A sunny day with a tailwind on Nantes Brest canal. One of the many écluse buildings. Lock keeper houses.
The Nantes Brest canal, conceived by Napoleon as a strategic inland connection of two important ports to avoid the British controlled ocean, is 390 kms long. That’s a good distance for a nice long game of Bike Touring Bingo.
Leaving Nantes. The canal starts a bit outside of Nantes proper, and the leaving of cities is frequently a bit of a jumble.Pastry break! At 17 kms. That’s a chocolate babka from marguerite Boulangerie du coin in Nantes.
Bike Touring Bingo is an adaptation to the office game BS Bingo, where you and your co-workers would have made up Bingo cards on the xerox machine of all your boss’s favorite and overused phrases, to be checked off during interminable conference calls.
Babka ready for its close up. Hazelnut and chocolate.
Bike touring bingo is much more free form. It’s any bike touring eventuality – such as having to open all four panniers to find the thing you’re searching for. Or getting stung by nettles. It can also be any French cliche, for example an elegant French woman bicycling by with a baguette in her basket.
Finally out into the countryside. Canal this way! Oddly named snail restaurant also this way? That sign deserves a bingo square.It’s steadily getting warmer and the day is calm but with a nice tailwind. The travel planner stops to admire a helpful map.Lunch break in Nort-sur-Erdre. We’re appreciating how well benched and picnic tabled this route is. So many benches.We’re on a Camino de Santiago trail. We chatted with one pilgrim and saw two others. They had 1,200 kilometers to walk to Santiago de Compostela, Spain. We’re headed the opposite direction from the pilgrims so merrily we roll along.Bike touring bingo square! French gentleman in striped shirt smoking a ciggy while piloting a boat. I got bonus points the next day when I saw the same guy (I think) having a wee by the side of a marina.Our first night on the canal in Blain at a lovely Chambre d’hôte, Le Nid d’Omer. We’re trying to remember to take photos of our rooms before we dump our panniers and make an ugly mess.Bingo! Well behaved chambre d’hôte cat observing breakfast.
The canal links up four rivers, so it’s fascinating to see the change from canal to river. It was quite a clever engineering feat as only 20% of the route had to be made from scratch.
Here’s a tiny Rich riding past a boat in a canal section.And here he is waiting for me to catch up in Fégréac on a section of L’Isac River. So many birds!Between those two photos was a coffee/tea/Easter chocolate break.And a lunch break. Although the path was busy this Easter Sunday, we always found places to stop and sit.The back of my bike. The front of Rich’s bike.
In our travels around the world we’ve always felt welcome as Americans, or at least not disliked. We always say people are good at distinguishing between a person and the country’s politics. But these are different times. Awful things are happening and the USA is responsible. We questioned if we wanted our American flags on our bikes at all. But we are American, we have to own it. Rich has a French flag to show our affection for France, and my No Kings flag hopefully conveys our lack of support for the current administration. We’ve had quite a few conversations so far and no French person has been anything but kind and understanding and as upset as we are about the war.
“I’m a little potato and I believe in you.” Thank you little potato at the crêpe restaurant in Redon.Crêpes and cider. The Breton stand by for dinner. Delicious. Dessert crêpe with caramel beurre salé. Salted caramel sauce. Yum.
No photo of the hotel room in Redon. It was adequate. And small. We thought Redon would be a bit of a nothing town, and quite empty on Easter Sunday evening, but it turned out to have a lot of half timbered buildings and some fascinating historical plaques to help tourists understand the history of the buildings.
Half timbered building from the 1600s, now with shops on the ground floor, as many were originally both businesses and dwellings it’s fitting.Sunset over the canal in Redon.Nettles. Rich won that bingo square with a “shortcut” suggested by Komoot. Thankfully it was a small nettling. Person traveling with a donkey? Is that on my Bingo card? It is now.I forgot his name, but he had just bought the donkey and he was headed out for a ten year ramble! With his cat too, who is wearing a GPS collar and was not happy about the crazy cat lady wanting to get her hands on him.Lunch. Smoked salmon for Rich and peanut butter and dried cranberries for me.Crossing through Malestroit. This is perhaps one of the most interesting and beautiful canals we’ve ridden.The écluse houses are adorable. The riding surface of the path is mostly really smooth fine gravel.My ongoing love affair with French bike route signage.Château de Josselin. On the Oust River. Still the residence of the 14th Duke of Rohan.
After decades of living and working in wonderful San Francisco we gave it all up to travel the world. Not owning a car allowed us to save money and live hyper-locally. Now we’re living around the globe. Follow along to see where we are and what cats I manage to pet.
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Less Car, More Life 