clairedavieswriter

This (with the addition of salted caramel spread, obviously) was the perfect cyclist’s breakfast, thanks to Isabelle’s early morning foray to the man in the village who dishes out crêpes from his roulotte.

Fully fuelled, we positively flew away from Damgan, although Guillaume and I had the first of several contretemps when I diverted from the road onto this newly minted voie verte. I mean, just look at it, how could we not?

At 11.30, we crossed the river Vilaine to the pretty town of La Roche Bernard, of historic shipbuilding fame (No? Me neither, but apparently it was where the first French-designed warship was built, in 1632, by order of the Duke of Richelieu)…

These days, the townsfolk’s metal working skills are put to more modest uses, but can still be appreciated, particularly when the sun is shining…

Speaking of skills, I continued to hone my coffee ordering …

And the sandwich we picked up on our way out of town was so huge it needed its own seat on the rear rack.

Having narrowly avoided cycling onto the motorway, following a further misunderstanding with Guillaume, we crossed into our next département…

Monsieur le Garmin seemed to be in a particularly bad mood today – perhaps he objected to working on May 1st? Whatever the reason, by lunchtime we were not on speaking terms. Nevertheless, Jon and I managed to dodge the traffic:

And found an agreeable spot …

To eat the aforementioned enormous sandwich

We still had another 50k to go, but for the most part this was no hardship:

Though after a longish spell uphill, into the wind and in the sun, a break was in order, and this bus shelter was just the job

Guillaume had one further trick up his sleeve – a gruelling detour along a rubble-strewn track, which included a ford (French word of the day: gué) and earned me my first puncture (thank goodness for the magic goo in tubeless tyres).

But we finally arrived at the bank of the Loire at Nantes, 9 hours after we’d set off. There, we found a warship…

…immediate refreshment with friends:

And dinner, which fell victim to a cyclist’s appetite before it could be photographed. I’m confident we’ll have no trouble sleeping tonight.