En Route! Days 3 and 4

Leaving St. Laurent

Yesterday was a long, but wonderful day. Waking up in the home I lived in for a summer in high school, greeted by Nicole in the kitchen with hot tea and gorgeous slabs of brioche, crêpes Breton, Italian honey, marmalade, and plenty of amazing local butter.   It took me back to that life changing summer. Honestly, I was never the same, shy insecure, unsure person after that. I literally changed what I wanted to do with my life after that and never looked back. With her patient corrections and careful enunciation the last 2 days, my French is feeling back to where I feel competent again.  It’s amazing how the brain can dredge up old learned skills with just a little nudging.

After breakfast, Paul took us on a tour of the coast, to familiar haunts and new places.  We returned to the house to sadly pack up and head out, but first, lunch. Down the hill from St. Laurent and before the climb back into St. Brieuc, on the bay is Le Legue. There’s a restaurant there where we had lunch. The formûle for lunch started with an entrée of the local specialty of Coquille St. Jacques with shredded carrots in a really nice light sauce. Brian loved it! I liked it, but I’m not huge on seafood other than a few things (I grew up in Indiana, he grew up in Florida, so that explains that).   The main course was a filet of cod served over perfectly prepared vegetables.  For dessert, was the French version of cheese cake, but more of a light Chantilly than the heavy cakes we have.  Ah, but a wonderful meal with great conversation must come to an end, quand même. 

We retrieved our bikes from the garage under the restaurant they had kindly locked up there for us. Nicole set us on the right course and then they went ahead to the next turn to wait for us to make the first big climb. There, at the intersection, she stood (in this terrible heat no less) in her red skirt, pointing us in the right direction. This repeated multiple times, with her walking the last few blocks to the train station rather than riding with Paul.  We arrived a bit early, but it was nice to just sit in the shade and cool off a bit and chat with them a bit more. 

Then it was time to say our goodbyes. Ugh, I hate goodbyes. But now Nicole has my French mobile number and has been checking in “by SMS!”  Toujours ma mère française.  The real challenge at this station was to find the one bicycle car. This was a regional train, so the board that displays which cars are first class, second class, etc. don’t display anything. Paul even asked one of the station workers. Nope, no idea which one it would be.  We had already bought the tickets, but there’s no assigned seating other that the class, unlike the TGV trains.  We had 3 minutes to scan for the bike car and board. O la-la! 

Finally, we saw the car that had  bike outline by the door, oops, no room! Other bikes and a stroller, with stuff, but no child, in it. An obvious local ahead of us went down to the next (and last) car. We followed. We had to pull off the panniers and leave them in the doorway, following the local’s lead.   Whew!  An hour to Rennes, then an hour until the train to Nantes.  At Rennes there are elevators that were just *barely* big enough for one bike at a time to get up from the arrival platform and back down to the departure one.   Same problem with that train, no advance information on the “composition du train”.  Watched carefully as it came into the station, saw nothing on the cars to indicate which one was designated for bikes. Jumped on a mostly empty car.  There was a nice place where the seats folded up and we’d could strap our bikes. Maybe this is what they intended? There was a sign that showed  tandem bikes and bikes with trailers weren’t allowed, so maybe?  The train manager never said anything after walking by multiple times.  Ok.  Then I needed the restroom.  The handicap W. C. in our car was out of paper. Never mind. I’ll head up to the next one. 2 cars forward  – a car that had passed us on the way into the station, there across from the toilet, were 6 empty bike hooks!  Oh well.  When we got to Nantes and were putting everything back together on the platform, we watched as that car went by.  Sure enough, on the door there was a teeny tiny little silhouette of a bike on the door! We  were supposed to find that in the 4 minutes we had to board?!

We got into Nantes close to 8pm.  We easily found  the hotel near the station.  We used points for this one, so it’s much nicer than the ones our usual daily budget is going to allow. Gorgeous place in an old church across from the botanical gardens. One problem, the beautiful shower with a rain head would only put out luke  warm water. After quick, bracing showers (alas another day without washing my hair) we headed out to find dinner. On the way to the place we found on yelp, we found a nice Irish bar with a good menu. Yep, eating Irish in France.   Better than McDonald’s!  By the way, the Smithwicks on draft was every bit as good as it was in Dublin. The bottled stuff back home, not so much. 

Back to our air conditioned, super comfy room to rest up for our first real day on the trail. 

This morning, it took us a while to get all the gear ready and head out.  The GoPro insisted on a firmware update before letting Brian set it up with the app. Turns out that didn’t let him set it up at the frame rate he wanted and it was more easily done from the camera menu anyway.  We needed breakfast, a picnic lunch, and water bottles for the bikes.  At the patisserie Brian found, I found a formule that was for a sandwich, a pastry and a drink for 6 Euro each!  I got jambon buerre with cheese for each of us, a pastry each and 2 bottles of water. I’d had free coffee in the room, so no need for anything else for breakfast or lunch.  Breakfast for ONE of us at the hotel would have been 17 Euro.  I got breakfast and lunch for both of us for 12E 20! Go me! 

That was the easy part. The bike shop we found only had 1 sad, small water bottle.  They recommended we go to a place at the tower (which I was obviously supposed to know about) called Go Sport.  We finally found it with Google.  It really wasn’t far, but navigating the busy streets, with roundabouts (in France cars have to yield to the cars to the right in them…. Let that sink in a minute) and then get into the bike lanes in the middle of the street.  Tricky, but we got the hang of it.  Cars here are clearly very aware of bikes, so not nearly as terrifying as this exercise would be in the US.  The shop was the French version of a Dick’s sporting goods place.  Got our “made in France” bottles, and headed out.  

It wasn’t bad navigating back towards the river and finding the EuroVelo 6 trail.  After that, we were en route! We think we did about 30 miles today, but not certain.  My sportstrack app crashed 20 minutes before we got to the town we ended up stopping at. Brian hadn’t started his. We both were having trouble getting our sensors lined up for our cyclometer, so those missed many miles.  Anyway, the trail is awesome so far.  The paper maps we have show when you have to share a road with car traffic, but there was really very little.  The river is low due to unusually dry weather. Today there were lots of farm fields and a couple castles. We won’t get deep into castle country until late tomorrow.  

Our biggest challenge was water. We finally found a tiny grocery in Oudon after backtracking on the trail a bit.   Bought 4.5 liters!  When we got to Ancenis about 4:30, we looked up the tourism office. It was easy to get to and right by the impressive château here.  I told them we were looking for a room, they saw we had the bikes, made a couple suggestions, called around to find an available room, and voila! It worked just like we read it would.  We have an affordable room with a locked shed for the bikes. The only drawback is that I forgot to ask about air conditioning.  It hasn’t cooled down here as much as it was predicted.  We got a few drops of rain leaving Oudon, but not enough to cool things off.  Won’t be a great night’s sleep, but oh well.   

Brian found an amazing restaurant right near us. Normally one would avoid a café at the train station: pricey mass produced food. But this place had amazing reviews. Turns out it was across a Plaza from the station and was amazing. No fixed menu, just a selection from the chef on a chalkboard. The food was brilliant! Also had a couple very good local beers.  So, first day is complete and it really went well.  Tomorrow we plan to go further since we should get started sooner.