One More Croissant for the Road. Felicity Cloake
buffet, I feel cast adrift like a tiny oyster larvae floating free in the bay. Here I am, on my own, in a strange place, not knowing where I’m going to stay or eat tonight, and a whole month stretching terrifyingly ahead of me. Well, nearly alone. I still have that pied de cheval to keep me company.
STAGE 5
Crêpes Complètes
Buckwheat crêpes were once the bread of Brittany, a region too poor and damp to support much in the way of wheat cultivation. Indeed, Anne Willan claims in her excellent guide French Regional Cooking that they formed the basis of whole meals, starting with yesterday’s crumbled into soup, followed by a main course of fresh pancakes spread with salted butter, and concluding with a second filled with butter and sugar or jam. They remain incredibly popular, though buckwheat is now generally saved for savoury dishes: look out for the galette-saucisse, the Breton equivalent of a hot dog, at markets throughout the region.
It feels weird not to have someone behind me as I pedal towards my first campsite; terrifying yet also strangely exhilarating. If the last five days have been half-holiday, a gradual easing into this new normality, then the tour proper starts now – and a wet evening in a tent feels like an appropriate baptism of fire, or damp squib, depending on your perspective.
Riding past Bernard Hinault’s son’s bike shop, which saved my silly bacon in 2016, when I’d brought a bike with no functioning brakes on a cycling holiday, I thank God I have no need of it today. I do, however, need somewhere to lay my head before the rain starts again.
Saint-Malo’s municipal campsite may be some way outside the city limits, but to my relief it is at least open, something not entirely clear from its website. The nice chap behind the desk, visibly surprised at a lone female camper, directs me to ‘a very quiet’ pitch behind a hedge, among the trees, which is kind of him, except, as I realise when I get there, it’s overrun with mosquitoes and separated from the rest of the site by a small but significant bog. No matter. I open the pannier with the camping stuff in it for the first time since KnifeGate at Portsmouth, and merrily tip the contents out on the wet grass. Rookie error, but I’m so proud that it only takes me 10 minutes to pitch my tiny tent that I promptly message last summer’s touring buddies to tell them so. ‘Challenge: down to 8 mins in a week,’ one of them responds immediately. Tough crowd.
As it’s raining again, I repair to the bloc sanitaire to wash almost everything I own, and in the meantime, perch stylishly on a plastic chair in nothing but a waterproof jacket and towel, taking advantage of the warmth and free electricity offered by an unplugged* tumble drier to try to plan ahead. There’s nothing to eat on site, and the huge oyster is still making itself comfortable in my stomach, so I end up spending about three hours in there, squinting at train timetables and maps, before finally dousing myself in mosquito repellent and taking my bundle of clean laundry to bed. It occurs to me as I lie there in the dark that perhaps a secluded corner of the campsite is not the best place for a single woman to pass the night, but to be honest, I’m too sleepy to care.
Something I’d conveniently forgotten about camping, though, is that however tired you are, the local birds will still be up with the lark. In fact, given the noise they make from 5 a.m. onwards, possibly they are all larks – in any case, my bijou residence, which has in the past been unkindly compared to a body bag, isn’t really somewhere for a luxuriant lie-in, so after taking at least three times as long to strike camp as to set it, and allowing myself five minutes to sit on a pannier and eat the other half of yesterday’s kouign-amann, I make my way back to Saint-Malo, where I have a reservation on my first train of the trip to Finistère, home to the best crêperie in Brittany, and thus France, and so, I think it’s fairly safe to say, the world.
The department takes its name from the Latin finis and terre, or ‘end of the earth’. Unsurprisingly, it’s not the easiest place to get to, and last night’s reality check in the laundry has put paid to any fantasies of exploring mysterious Arthurian forests. It’s a shame; Brittany, which feels a lot to me like Cornwall – it even has a region called Cornouaille – is a place with a lot to offer the greedy visitor: apart from the aforementioned oysters and kouign-amann, and the inevitable crêpes, its rocky coastline gives forth fabulous fish and seafood, and the land is famous for its butter and cream (though, interestingly, Brittany does not have a great history of cheesemaking: indeed, the old Breton word for cheese was lait pourri, or ‘putrid milk’. Yum!).
Instead I’ll be whizzing through all that on a TGV bound for the port city of Brest, on Brittany’s westernmost tip. It doesn’t leave Saint-Malo until mid-afternoon, leaving me with a lot of time to kill, and not a boulangerie, café or restaurant in sight. For all my grand plans of reacquainting myself with the old town, the remarkably persistent rain makes me disinclined to explore much further afield than the immediate vicinity of the railway station, which is how I end up sitting in the Relay convenience store with an acrid espresso, an Innocent smoothie (the closest thing I can find to fresh fruit) and a family packet of St Michel galettes au bon beurre for breakfast, probably produced in the biscuiterie we passed near the Mont.
After waiting in vain for the sky to brighten, I make an executive decision to retire to the médiathèque round the corner for an executive planning meeting. Even in the May gloom it’s a lovely light-filled building that would be a peaceful place to wile away a few hours if it wasn’t filled with gossiping, flirting teenagers from the local college, fortunately too absorbed with each other to notice me and my very loud shoes. It’s amazing how long everything seems to take – I’m in there four hours, and come away with three restaurant reservations, a campsite for tomorrow night, a strange apartment-hotel for this evening, and some train times scribbled in my journal. All in all, it’s not a great start to my first day on my own. I’d hoped to feel like Paddy Leigh Fermor; instead, I just feel like myself, in a bad mood.
On the plus side, the train is a swanky new one, and I seem to be the only bike booked on it – fortunately, as on locating the correct carriage I realise there’s only one space.
PAUSE-CAFÉ – French Trains
I’m not saying I’m an expert – the French railway is a byzantine operation – but it may be helpful to pass on some of the scanty wisdom I acquired after six weeks of travelling the network.
First off, if possible, speak to an actual human being rather than doing battle with the SNCF website or (even worse) one of their various apps, all of which are hard to navigate, even in French, and can be temperamental.
Secondly, if you’re taking a non-folding bike, you’ll need a reservation for it (€10) on high-speed TGV and other grandes lignes – unless, that is, you want to take it apart and transport it in a housse, or bike bag, maximum dimensions 120 x 90cm, in which case it travels free. Though the website makes great claims about how many spaces each train has (marked with a blue bicycle symbol on timetables), I found they were rarely available, so make sure you check ahead.
That said, if you don’t mind travelling at a snail’s pace, you can take your bike on any regional TER service for free – the bike carriage is usually at the far end of the train, and newer ones have hooks to hang your front wheel from (top tip: take your panniers off first). Though the steps can be a nuisance to navigate on older rolling stock, there’s almost always staff around to help. Try to lock the bike to something, or itself, if you’re going to sit elsewhere; it’s generally safe, but I have seen things stolen in the past.
Both ferries and Eurostar require separate bike reservations – the latter may claim you’ll need to take the