"Straw" onions, pearl onions, early onions and others which are picked late - a visit to our markets at any season shows that we're never lacking. Near where I live, around July, when the market gardeners dig up their onions and let them dry a little on the warm earth, the whole area smells like onion soup. But, of all the varieties produced in this region, the most renowned is the tender, flavourful and fairly mild Roscoff rosé onion, which also has the advantage of keeping well.

Around 1828, this rosé onion was already being successfully cultivated in the fertile soil of Léon. Following an excellent harvest, an enterprising young farmer decided to create a new market. With his onions, he filled up his boat and headed for Plymouth. A few months later, he returned in an empty boat, bringing proof of his success - white bread, which was an luxury unknown in France at that time. Other producers followed suit: 200 in 1860, 1300 in 1909, 1500 in 1929 became onion sellers. The demand was such that from July to March, boats shuttled back and forth between Roscoff and Liverpool, Cardiff, Dundee, Inverness and other British ports, while the sellers cycled through the countryside, braids of onions around their necks, carrying up to a hundred kilos at a time. From morning until night they rang their bells, sleeping in warehouses for six to eight months at a time without returning to Brittany.

Their biggest fans were the miners and dockers, who loved the rosés de Roscoff and ate them raw. Soon these bicycle-riding onion sellers became affectionately known as "Johnnies" among their clients. Being a "Johnny" had become a career. A few Roscovites still sell their onions in England, but they now do the rounds in a van. In 1996, Paul Caroff - as well-known in Roscoff as he is in Pool, a small port on the southern English coast where he first landed with his father in 1951 - set a new record, selling five tonnes of onions in five weeks. The Roscoff rosé onion is still cultivated and still succulent; it's available in the markets. A few Johnnies still sell their braids to the delight of British tourists and local shoppers. They also have their own museum, in the Chapelle Sainte Anne on the Vieux Port.