A large pasta meal cooked on our stoves , followed by apricot flan and then a dry night, set us up nicely for today. No rush as we were booked on a train at 1200 from Vannes which was only 8km away. So a gentle ride which took us alongside the fortified city and straight to the station.
We had an hour to sit and drink tea and speculate how the process of taking bikes on trains would work here. Full size bikes weren’t allowed on the TGV service, so we had to use the slower TER regional trains. Because these routes can be busy in high season, bikes need their own tickets. We had the tickets, but if French railways were anything like the UK, then that would be of little comfort !
In the event boarding was straightforward , it helped that the train commenced it’s journey in Rennes, so we had plenty of time to get sorted. 6 hooks were provided for bikes above a row of folding seats, which were of course occupied ! I used my best school boy French to persuade one of the occupants to move, which he begrudgingly did, though not without a Gallic shrug and loud sigh. That gave us enough room to stow the bikes sideways.
As the train progressed we were rather glad that we got on first !
The journey was enlivened by a gentleman who took four attempts at different stations to get off the train. The train would arrive, then about a minute after the doors opened he would slowly get up and wobble towards the exit, each time just a little to slowly to reach them before they closed. At the last attempt we gave him a helping hand to get off quickly and onto the platform. He was either drunk or on drugs, or both !
That was pretty much the excitement for the day. We offloaded the bikes at Rennes and then after a circuitous ride out of the city we hit about 10km on a busy road. Fortunately like most of the other major roads we have ridden here, there was a cycle path. We spent the afternoon trying to outrun dark clouds behind us, but we failed, so as usual it was a partly wet ride. Around 5pm we rolled into the municipal campsite for what is scheduled to be the last night of camping, tomorrow we have a hostel booked and then a hotel in St Malo as we have a morning ferry.
Steady Pedals 