Breakfast on the beach by the campsite. Dreams are made of this.
I have left my mobile phone charging in the campsite office and have until midday to enjoy the environs. The beach on the east of the Peninsulais empty, apart from a lone guitarist. I scramble over the rocks and up to the track I walked down yesterday evening, for a second view of the flowers. Glorious again in this different light.
My next night will be with a Warmshowers.org host the other side of Dol de Bretagne, a relatively short ride. I have time to meander along the coast. Although I don’t expect any experience to top where I have just been, I take a route that goes via the Pointe de Grouin – out of curiosity (this is where I had planned to camp yesterday). It is spectacular but doesn’t hold me for long. I abandon the idea of detouring into every beach and bay along the coast – less is more.
I cycle on towards Cancale on the western extremity of the Baie St Michel. The approach road is lined with Hornbeam pruned into chunky rectangular lollipops. The brutalist approach to pruning lives on.
The town is another of the grey and stony variety. A line of restaurants extends along the shore. The place is literally throbbing with food, and large groups of tourists wearing their Cancale straw hats. I choose the least frequented place I can find with a decent Google rating. It looks onto the mudflats that characterise this part of the coast. At low tide it is hard to imagine water could ever be part of the picture. But the tidal range here is immense, up to 16.1m.
My restaurant table is shaded by a canopy. But, if anything, this seems to trap the heat. Not a breath of wind. I watch wagons passing. And realise – of course – that the mudflats are the conditions for oyster beds. I could have gone to the oyster market and had two dozen oysters for €10 – a quarter of the price in a restaurant. On a display board, I learn that, “Oysters were imported by the Romans from the coasts of Normandy and Brittany before and after the invasion of Gaul. Oysters disappeared to some extent from banquets in the middle ages returning to royal favour with Louis 14th who ate them every morning.”
But heck, phone recharging and a bit of chat is part of the experience. My hostess points to the other side of Baie St Michel where, through the shimmering haze, I can just make out the Mont Dol, a flat-topped granite outcrop standing above the plane. My destination is an hour the other side of it – mythically far (but actually only 27 miles).
I follow the coast until Hirel, then turn inland. Quiet lanes and tracks. A short stop-off at Dol de Bretagne, a comfortably bourgeois little town with a strange, asymmetrical church.
The address I have for my Warmshowers hosts is in the middle of nowhere. I turn off the main road onto a forest track, arriving shortly afterwards at an eco-hamlet with no house numbering. It is an important moment. I have been trying to get this cyclist co-hosting solution to work for some months. But the lack of monetary exchange, and ergo commitment, means slow confirmation – if at all. This is the first time it has worked. It’s very kind of Anne and Gilbert to allow me to camp in their garden as they are about to depart on a four-month trip to the Black Sea. We have a brief chat over an apple juice, before they have to go out. A flat lawn, recharging point adjacent, a lean-to for the bike, an owl to serenade me. Perfection.
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