A great day to be riding: Montauban de Bretagne to Guemene-Penfao
The sun was shining, the birds were singing and I was in my usual morning funk. The hotel owners were leaving on vacation and would not be serving breakfast, so I needed to leave my room and wander down the street to get my morning caffeine fix. I grumbled a few words at the overly cheery clerk in the bakery as I bought a pastry for my morning meal and went next door where I had to wait while the barman sold cigarettes to those with a much worse addiction than mine. Two large double expressos soon gave the world an acceptable face, and I went back to the hotel and packed up. I left in good spirits, but the headwinds soon returned making the morning a bit of a slog. This being Sunday the club riders were out in force and I waved and said bon jour as one does. Cyclist solidarity does not however mean that guys in racing trim are willing to wait for touring cyclists to join in for a drafting session. So I soldiered on until I got to the shelter of the Foret de Paimpont.
Any Canadians out there recognize this? Actually, I took this for Sue. Her mother was born Rita Trudeau and she was distantly related to the prime ministers of the same name. There are only about eight or nine houses in Trudeau, which is not large enough to be considered a village, but only a lieu dit or "a place called".
A couple more kilometers down the road and I was in Paimpont, which is a rather pretty town and chock full of tourists taking their summer holidays. I stopped into the café on the right for coffee. The bar lady didn't know that M. Trudeau was the Canadian prime minister, although she did know about the lieu dit.
The lady did suggest I ask in some of the other shops if they knew anything about Trudeau, and while one nice woman did see the Canadian connection, nobody named Trudeau is known to live there now, or ever, for that matter. So I left Paimpont none the wiser as to the possible significance of a tiny cluster of houses in the Breton countryside. The Breton flag is displayed proudly on a shop in this shot.
I made a sort of U-turn, not to follow my route backwards, but to head more southeasterly, with the wind at my back now the pace really picked up. I stopped in a bakery in Guer to get a fougasse, a sort of cheese and meat on bread concoction, an apple tart and a coke. I took these into a park across from the bakery where I sat eating as the Sunday noon crowd stopped for their bread in the bakery and then hurried home.
Guer is where a velo route starts and I was on that instantly. For the first time in quite a while I crossed a touring cyclist, a young fellow on his way from Paris to Brest. We chatted a bit before parting but not before he warned me about blockages on the path.
A tree had indeed fallen across the path, but there was enough space to squeeze around it so I didn't have to double back.
The path continued to Messac, where predictably it started to rain. I checked in the tourist office for accommodation, but found none to my liking and decided, after mature reflection and a Perrier in a local bar to continue on.
When I got to Grande Fougeray the rain stopped and the sun came back out. The town was completely deserted. Not much is open in France on Sunday, but even the hotel and the restaurants were locked up tight. I kept on to Pierric, where I turned right which got to a sign indicating a campground in Guémené-Penfao. (Please don't ask me how to pronounce that. Its Breton, not French) The camp had a snackbar serving light meals and drinks, and a large undeveloped area for hiker biker types like me.
Camping in the pines. I got a beer and tried to use their wifi, but it didn't work with my iPad for some reason. Fortunately, I was able to borrow the managers phone to call Sue and let her know I was all right. I settled for hamburger steak and fries for supper with cheap red to help it go down.
