Biking Day 28

• Length ridden: 112 km
• Ascent: 590 meters
• Rating: 9.5 out of 10 - another great day!
• Highlights: Saint-Pol-de-Leon, meeting Marie and Patrick, the road to Heavan
• Lowlight: Brest, especially with all the construction
• Map of the day

I was in the saddle at 7 am and was excited to experience another great day. In the morning, Morlaix was completely quiet, I was pretty much the only living thing moving (not that non-living things move a lot). My first stop was still in town, it was the building complex called "Manu", which was a tobacco manufactory - bearing witness to Morlaix´s working-class heritage. It is now an exhibition area, a cinema and a concert hall - with some cool art, like the picture of a woman on the stairs.

It was actually quite chilly in the morning - the sun sets quite late in the evening at that part of the Central European Time zone - logically, it rises quite late too. As I was heading towards the north along the bank on the inlet, I was glad to get some warmth from the rising sun.

It was at first like riding next to a river and it got more and more sea-like. At an intersection, I started turned onto a forest, with quite an incline, but then I realized I would miss out the nice views of the coast, so actually turned back (which I rarely do)and caught the scenic coast road.

It was at 8:30 that I got to Carantec, where I wanted to be at the previous night, the first thing that struck my eyes was a chateau in privater hands.

A bit later, at Henvic, there was a nice array of anchored sailing boats.

I rode on and - falsely - thought of having reached the city of Roscoff - which was a milestone - yet another decision point as to whether I should cut over to Ireland or stay in France (you know the answer now that is was the latter, back then, I was still split). I got to not less than 3 major churches and sat down in front of the third - and largest - church to have some coffee and pastry (also called a breakfast). As I later found out, Roscoff was still a few kilometers ahead of me and I was actually in the town of Saint-Pol-de-Leon. This town used to be the seat of a bishop and there is a cathedral with an 80-meter tower.

After a pleasant petit-dejeuner at what I still thought was Roscoff, I got to the coast and met Marie and Pascal, a very friendly French couple, even by the high French standards - they were the ones that informed about the correct name of the town. We chatted for over half an hour - me talking in French, them answering in English. It was a very pleasant conversation - I feel very jealous of them living right next to the coast in such a wonderful place. There was indeed a house for sale right next to the coast, but I would need to buy the winning lottery ticket to be considered a potential buyer.

They also showed me a small, but very pretty peninsula, with beautiful trees and a large rock, which I climbed to get a view of the next town, which indeed was Roscoff. From the rock, I could see a ferry just departing for...probably Ireland.

I started riding in the direction of the ferry, and it was a very narrow road, when, suddenly, a huge truck appeared out of nowhere. As that vehicle was a couple of magnitudes heavier and stronger than me, I thought jumping to the side of road (i.e. off the road) would be prudent - so we did not match our forces. Now I was in the middle of the peninsula, where I bought some juicy fruits and vegetables at a stand - this was an agricultural area. Similar to Caen and Cherbourg, I rolled to the ferry terminal, here the crossing would have been possible, but only two days later, as it was an overnight journey, where a cabin was compulsory; with all cabins being sold out for the day and the next. So, third time is a charm, after a final weather comparison which ended clearly for France (see e.g. here), I finally gave up on the idea of me leaving the county and I was to spend another ten unforgettable days there.

When I finally reached Roscoff proper, its beach was probably the ugliest one I had seen in a long time, it being completely barren due to the low tide. There were some small ferry boats operating to an "island" not far from the coast (I believe it was called Ile de Batz), but it would have been easier to jog over. As it did not look too inviting, I decided to do some sight-seeing within town.

It is very much possible that I had been spoiled by the wonderful towns on my trip, especially in Brittany, or maybe it was the rather overcast weather - Roscoff did not really capture my heart. Still, I found a very beautiful church there, called Notre-Dame-de-Croas-Batz, originally from the beginning of the 16th century.

I looked - in vain - for some other highlights and did not really find anything noteworthy. Now that I am writing this blog, I found out that in the Middle Ages, Roscoff was just an outer harbor of Saint-Pol, the previous scenic town I liked so much. Maybe this fact explains why I was more attracted to that place.

A bit frustrating was that fact that the road from Roscoff was the exact same I had ridden here, at least for a while - and not too scenic for that. From this town onward, the general direction of my journey changes, until now, I was riding - with some exceptions - towards the north, now it was pretty much a southward direction.

It was so that I go to Saint-Pol again and similar to the Mickey Mouse situation in Cherbourg, I decided not to follow the coast all the way to the westernmost point in France (though did consider getting there for a while, then gave up the idea), then ride back east towards the Gulf of Morbihan, but to make a sort of a shortcut through Brittan and ride "down", to the south - so now the town of Brest got into the crosshair. The reason for this was twofold. First, even the coastal roads are not really next to the coast, as we have seen in Morlaix, there are inlets where one has to make gigantic detours. Second, maybe even more important, I was getting a bit tired, it was now that I started looking for "exit strategies", reaching a larger city with ample of train/bus/airplane connection to get home. This was my 28th riding day, so it is you rode through the entire month of February (in a non-leaping-year...).

As I was riding southwest towards Brest, in the middle of nowhere, well, it was close to Saint Vougay, Google tells me to do a right turn, onto an unpaved road - again, someone in Silicon Valley did not do his homework - or mabe they did, as this turned out to the the most beautiful patch of road - despite the fact that it did not lead anywhere, except to a coule of smaller houses. So there is this unpaved road, and I see a beautiful purple bush of hydrangea (also called hortensia) on the left, then another bush to the right, this one light blue, then one on the right, dark blue, and then one more left, one more right, I think a picture would be suitable here, there you go.

Well, I did paste in a picture, bit it does not really do justice, it was so beautiful. I prepared a video, which I sent to my parents, they mentioned the road to heaven must look like this. I do not usually share videos, but here is the link in case you want to view it, hopefully, it works for you.

And talking about surprisingly nice places, the road ahead had some highlights. First, I saw an impressive house - it was not the house, but its garden that was wondeful.

You would think that this was in some posh area in Los Angeles, no, this was a rather agricultural area, so much, that just opposite this house was a large cattle barn. OK, not exactly a "highlight", but the contrast to the villa was striking.

...and in this rather quiet area, I suddenly get to a large castle, called Chateau de Kerjean, built in 1570. The website proclaims "You have to go inside the impressive walls to appreciate the grandeur of the Renaissance-style architecture". No, I was not going to go inside, it was 5 pm and I had seen a bunch of other castles already on my trip. Had I decided to go in, it would have gotten to 6 pm and I would have seen a couple of nicely decorated rooms - not to mention having to spend €10 or so. You see, a certain sense of fatigue was setting in, nothing too bad, but I thought I would skip this experience. The lady at the counter was nice (hey, we are in France, correct?), she let me enter the courtyard for free to take a couple of pictures and even offered some cold water for the remaining part of my trip.

To sum up, all within a few miles of each other was the road to heaven, a Hollywood villa, a cattle barn and then an impressive, 16th century castle. Show me another place that has such variety.

Now it was just a few really wonderful churches in Saint-Derrien, Plounéventer, Plouédern, Ploudaniel, Saint-Divy and Guipavas that followed, here is a best-of selection.

OK, I`ll admit - I included almost all the photos, but this department, called Finistère, was so wonderful.

My mother had prepared me for the "culture shock" of the city of Brest. I think the fact that I made three photos of the entire town gives a picture (pun not intended this time) how little attractive - I would even say unattractive - this place was. I recall first riding through some communal block houses that could have been somewhere in Eastern Europe, then ascending down this major, ugly road towards the centre (what center?), where I was greeted with a socialist-style town hall. To make things worse, there was huge reconstruction going on and the weather was anything but friendly - earlier during the day, it was quite OK, now it was hopelessly overcast. Well, Brest was completely destroyed in the bombings of 1944 had to be therefore rebuilt from scratch - so there is not much of history there.

I had not started thinking about a place to stay just as yet, but as my phone indicated rain would be coming, I thought it would be better to have roof above my head. I sat down on a park bench, and just as I started Googling (or "Booking"), a guy in his twenties showed up and sat next to me. Being quite tired thar evening, I had a nothing-really-matters attitude, so if his intentions would have been vicious, I would have been an easy target. Quite the contrary - he just wanted to have a conversation and was curious as to who I was. When I told him my nick-name was Balu, he took out his cell phone, googled the Junge Book and started singing the song of Mowgli - in French. Like this! That cheered me up actually, as I this place made me a bit depressed. He was then gone just as fast as he had come.

Based on the positive experience with the Brit hotel two days prior to this, I checked to see if there was one in Brest (it is a chain), and yes, there were even two properties, so I booked a room in one of these and then went on my quest to find something - anything - nice in Brest. I got to the main railway station, where friendly taxi drivers (yes, in France even the taxi drivers are nice) held a consilium of how best guide me to my hotel, as the entire city was under construction. They sent me down to the harbor road and told me then to ride east.

I descended to the harbor and that is when I finally found what I was looking for. Resembling the waterfront in Seattle behind Pike Place Market, I reached the port with some thirty or so quite large restaurants and pubs lined up next to each other, overlooking some large cruise ship terminals and small sailboat harbors. They were all pretty full, I guess the entire town fled here as the downtown area was such a mess, with the road works going on. I had already eaten a bit earlier, but I did enter one these places, a sort of a pub, ordered a nice, cold beer and some French (they were indeed French) fries and mingled with the crowd - not in a particular hurry, as my room was already booked.

It was around 10:30 pm that I left towards my hotel and it was still a couple of kilometers away -and, just to make sure I do not get there easily - there was also a bit of a climb at the end of the ride, as the hotel was on a hill, quite far from downtown. An interesting thing happened just when I started riding through the large commercial/freight port. I heard some pipe music, thinking it to be a Scottish pipe. No, the Brettons have their own version of the pipe and these tones came from someone practicing, playing on a wind instrument in a completely abandoned place, all by himself. He was a bit surprised to see me, but readily agreed to play some music for me - explaining that there was a big competition coming up the following week - I hope he will have done pretty well there. He gave me the link to song that supposedly won the competition the previous year, in 2023; I forgot all about it until now, when I am writing the blog and am listening to the song while writing these sentences. Here is the link - it is pretty cool!

I got to my hotel, Brit Hotel Le Relecq-Kerhuon, which was not as nice as the previous one in the chain, but the welcome was as usual friendly, the bed clean - so I dozed off, having ridden 112 kilometers that day.