other patrons about whether or not Bob Marley says “Plouyé” at the beginning of Jamming. Or you could listen to Élise play the bodhrán, a framed drum used in Irish music, after she showed the picture of her younger self playing it, just after her wedding to Byn.

She expects to keep going like this until she’s 103 years old. “My regulars are making me a wooden walker,” she says. “I told them to add wheels, so I can go back and forth behind the counter.” At 67, Élise is far from needing the support, but it’s a way to keep her goal in mind and preserve this piece of Celtic heritage for as long as she can.

Like everywhere else in France, through rural exodus and landlords retiring without finding a replacement, Brittany is losing its precious community spaces where Breton culture thrives. After World War II, there were 400,000 bistros and cafés in France. In 2024, that number fell under 40,000—in Brittany, they went from 7,000 in 1987 to fewer than 3,200 today.

Back in 1978, Plouyé and its 600 residents counted almost ten bars and several shops and bakeries. Now there’s just Ty Élise and Ty Anna, the bar Élise's mother took ownership of back in the 50s and tended until she was 92. Just a few streets away, the place where Élise was born has been run for more than 40 years by no one other than her brother, Jean-Pierre, whom she visits every morning to take her coffee.

“It’s too hard for young people to make a living with these kinds of places in rural areas,” Élise says. “I’m lucky to have good attendance here because I’m one of the only ones left, and I have my pension, which gives me peace of mind.”

Another regular passes through the pub’s door and takes a seat at the bar. He just spent his last day at work, and is now fully retired. Élise serves him a pint to celebrate. “You’ll be bored shitless now,” she says. “Why not take over a pub?”