In the fourteenth century, France as we know it now didn't exist. Most people in the country the Romans called Gaul thought of themselves as something else, Burgundians for example. The French were limited to a small area around Paris, an area that had not been too important in Roman times, but that had enjoyed the patronage of an increasingly powerful family, the Capetians, a family that furnished all the French kings, and a large part of the French nobility from the time of Hugh Capet at the end of the tenth century right up to the revolution of 1789, and during the restoration from 1814 to 1848. There were a lot of branches of this family, the Capetians proper, the Valois, and the Orleans among them, and there was not alot of familial love between the branches, but they persisted for all those centuries as the rulers, often in name only, of France. One part of ancient Gaul remained aloof from the rest of Gaul, and that was Brittany. Alone of the French provinces, its language was a derivative of ancient Gaullic, or Gaelic as we now say. It was ruled by a series of native dukes who owed no allegiance to the high kings of France. The position of this land, at the entry to the English Channel, or la Manche as it is known in France, and bordered by the lands of powerful French dukes in Normandy, Anjou, Poitou, and Maine meant it was always threatened by its neighbors. As those neighbors, one by one, came under the dominance of the kings of France, Brittany's independence became more precarious, and its dukes decidied to fortify their territory with a line of fortresses along the borders or "marches". I suppose they borderlands are called marches because of all the marching up and down by belligerant armies, but I'm probably wrong about that. Anyway, I had a few days at my disposal, and the weather looked promising, so I thought I would go for a look. Brittany is a hot bed for cycling, and the region is blessed with good roads, so the prospects for a good tour looked excellent. I could also continue with my goal of evetually visiting all 532 sites selected by the French Cyclotouring Federation (FFCT) leading to the awarding of the Brevet Des Provinces Française (BPF). And I would also get a chance to sample local cuisine along the way, one of the best reasons to live in this wonderful country.