May 27, 2018
Day 62: Treguier to Binic
It's hard to remember today's route and what happened on it. The reason is that we have (deliberately) been diddling up down and all around the coastline, and through a dozen or more villages. With the road twisting this way and that, while abruptly rising and descending, many times I was not even sure what side the sea might be on, unless it was in sight.
Here is a piece of one of our maps from today, to give some idea about what the route was like:
Things started calmly enough, as we revisited the church and streets around our hotel in Treguier. Often I comment on how different things look in a town in the calm of morning, after the hustle and bustle of the day before. But here things looked just as they did in the evening, highlighting the fact that these villages are really not overwhelmed with tourists.
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One of our objectives on the day was to find a Tourist Information, where we could get English versions of the maps we have been using on this Tour de Manche. There is a set of five, put out by the Departement, and looking like the excerpt above. They are really good and have lots of tourist info on the back. We have the set in French, and that should be good enough, but our brains are too lazy to scan and absorb the information in French, and we know there is an English version.
We stopped at Tourist Information in Lezardrieux, and found that it would be open 10-12. It was 9:40, and we were loath to hang around for the 20 minutes. We knew there was another TI 6 km down the road in the larger town of Paimpol. Meanwhile, from the back of our French map, we can tell you something about Lezardrieux. Nearby there are huge seaweed forests, the harvesting of which produces 4 million tonnes annually. Some seaweed is still collected by hand at the shore, but we assume the rest is a mechanized operation. Looking down at the beach, we did see some sea-weedy stuff, but we are not sure we really came to the big operation we had read about.
In Paimpol we found the TI easily enough, only to see that they are entirely closed on Sunday. Presumably they think tourists return to their home countries on the weekend and only come back out on Monday morning! We were gratified, as we stood nearby plotting our next move, to hear frustrated French tourists expressing the same opinions.
A thread running through the whole day was the amazing beauty of the surroundings. This was made up of the hills and sea views, and also the crops and notably the flowers and flowering shrubs. The number of perennials and trees that people have planting is really a standout feature of the place. The roses, lilacs, rhododendrons, hydrangea and so many others seem to just love it here. The other main continuing feature is the houses, which now have turned away from bring white and are back to beautifully executed solid stone. There are hundreds, thousands of examples of these gorgeous homes. Here are a couple of them:
We were intrigued by the existence of the old "Abbaye de Beauport" near Paimpol and went to have a look. Like the "Bon Repos" some days ago, it was a ruin with partial restoration. Unfortunately for us, here too they were charging admission to have a look inside. 6 euros each - that's 10 dollars to us - enough for two Big Macs back home. We decided to hang on to our cash. But, the grounds were beautiful, and included tree sized very fragrant roses.
At a lookout nearby the Abbey we found two people on a bench looking out to sea. We found that they were locals, and they were able to identify for us some of what we were looking at. One thing they pointed out was tractors working in the bay, at low tide, and harvesting oysters.
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We got to talking to our locals about Canada and the French settlers of old. We were surprised to learn that the fate of the Acadians, drop kicked to Lousiana, was news to them. That was 1755 - these locals either had short memories or never covered this in school. This forced us to recite "Un Canadien Errant" to them - it's a song all Canadians know (we assume!) about the expulsion of the Acadians. (Actually, it was written after the Lower Canada (Quebec) Rebellion of 1837, but was adopted by Acadians with the version Un Acadien Errant.)
We began to look ahead on the map, speculating on which town might have food for us, maybe juice for our batteries, and of course the elusive open Tourist Information. For some towns the map has enticing symbols, like a market basket or the TI logo, but we found nothing. Either the things were closed or the route efficiently kept us away from the town center. We no longer had the energy to go off route searching, so we just plodded on.
Soon we entered a 15 km stretch that is the closest thing this region has to an urbanized strip. It's not like you might think, not like Florida or something. It's just kms of beautiful houses and views, with no spaces between the towns -Treveneuc, Saint Quay Portrieux, Etables sur Mer, and Binic. Binic! That's our spot, the place where we had booked, confident that even with the hills we could make it. And we did make it, but only barely - as least as far as our bikes were concerned. They were saying another 3-5 km and it would all be over. It's something to think about, because these bikes are real dogs to pedal with no power. They really are not built for that - in terms of weight, gearing, and drag. And pushing them up hills? It's best that Binic turned out to be exactly where it was!
Just making it to Hotel Neptune did not mean the end of the adventure for the day. For one thing, we arrived at 4:30 and reception was not until 5. (Yeah - France!). As we waited outside, a man came along who very enthusiastically peppered us with the Usual Questions. He was a 70 year old avid cyclist, and had opinions and advice on all the gear. Actually we enjoyed talking to him, to the extent we found strength for it. We were rather glad, though, when the hotel man arrived - a few minutes early.
We went through the usual routine of arranging to take the luggage off the bikes and put it at reception, while the bikes would be shown their garage or other storage. We took the luggage off, and then the hotel man jumped in his truck and said "follow me". Clearly he had not read the bit about what dogs these bikes are to pedal. We explained that, and he said ok. He jumped out of his truck and said "follow me", taking off on foot at a lope.
We straggled behind as he crossed a passerelle in the harbour and crossed several streets, heading for a distant garage behind a supermarket. He used a remote control to get a gate to slide back and then to open a garage door. Finally a key to a storage locker opened the place where the bikes could spend the night. Ok, simple. That is, until the remote refused to open the sliding gate again. So we went back through the garage door, which did open, and then a series of emergency exit doors before emerging on the street. Dodie was hobbling along on her canes, so we invited the man to lope back to the hotel on his own and we would meet him there (eventually). Anyway, assuming the bikes can exit tomorrow, no problem. We got a tour of the harbour - relaxing, after 67 km of hills!
Today's ride: 67 km (42 miles)
Total: 4,147 km (2,575 miles)
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