Its source is in the town of
Gouesnou. It then passes through
Bohars and
Guilers (a village bears the river's name) before it flows out into the
roadstead of Brest. The Penfeld runs along the former course of the river
Aulne, shifted to the west by the opening of the
goulet of the
roadstead of Brest by the
interglacial periods of the
Quaternary Era. That explains its depth, which allows deep-draught ships to go quite a way upstream, with tides running up it up to deep. At Brest, the Penfeld is crossed by the
Pont de l’Harteloire then, some way downstream, by the
Pont de Recouvrance, the largest vertical-lift bridge in Europe until it was dethroned by the
Pont Gustave-Flaubert in 2007. In its last stretch, within embankments high, the Penfeld runs through the Brest naval base, and at its mouth (a site whose strategic importance has been recognised since antiquity) is the 15th-century
Château de Brest. == See also ==