DAY 1: ST. MALO - RENNES: 90km
SATURDAY 30 MAY



What a lovely view to wake up to

I woke up feeling very tired. I hadn't slept ever so well as I had woken up a few times in the night as I was thirsty. Annoyingly it was only in the morning light that I noticed we had put our bidons by the bed in case we needed a drink in the night. My knees felt a bit sore from the day before and I had forgotten to put Biofreeze on them before I went to sleep. I vowed to make sure I did that as a preventative measure in future along with a daily dose of Nurofen.

I soon perked up as I watched our approach to St. Malo

We thought we would have breakfast on the boat but unfortunately just as we got to the till the computers crashed and they were unable to serve us and while we waited to see if the problem was going to be fixed easily the announcement came for passengers to return to the car decks. As the bike shed was at the front of the boat we thought we ought to get down there as soon as we could in case they wanted the bikes to go first. As it turned out we did not have priority and were told to push the bike off the ferry at the same time as the cars were exiting.

A loaded tandem and trailer is not the easiest thing to manoeuvre

It was lovely to arrive in St. Malo and, although there was a bit of a chill in the air, it promised to be a beautiful sunny day. After spending a bit of time setting the Garmin we were ready and cycled out of the ferry port and through the suburbs and an industrial area.

It wasn't long before we were on the open road




It was a bit of a climb to Chateau Malo




where we found our first coffee stop - shame it didn't have seats outside

We were feeling hungry by this point and couldn't see a bakery in the village but luckily we had cereal bars with us and so ate one of those with our drinks before setting off again on a fairly busy D road and then onto quieter D roads.

We cycled through wonderful countryside




and pretty dark-stoned villages




Everything looked so fresh - they must've had a lot of rain recently

I took the opportunity to apply more chamois cream in a village WC as the seam of my shorts was rubbing

What a pretty leafy lane




Rob had a "I need one of the emergency biscuits" moment

We stopped to check what felt like play in the bottom bracket to the amusement of the cows

Just one more straight, fast road until lunch

After 41km I felt ready for a break. The scenery had been beautiful - lots of parkland, pasture and potato fields, together with some lovely ponds and watercourses but it had been quite hard work as we had spent a lot of the time cycling into a headwind.

We had discovered Combourg's town website when researching the route and decided to make that our lunch stop as it looked really nice - although it's hard to tell from the internet whether somewhere is really nice or whether they just have a good publicist. It turned out to be a really lovely town and somewhere we would like to return to on another occasion.

What a perfect spot - the goats cheese pie was amazing but the wind was so strong I had to hold on to my salad while I ate

To keep costs down we bought our pudding at the baker's and took it by the river

Before setting off again after lunch we checked the front pedals as they hadn't felt quite right earlier and discovered that we needed to tighten the cranks. At least it was a simple thing to fix and not the bottom bracket playing up.

We reluctantly left Combourg at 3pm and promptly had a long drag up a hill - I was glad I had only had a light lunch and a 25cl pichet. We continued to pass fields of cows who stopped chewing to watch us go by and you could almost hear them say "What the **** is that?".

We had a bar stop in Dinge

There was a group of English cyclists sitting outside the bar and we joined them. They were a real mixture of characters and ages and we had a bit of banter and cycle chat with them. As we discussed routes one of them said "It's about 70km, I measured it on my credit card". This really made me laugh and I told him that I would have to include his quote in my blog. He retorted that he would have to include the fact that we got out our small lightweight fold up stools (from Poundland) to sit on from a heavily laden tandem (they had someone to carry their luggage). However we had the last laugh as we were the ones with a seat - and he was having to stand.

We left the bar shortly after the other group as we needed to get going as we still had a way to go before we got to Rennes.

This cross looked like it had been made from wood from a house




We reached the Ille et Rance Canal




This would take us all the way to Rennes




An idyllic rural scene at one of the road crossings




The reflections were beautiful

Although our progress wasn't as quick as it would have been on the road the surface was good and the view certainly made up for it. It was a lovely summer late afternoon and the daisies and yellow irises looked beautiful. However, I was pleased when Rennes came into view as I was ready to arrive.

As we approached the town centre we stopped by the side of the road and stood astride the bike while we worked out which direction our hotel was in. The next thing we noticed a car reversing, not very quickly, but certainly in our direction. We were unable to move out of the way and if Rob hadn't banged the back of the car with his fist to alert the driver to stop we we would have been run over. The passenger was extremely apologetic and we rode off feeling a bit shaken.

We had pre-booked a hotel on the basis that there weren't any campsites in Rennes and received a warm welcome from the staff at the Kyriad Hotel.

The patient staff helped us sort out our luggage

We were shown to a lovely spacious room with a little balcony overlooking the station. We strung up our washing line in the bathroom and got our washing up-to-date while we showered and the bathroom soon resembled an Italian slum. By the time we were ready to go out it was gone 8.30pm and we walked up into the old town.

We enjoyed walking around soaking up the atmosphere of a summer's evening

We looked at various restaurants and decided that we would find the Italian the hotel receptionist had recommended.

Villa d'Este certainly lived up to our expectations

We had a very good meal sitting out on the little terrace and for our main course had a trio of pasta dishes - just the thing to set us up for the following day.

We had a lovely view from our table

It was late by the time we got back to our hotel - but we had had a lovely relaxed evening