Getting there - Kilkis (Greece) to Gouarec (central Brittany):

Friday September 3rd 1999 After a sweltering summer of practice runs of between fifty and sixty kilometres here in Greece on my own bike, the sort of daily distance I'd been told we would be doing in Brittany, I felt I was fairly cycling fit for the French tour. Yet more sedentary work had done nothing for my midriff, though, which worried me - the prospect of losing some weight on the tour was, therefore, one I warmed too, although I had been informed that there was a lot of eating done on Breton Bikes tours and that it was not the sort of tour to lose weight on.

September 3rd - the day of departure - came, and I flew Alitalia from Thessaloniki to Paris Charles de Gaulle via Milan, and thence by TGV down to Saint-Brieuc, a town in the north of Brittany, where I had arranged for hotel accommodation for the night before joining the tour. The following day, after a quick look round Saint-Brieuc and its lively Saturday market, I was collected and travelled to Breton Bike's base at Gouarec, a village on the beautiful Nantes-Brest canal. Here I met Geoff and Kate and was given the bike and camping equipment I would be using. The bike was an Orbit Expedition, very stable and comfortable both loaded and unloaded. The tent, a VauDe Taurus II, was a cinch to put up and take down and the rest of the equipment, consisting of Trangia cooking equipment, plates, cutlery and cups and a warm sleeping bag, were all good quality and packed nicely into the panniers - leaving just enough room for the obligatory bottle of wine along the way! Being used to cleated pedals (Shimano PD-M747), I had brought the pedals from my own bike along, and these were quickly fitted to the Orbit machine, so that I could use my Shimano SPD shoes.

Getting started:

The group who would be taking part on the tour consisted of English people who had toured with Breton Bikes before and so who knew each other. Most of them arrived in the small hours of Sunday morning after travelling over from England on the ferry from Plymouth to Roscoff, where Geoff collected them in a coach.

Day One: Setting off - Gouarec to Pont Samouel (11 miles):

(Left: Myself, before we set off from Gouarec, Day One)

Sunday 5th September 1999 The overall plan, Geoff said, was to travel south to the southern coast of Brittany, visiting Belle-Ile, about forty-five minutes by ferry to the south of Quiberon, and then make for the northern coast, taking a route which would lead over the Montagnes Noires ("Black Mountains", but generally well below 400 metres above sea-level) to the west of the starting point at Gouarec. Once we hit the north coast we would spend a couple of days in that part of Brittany and then cut across towards Saint-Brieuc, before returning to Gouarec. Daily distances would, on average, be between 45 and 65 kilometres, and there would be a couple of rest days during the two weeks, where we would use the same campsite as our base of two nights running.

So, on a distinctly cool and misty Breton morning, I met the rest of the other members of the group and we took a welcome breakfast of crêpes and tea/coffee/hot chocolate at the café in Gouarec. The bikes were then readied and we took to the road. Our first day's cycling was nicely designed to break us in to the heavily-loaded bikes, and we did only about eleven miles, part of which was along the Nantes-Brest Canal, ideally flat cycling! The mist shimmered and then dissolved away before we set off, and the sun was warm and added to the enjoyment of a day's easy cycling.

We stopped at a couple of watering holes for welcome beers before reaching our overnight stop, which was at Pont Samouel. This was a lovely spot, with a beautiful calm lake just below the campsite, and a bar-cum-restaurant called La Folle Avoine, where we were to eat in the evening. After setting up camp, a number of us repaired to a table outside La Folle Avoine and enjoyed a few beers (picture to the right). This was a good opportunity for me to get to know some of the group members better, and we had lots of laughs.

In the evening there was a meal arranged. Although we had all the equipment to cook up for ourselves, it was a Sunday and that meant that buying in food presented a problem. Over the two weeks I found the aspect of getting food and other provisions (ahem... - the bottle-opener was kept busy!) required a bit of forward planning, especially at the weekends. The Monday closing times of the shops in France didn't help, either. A number of big supermarkets, handily enough, open on Sunday mornings, as well as on Mondays, and this turned out to be the best place to go for weekend purchases. At other times the local épicerie (greengrocers-cum-small supermarket) was a good place to go for local food and drink, such as local ciders, a speciality of Brittany.

We had a good meal, anyway, at La Folle Avoine, with a choice of crêpe-based dishes or other dishes based around steak and so on. Crêpes are a local speciality in Brittany, and come in a variety of dishes, both main courses and desserts. I have to admit that I am not very much taken with crêpes as a foodstuff in general, and that was a pity as I probably missed out on some delicious local dishes. So I stuck to the steak! The evening was rounded off nicely with Rawdon (a fellow translator) trying quite successfully (given the amount of red wine we'd had) to get us sing the unfathomable chorus to a song which seemed to have something to do with people living in the jungle... Maybe you can email me the lyrics, Rawdon?!

Day Two: Pont Samouel to Pont Augan (36 miles):

Monday 6th September 1999 After breakfast, and having sorted out a misunderstanding with the owners of La Folle Avoine about the previous day's beer bill (make sure the owners of that establishment give you a receipt when you pay for what you imbibe there!), it was back on the road again. Today we had a full day's cycling ahead of us, with a variety of roads and countryside, from superb wooded riverside runs to long uphills. Our route followed the road towards Kernascléden, where there was a church which was highly recommended by the Michelin guide to Brittany, the riverside run down through the beautiful Forêt de Pont Calleck (picture to the left) and the long uphill to Plouay. The majority of the group decided to skip Kernascléden and its church and stop at a restaurant at nearby Kerchopine. At one point, after I had stopped to buy in some water, I found myself approaching a junction, with the group waiting for me on the other side. Just as I was about to accelerate across the junction a car appeared out of the blue, causing me to make simultaneous attempts 1) to stop quickly, 2) to look both ways again and 3) to de-cleat. Two out of three wasn't bad, but my de-cleating was too slow by far, and I found myself studying the asphalt from close up when the bike keeled over under the stationary weight of luggage! I don't know who was more surprised, me or the car driver, who slowed to a virtual stop...! No injuries more than a bruised pride and a scuffed knee - the entire group witnessed one good reason why cleats and sudden appearances of cars at blind junctions don't go together all the time!

One feature of eating out at midday was that you could get set meals (a choice of, say, three dishes per course) for about fifty to sixty francs, often including wine, whereas eating at such establishments in the evening would be rather more expensive. Although rather expensive compared to prices I am used to in eating establishments in Greece, this proved to be very good value in French terms.

After Kerchopine came the long, slightly downhill run by the River Scorff as it ran through the Forêt de Pont Calleck (see picture above). One of the few occasions when I felt badly-treated by a car driver in Brittany came on this road, when a Citroën 2CV passed me so very close that I could have leant in and kissed the old lady in the passenger seat! The driver was also well advanced in years, and apparently he gave the same sort of treatment to other members of the group ahead of me further down the road. Perhaps a case for lowering the age after which driving is not allowed...?! Then it was on to Plouay, which involved an interminable climb - nothing particularly difficult, but just never-ending!

I fell rather behind the group on the two-mile hill to Plouay, and by the time I got into the town I had no idea where they were - if they had gone on or had stopped somewhere in town. Many French towns have large supermarkets entitled LeClerc, Intermarché or Casino, and I spotted a sign for the local Casino supermarket, so I made for there in the hope of seeing a line of loaded touring bikes outside and the group inside, stocking up for the evening meal, but no such luck. I decided to press on and make my own way to Pont Augan, where we would be spending our night. Taking a back route out of Plouay (due to roadworks blocking the main route I had wanted to take), I found the going very enjoyable, through leafy forest and much of it downhill - the pay-back for the hill into Plouay! I got to Lanvaudan, where I stopped for a welcome beer - the weather was quite warm. Shortly the first of the group turned up - somehow I had passed them in Plouay and not seen the bikes lent against a bakery wall. So we had a couple of beers and then stocked up on cheese, bread and wine for the evening. Kate and Geoff (who had gone back to look for me, apparently!) turned up in turn and we set off for the last leg to Pont Augan. This involved some stiff climbing along the side of a ridge which gave marvellous views to the south, before making a very fast descent and joining the flat D327, which runs parallel to the River Blavet. A little confusion was caused by Pont Augan having two campsites, one in the village and the other a mile or so outside, but I was soon putting up my tent (picture to the right).

Day Three: Pont Augan to Quiberon and Belle-Ile (41 miles):

Tuesday 7th September 1999 After a great evening quaffing wine and nibbling at various local delicacies (rillettes, which are fatty pieces of pork, local cheeses and er.. peanuts!) and a good night's sleep, we all awoke to find the morning damp and foggy. Packing up quickly to get an early start, we set off. Packing up quickly soon proved to have been a little unwise in my case, as I quickly realised that I had rolled my cycling mitts up in my tent, so I had to unpack the bike again and get the mitts out - I couldn't cycle without them. The fog persisted for about an hour, but once the sun started to penetrate it quickly dispersed, and a beautifully warm day took its place. The group had gone on while I retrieved my mitts, so I decided to make a short cut in the route they were following which would give me the chance to catch up with them. However, a spot of poor map-reading meant my short cut was no shorter than the route they had taken. The village I had been trying to get to was on the fold in the map and repeated opening and closing of the map had worn the fold so that the print had worn away, and thus I managed to end up in the wrong village and on the wrong road. The yellow Michelin maps which we had been provided with by Geoff are good (one centimetre to one kilometre), but I found that they could be lacking when it came to the smaller lanes. They are certainly not up to the standard of British Ordnance Survey maps in that respect. Quite often it was more a case of using the position of the sun to make one's way.

So it was that I made my way to Branderion, after getting directions from a chap driving a steamroller down a recently-asphalted lane, which turned out to be a cul-de-sac (no through road). So back along the lane I went, and cycled down the more major road to Branderion, a very small town on the D765 between Hennebont and Landevant. Here I bought in some water, and ended up using the sturdy green plastic Badoit bottle to carry water for the rest of the two weeks, as it fitted beautifully into the water bottle holder, unlike the bigger 1.5 litre clear plastic bottles. The run from Branderion to Landevant was fast but busy with traffic, particularly articulated lorries, probably because it was a feeder road for N165/E60 route nationale to Auray and Vannes.

At the point where the road fed into the route nationale, a lane led off and followed a parallel course right next to the route nationale for about three-quarters of a mile before turning off southwards. It was good to be pedalling along slowly, watching people flying by in sardine cans on wheels, knowing that at least I had all day to get where I wanted to be. We had been told in the morning that we would be catching the ferry from Quiberon to Belle-Ile at five in the evening, so there was plenty of time to stop and enjoy the lovely warm day and the countryside.

I eventually caught up with the group at Locoal-Mendon, which is in the low-lying area by the Rivière d'Etel. They had stopped at a restaurant there (picture to the left) and were eating, so I joined them. For starters there was crab, so special care was taken not to eat the wrong bits - the dead man's fingers, which are supposed to be poisonous enough to kill. As with other meals, there was wine with the meal, and I found that this, combined with the length of the stop for lunch, tended to reduce my energy levels in the afternoon, so I decided to eat chocolate during the day and have something more substantial in the evening. I also wanted to lose some weight on the tour, remember!

After lunch, I stocked up on Mars Bars and we set off as a group for Quiberon, a touristy seaside town at the end of a ten-mile long peninsula. Naturally enough, the only road leading down the extremely narrow neck to the Quiberon peninsula was very busy indeed, by far the busiest road I was to encounter during the two weeks. It was very much a case of cycling in single file, although in general the cars gave us a wide berth, and considerate drivers waited for quite a while until they could do so. Upon getting to Kerhostin, we found alternative routes led off to Portivy and to the west where the peninsula widened somewhat. Before taking one of these smaller, much quieter roads to the Côte Sauvage ("Wild Coast", lines of dunes facing the raw power of the Atlantic to the west), a few of us stopped for a beer at a little restaurant-cum-café on the main road. This place was memorable for the fact that the proprietor was singing, or rather emitting strange disjointed long notes, all of which were terribly flat. Either the chap was dramatically tone-deaf, or he had been a tenor for the Portsmouth Symphonia!

Arriving in Quiberon, I took the opportunity to get some money out of a bank ATM using my UK NatWest account cash dispenser card. Not wanting to incur the high interest charges involved with using my Greek VISA credit card to withdraw money, before I set off for France I had checked on the Net to see where there were ATMs in Brittany which were connected to the Cirrus ATM network and found that getting money out of banks would be possible in most places. Apart from my accounts where I live in Greece, I also have the current account in the UK, and wanted to use that to finance the day-to-day expenses of the tour, as Greek banks are decidedly backward in terms of adopting such networks and my Agricultural Bank of Greece cash dispenser card certainly wouldn't work in any bank in Brittany - as far as I know it only works in Agricultural Bank of Greece ATMs in Greece itself!! Travelling within Western Europe has certainly become much easier in recent years with the spread of such ATM networks as Cirrus, and one can but hope that Greek banks will drag themselves kicking and screaming into the modern age in respect of ATM network interconnectivity... But I digress.

Quiberon is a busy seaside port town (picture to the right), and clearly a prime tourist destination. Due to the beautiful weather, many people were sitting outside at cafés and others (braver souls!) were swimming or enjoying themselves on the beach. The majority of the group were already at the port where we would be catching the ferry for Belle-Ile. Having taken the ferry innumerable times in Greece, where ferry fares for foot passengers are usually around one pound Sterling (US$1.60) per hour's journey and bikes go free, I was surprised to see that the return fare for the forty-five minute crossing to Belle-Ile was ten pounds (US$16) for a foot passenger and five pounds (US$8) for the bike, but perhaps the route was a monopoly, which would account for the high fares. Once the ferry had arrived (picture below) we boarded and the bikes were carefully arranged in a special area on the car deck before the cars and lorries were loaded onto the ferry. Then it was off up to the deck to enjoy the crossing!

Below left: The ferry in port. Below right: Land ahoy?

Upon arrival on Belle-Ile, at the attractive port town of Le Palais, we disembarked and set off for the campsite, some five miles up the road at Bangor. The road out of Le Palais was steep, but at one point we diverted off and walked the bikes through a strange set of tunnels before rejoining the road. Arriving at the campsite, we quickly pitched the tents. Belle-Ile was to be the first of two places in the two weeks where we would spend two overnights. I had found the run that day rather tiring, perhaps in the afternoon because I was pushing myself to ensure I was at Quiberon in plenty of time for the ferry, so I hit the hay in the tent and only woke up at eleven p.m., by which time Bangor was as quiet as the grave.

Day Four: Rest day at Bangor, Belle-Ile:

Wednesday 8th September 1999 The village of Bangor had a pleasant square where there was a café and adjoining mini-market (épicerie), which maintained the tradition of having weird opening hours. In the morning I bought in some postcards and some biscuits and sat at the café to write the cards over a chocolat chaud, a nice cup of hot chocolate. Then I spotted the sign indicating that the mini-market closed at 1 p.m. for the rest of the day. Maybe Charles de Gaulle called the English "a nation of shopkeepers" because we actually open our shops for more than a few hours a day?! Anyway, I phoned my wife back in Greece from a callbox (my mobile was activated for "roaming" but I found Bouygues' Brittany mobile phone coverage to be patchy at best, probably due to the hilly countryside). I had heard earlier that day about the earthquake in Athens and she gave me the latest news about it. Then Rawdon and I cooked up some lunch back at the campsite and had a good long chinwag about translating, a profession we share.

In the afternoon it was back to the square for a few beers with Jennie, Andy and Pat and then in the evening Jennie and Evelyn cooked up a delicious chicken supreme, with mushrooms and crème fraîche. All washed down with lashings of red wine! (picture to the left)

Thank you for visiting my pages! Please do not hesitate to email me.