Three Late Summer Days in Brittany

 

Dates: Thursday 22nd September (evening) - Sunday 25th September (evening)

Mileage: ~750 miles in total

After an enjoyable summer that included a motorbike trip (or three), we reluctantly returned from our late summer family holiday back to the UK. With children back at University or otherwise engaged and with the weather changing, I craved for one more bike trip to look forward to before the winter. I suggested to my wife that we take a lazy short break, on the motorbike, to Brittany. She agreed, on the understanding that there would be no tents involved, so I set about taking a day off work and planning the weekend.

 

We decided to head down towards a town (Auray) in South-Western Brittany which I had last visited on a motorbike trip with friends some 20 years ago. We booked an overnight ferry with a cabin which left Portsmouth on Thursday night at 23:00 and took us down to Cherbourg where we arrived refreshed and eager to go at 08:00. The weather was a little drizzly so we headed directly South to escape the clouds and eventually stopped for a coffee near Granville, where the sun finally made an appearance. Whilst in the area, we popped-in to see Le Mont Saint-Michel only to find that you can’t get close to it these days and need to take a shuttle-bus to see it properly. Gone are the days when you can park next to the magnificent island settlement and just walk onto it over the causeway. No big deal, we had both been there before and were keen to take in some new sights anyway.

 

We decided to take the smaller roads as we had plenty of time to get to the hotel, so I had a route planned that took us South-West through some of the more rural and remote parts that France has to offer. The back-roads are generally well maintained and are very quiet, interrupted by the occasional sleepy town offering ample opportunity to stop for a coffee and refreshments. We eventually found a place for lunch in Yvignac-la-Tour where we seemed to crash an event and were told that all the tables were reserved. A kind couple took pity on us and suggested that we join their table, for which we were grateful. My French isn’t the best so we ended-up going for a lottery three-course meal having no clue what we had ordered. The food, as is usually the case in France was excellent.

 

After much gesticulation and laughter, we finally got back on the bike (two hours later) and continued our ride South. We booked a basic, but perfectly comfortable hotel near the Port Saint-Goustan part of Auray. After a short walk we made our way into the pretty medieval port town and took in some of the lovely sites before finding a cosy place to enjoy a meal and some well-deserved Merlot.

 

The next morning we woke to magnificent sunshine which was handy as I had a route planned for us to explore the surrounding area on the bike. Our first stop was Locmariaquer which is a lovely small medieval fishing town. After a short walk around the town square and marina, we jumped back on the bike to ride through La Trinite-sur-Mer and down to Plage De Kervillen where we took a walk along the beach and took in the sea air. The next stop was a short ride to Carnac to visit the famous Monoliths. These are quite impressive, in summary like a fusion of Stonehenge and Avebury. It is certainly worth a walk around the main site which has the biggest concentration of stones, but they do spread for some distance like the stones in Avebury.

 

Always a sucker for exploring capes and peninsulas, we then headed down to Quiberon which is a long sliver of land jutting out into the sea. The area was a lot more built-up than I had expected with some stunning old holiday homes on either side of the main road. That said the views were excellent and at the narrowest point you can clearly see the sea to both your left and right. We headed right down to the tip of the peninsular to Pointe du Conguel which offers near 360 degree views of Quiberon Bay and the surrounding waters. The weather was glorious with people swimming in the sea and making the most of the late September sun. We had a great walk around the beaches thanks to having empty panniers on the bike where we could stash most of our restrictive biking gear.

 

As we rode back up the peninsula, we could see clouds in the distance with thunder and lightning. We stopped at a roadside café for some lunch and coffee and watched as the storm passed to the side of us revealing more blue skies. We then followed a circular route back towards Auray that I had found on bestbikingroads.com which saw us back at the hotel by 4pm. After a quick change, we walked back into the port area but this time spent more time exploring the lovely town of Auray whilst we still had daylight. As the evening drew-in, we returned to Port Saint-Goustan where we enjoyed some local cider before finding an excellent restaurant next door to a building in which Benjamin Franklin stayed in the late 1700’s whilst drumming-up French support for an emerging American nation.

 

On our final morning we had another long and scenic route planned back up to Cherbourg. Our first destination was the magnificent fortified city of Vannes. Such a lovely place and certainly worth a longer visit in future. From there we headed North-East, zig-zagging through the countryside making slower progress than before and (by chance) going past the home of Dick Strawbridge made famous in the popular TV show ‘Escape to the Chateau’. Luckily we had a large breakfast and my wife had packed some lunch as we didn’t really have time for any long stops as we had to make the ferry back home.

 

We arrived in Cherbourg with 1.5hrs to spare and had a large (and surprisingly good) meal on the boat. The journey home was uneventful (other than some superb violin music played live on the boat by some travelling musicians) and we arrived in Poole just before 22:00. A couple of chilly hours later we were back home – tired but content that we had managed to squeeze so much into a few days at the end of the summer.