Escape from Dinan

We spent about 4 hours that day cycling along the rail line. A couple of times, the little green bike signs marking the path pointed us onto little roads as we went south, and eventually we ended up on the river path into Dinan.

Just outside Dinan. Biking Brittany

We dropped our gear at that night's campground and decided to walk up the hill into the city as my cycle muscles were pretty much pooped. Old town Dinan centre turned out to be really awesome with the narrow cobbled streets, a supermarket and lots of restaurants still open even at 930. We settled on a crepe place that had its front window full of backpacker awards. Mike had canard (duck) roasted in escargot garlic butter and I had smoked salmon with some kind of delicious sauce. We completely stuffed ourselves, immediately got really tired, and went back to crash.
The next morning we went up into town for groceries and coffee, and a little daytime looksee.

Standing at the wall of Old Town looking down at our river route. Biking Brittany

Down at the river for 'neck craning views' of the viaduct. The tower in the background is where we were for the previous pic. Biking Brittany

As it was moving on towards noon, we decide to kick on and get on the road, heading back north toward St. Malo via this pink line on the map, which represented a coastal trail following the inlet all the way back up to the bay. At first, the going was great with the nice wide kaliche covered trail along the river. But after maybe a half hour, our pink line took a little jag into the woods. Then, onto some road. Then, onto some smaller roads. And finally, it turned into a tiny little grassy lane, dove directly between two obviously private houses and through their backyard before literally plunging straight into heavy forest down a muddy root riddled hill. We were now pushing rather than riding but we figured the pink line would eventually return us back to a decent path.

Coming out of the woods. Biking Brittany

For a little while it did. We rode down lots of bitty one road towns, again through someone's property, and over wider grassy paths through corn and barley fields, or sometimes wildflowers. We pretty much saw no one except cows and horses that acted like they'd never seen people in their lives. The weather was perfect and we had the French country side all to ourselves. It wasn't long though, before our path led us down another road that dead ended at what was kind of a pier, without a pier. There was the inlet, full of boats and windsailers. And a little restaurant/bar, with about 6 or 7 boaters having lunch and drinking beers. It was like the rural French version of Hula Hut.

You can't really see the Hula Hut, but there are all the boats in the distance. Biking Brittany

Our dead end was dead for wheeled traffic. The pink path had turned into a forest trail again, this time climbing up a steep hill covered with half buried rocks and even more roots than before. Perfect for hikers, which, as we had suspected in the beginning, the pink path mainly catered to. There was no way we were going to push all that gear and the bikes up that hill so we started looking for alternative routes that would meet back up with the pink later on. This worked for a little while.
But when we finally got to our path meeting place, we had some trouble finding it. According to our map, our path began in a small ravine and headed back towards the coast again. What we found was a small crescent of overgrown jungle in the middle of a corn field. And, if you parted the nettles and weeds at the mouth of this ravine, what you saw first was skid marks in the mud, made from the slipping feet of hikers before us. Then, peering down into the shadows, you could just pick out the little footpath, winding away into the gloom.
We were left with one choice- push the bikes back up the hill, through the dirt and the corn back to the road. Then, it was backtrack and try another meeting place, or stick to the roads to make our way north. Or, we could quit the pink path completely and go back to Dinan where the river path went away south. From there, we could follow that river for pretty much as long as wanted. It was a pretty obvious choice. Forget the coast. It had taken four hours of intermittent cycling, pushing and map poring to get us where we were. Fed up with the pink line, we decided to plot our return to Dinan via road. We had started riding that day around noon. We gave up the coast in the cornfield around 530. And by 610, we were back at the river, just in time to have dinner at our noontime lunch spot- the same spot our pink path had gone bad.

Goodbye pink path, I'm sticking to the river. Biking Brittany