Discovering the headlands of Brittany, gems of natural beauty

The stereotypical French person has a striped shirt, a beret and a baguette under an arm. That may be a cliché, but what's certain is that bread is an integral part of the French diet and people take their bread very seriously. So just what makes French bread so good? And what are the rules of "baguetiquette"? In this edition of French Connections Plus, Florence Villeminot and Genie Godula bite into the crunchy heaven of the baguette.

On this episode of the Metrowoman talk show, we discuss finding purpose and some of the issues women face.

We take you across France to discover some examples of increasingly rare craftsmanship. On the banks of the Loire River, Gilbert makes wooden moulds for some of France's biggest hat designers. Some 600 kilometres south, in the Pyrenees, the profession of clog maker still exists. The proud inhabitants of the Bethmale valley continue to wear locally made clogs for special occasions. Last but not least, wooden boats known as barquettes have been sailing in and out of Marseille's old port since the 18th century. Denis's family have been making and restoring them for three generations.

We take you to discover the coastline of the French region of Brittany and its gems of natural beauty. With its 70-metre-high cliffs, the Cap Fréhel has some of the most dramatic scenery in the region. Further west, there are spectacular views over the Morlaix Bay, home to more than 60,000 seabirds. Out in the Atlantic, Ouessant is the last island before America. We end our journey at sunset at the Raz peninsula, looking out onto the Atlantic, at the tip of Europe.

From the foothills of the Vosges mountains, to a medieval town in the south, to a village on the Spanish border, France has many beautiful streets full of history. We take you to discover three of them.

Harvey J. Alter, Charles M. Rice, and Michael Houghton jointly won the Nobel Prize for medicine for their discovery of the hepatitis C virus.

Plato, Aristotle and Socrates are just a few well-known ancient philosophers. But what about their female counterparts? What about the woman who taught Socrates? Or the sage said to be behind Plato's theory on love? Their names are often lacking when it comes to teaching philosophy and that is something Rebecca Buxton and Lisa Whiting wanted to change. They put together a book called "The Philosopher Queens". Written by female philosophers about female philosophers, it highlights the worlds of women who were drawing crowds as far back as 400 BC and brings us right up to today's thinkers.

Roumazières-Loubert is known as the "city of clay". This small town in France's western Charente region has been turning the precious raw material into tiles for more than a century. For 40 years, Bernadette has been passionate about working with clay and says the local factory has become her second home. A little further south, the town of Chalais boasts opulent villas along the railway line: a unique architectural heritage. Jean-Louis shows us the impressive medieval castle, while Joël takes us to discover the world of traditional cattle farming, with calves fed under their mothers.

Drone images of the Brittany countryside under snow around Quedillac, in Ille-et-Vilaine, France.

For a century, the French town of Saint-Amand-Montrond, in the central Cher department, was the capital of gold. As France's third-biggest centre for manufacturing gold jewellery after Paris and Lyon, the town of 10,000 inhabitants was best known for its hollow-link gold chains. Today, few goldsmiths remain but the local vocational school is busy training up the next generation of jewellers. FRANCE 24 takes you to discover it.

Strong wind and waves hit the Finistere region of Brittany, northern France, with nine areas in the region placed on weather alert.

It began as one of Hitler's craziest ideas: to construct 4,000 kilometres of defences along the entire coastline of mainland Europe. Some 76 years later, local governments, private individuals and companies are trying to give a second life to sections of the infamous Atlantic Wall. In the Finistère department of Brittany in western France, a half-buried bunker now houses a museum featuring the voices of those who lived under German occupation. Meanwhile, an abandoned bunker on Brittany's Cap Fréhel peninsula is now home to a group of bats. FRANCE 24 takes a closer look at these sites and more.