In which Doris’ birthday is spent laboriously on the toboggan roads across Brittany
The rodents bring the birthday post and Doris is 35 again. Older people might struggle with an epic journey so it is best to stay young. High paws on the trip so far.
Today we go through very small farming villages to Rennes, capital of Brittany. Across these departments we see parched grass, farmers taking water bowsers and hay out to the fields or cattle in sheds out of the sun where they can be easily fed and watered. The temperature is well into the 30s again.
There is shade through the forests but out between the fields we’re being roasted again. The villages are suffering like nearly all the villages we have been through. Doubly here, they are depopulating and it is August with its month long business closing.
We pass a house which is campaigning for Department 44 to be part of Brittany, as it obviously should be. We attach a picture of the French departments to let you form your own views. A north-south divide across the Loire (the large river inlet at the west of Department 44) might be the result. We cycle quickly away trying not to think Brittanic or Loiric thoughts in case we are suspected of treason (although as this village is following the French Neutron Bomb model of zero live population maybe we are being over-sensitive).
When we get to the outskirts of Rennes there is new building, this is where people want to live. It is one of France’s fastest growing cities (about 220,000). There are groovy bars with amusingly named beers, fantasy games shops and people under fifty years old, much less. The businesses that thrive in the villages are the pharmacies. Sid wonders if Deliveroo could branch out?
The battle for conveyance of the day is between a toy truck being used as a doorstop in this morning’s hotel, and a collection of plastic hubcaps, called in French: Enjoliveurs. Isn’t that sweet?
We outwit the general closedness of shops with offset buying and eating. We eat second breakfast (bought early in a town with no cafe) in another village’s cafe where Madame’s main business is selling Francaises des Jeux lottery cards. We do not see a winner while we are there but the men – all men – seem to bear Patricia no ill will.
In our quest for seats with backs we make our salmon terrine brioches sitting on a church step with the door at our back. Sid’s orange is unexplainedly decorated with a sticker of the Mona Lisa, and we cycle away with it stuck to his helmet. She seems to be constantly saying “you will have more fun if you cycle just slightly over to my left”.
Rennes is just 84 kilometres away from breakfast. The local cyclists call these roads, that they use for training, ‘toboggans’ because of the constant climb, descend, climb, descend and we have had enough of winter sports by the time we get into Rennes.
We have not seen an interesting tractor, car, van or truck until we come into Rennes when the winner is revealed: in town for a wedding is this blue Renault Caravelle, which being the convertible is called a Floride. A worthy winner, if a late entrant.
We look for the tabs that go in drinks bottles to help water take up and add useful salts. On our rounds of bike shops we call on the kindness of strangers to have our slightly squidgy [pleasantly cushioned – D.] tyres brought up to five bar again. That should help us over the last few days home.
Although we have been to France often in various cars (and with bikes), we’ve never stayed in Rennes before and the main square is having some sort of festival. We enjoy the Bar-o-Matik robot drink-maker and then return after dinner to join the crowds by the main stage and tap our toes to Cuban music. French people love to dance, and if you look at the picture [I have put a large version in – D.] you will see everyone dancing in the aisles. Scroll back to Bulgaria/Serbia and the spontaneous folk dancing, this is the same thing with different music.
We are determined not to let the watch system slip. The hygiene, ointment and house-keeping routine is as careful as ever. Tomorrow we will be idle tourists in Rennes, on Monday ride 80 k-ish to St Malo, then have another easy day as we cross to Portsmouth before riding not far to an hotel on Tuesday. From there we will have three days’ ride home, route TBA [or rather, TBF, To Be Found – D].
As the great poet Noddy Holder sang, the call of home is loud.