Saint-Michel-en-Grève to Saint-Thégonnec

June 13, 2019

Another morning with a very wet tent! Funny, it's just as wet if not wetter after nights when it didn't rain! And the cloudy skies don't promise any sunny opportunities to dry it. Looking for accommodation near my planned destination for the day, I see there are no campgrounds so I send a request to a chambre d'hôte.

Then it's off down a quiet road parallel to the highway into Saint-Michel-les-Grèves. I'm glad Garmin didn't send me up this way to the campground yesterday because it's very steep and I would have been pushing!

After coffee and a pain au chocolat at the café, I crossed to the little épicerie and got some peas in the pod and apricots for later snacking. Then it was off along D786 beside the water. When the bike path beside the highway appeared, I moved onto it because the highway, so quiet last night, was much busier this morning.

After climbing away from the water, my route brought me back down through the outskirts of Plestin-les-Greves and past a big Lidl. I stopped to get some yogurt or rice pudding for a second breakfast plus something else for lunch. I ate my yogurt on a bench by the seaside walk a bit further on. Fortified, I continued.

Poppies! I've missed them. I haven't seen more than a couple of isolated flowers in days, maybe weeks.

Yet another Rue de la Corniche climbs away from the beach. Here I'm looking back from the Table d'Orientation viewpoint. St-Michel-les-Grèves is a couple of headlands behind the one we see.

The Cairn de Barnenez is over there somewhere, I think.

My destination today was St-Thégonnec, but I wanted to visit the Cairn de Barnenez on the way. It was just after noon when I got to Le Guerzit (?) and, since it was likely that the cairn was closed between noon and two, finding dinner has been problematic lately, and the menu du jour is the best deal going on weekdays, I stopped at a restaurant that offered a "menu ouvrier": 13.50€ for entrée, plat, and dessert, only 2€ more than my automated pizza last night.

The meal was quite good. The entrée was a small green salad plus a kind of potato salad with tuna (it didn't taste like the canned tuna at home) and the plat was a hamburger with frites. I chose pannacotta for dessert and had a glass of wine too. I'll eat my lunch stuff for dinner and might do this tomorrow too.

It was a climb up to the Cairn de Barnanez, and apparently, at the time it was built (between 4500 and 3900 BCE), the sea level was lower and the present Baie de Morlaix would have been dry land. This giant structure (75 m long and 28 m wide), containing 11 burial chambers, was built on high land. Over the centuries it was covered in vegetation and forgotten.

From the leaflet: "It was not until 1850 that these mounds of earth and stone were identified as tumuli at the conference of a learned society. In 1954, the monument was bought by a civil engineering company and used as a quarry. However, the scientific community campaigned for its preservation and there were successive archaeological campaigns from 1955 until 1968: coordinated work during excavations, consolidation and restoration work led to this enormous mound of stones regaining its original appearance, described as a 'Megalithic Parthenon' by André Malraux in 1959."

Cairn de Barnenez. It really is big! That's an art display on the lawn in front.

The entrance to one of the burial chambers, blocked off to keep visitors safe. I put my handlebar bag in the picture for scale.

The entrance to this burial chamber is only closed off with steel bars. You can see right through because this one was opened at the other end by the quarrying operation in the 1950s.

The other end of the Cairn. I like the use of larger rocks here.

The inside of the Cairn, as exposed by quarrying.

For the lower two levels, the stones were very carefully placed to lock together and create a smooth surface. That doesn't seem to be the case with the third level.

In the tiny visitor centre, there's a little model of the Cairn that you can lift to top off to see the interior layout, plus a bigger model behind glass, plus this diagram on the wall.

Continuing, the next notable part of the ride was D76 along the water into Morlaix. EV4 avoids this, off into the hills (and probably unpaved tracks), but it wasn't too bad. Although shown on the Michelin map as a white road, there was a centreline plus fog lines, no shoulder and the speed limit was 70 km/h. However, traffic was fairly light, the route is flat, and the scenery lovely.

Morlaix, however, just made me think "get me out of here!" Of course, my route out included a big hill since I was going inland rather than back north along the coast. I got to a point where the road split and I had to stop to check the course on my Garmin to see whether I really needed to take the steeper option. No, thankfully. While I was doing this, a fellow in a work van parked across the street called out, asking where I was going. St-Thégonnec, I replied. He said I should go back down the hill just a little and take the lower road. Much flatter, which he knew as a fellow cyclist. I thanked him and followed his local's advice.

It wasn't exactly flat, but definitely less steep than the course I'd plotted. It connected with my course just south of Morlaix and I was in the countryside again. Fields and...wind turbines! Spinning! Sadly, there was a headwind most of the way to St-Thégonnec.

St-Thégonnec is a big village, with all services. There isn't a campground in the area, but there is a hotel, yet another of the Logis chain which I'd sworn off after my Paimpont restaurant experience. However, here it was my only option since I'd struck out on both chambres d'hôte. (The first had replied right away that they were not open this week; the second hadn't replied. When I called, she said she hadn't replied because she didn't have a room available. I said the website had shown a room available when I'd submitted my request, and it would be much better to reply in the negative than leave someone hoping to hear back.)

I walked into the Auberge de St-Thégonnec (the Logis hotel) and asked for a room. The fellow at the desk was very friendly and had good English. He said he was the new owner as of July 1 and was working through all the details for two weeks (what needed fixing, etc.). I described my Paimpont experience and he was shocked. He seemed really nice and I hope he makes a go of it.

In my room, there were no hangers, and neither the radiator in the room nor the one in the bathroom worked. I don't usually turn them on, but the room was cool and I had a lot of wet stuff to dry (tent and laundry). The floor was definitely cold! There was also a little stash of teabags and instant coffee, but no cups or any way to heat water. Unlike the radiators or hangers, that was easily fixed by asking after I'd had my room picnic.

I went out to see the famous church afterward, but it is only open between 0900 and 1800. It looked worth waiting until 9 tomorrow to see inside.

This building is the ossuary of St-Thégonnec. What's inside, I have no idea.

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Today's ride: 69 km (43 miles)
Total: 2,591 km (1,609 miles)

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Rachael AndersonGlad you got to have a good meal at lunch!
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