Except that I hate riding on the street with cars that are driving any faster than say, 20 or maybe 30 miles an hour. I rode my bike on 6th Street to work a couple of times, and on 4th and 7th back home, and once on South 1st on the way downtown. Oh, and once I rode my bike down Guadalupe, from 51st to just south of campus. People were meanest there, tailgating and honking and shouting things. So my experience of road riding really had not been very pleasant. What all that boiled down to was that I didn't want to go on any highway type roads where people's main goal was to run over and kill cyclists.
As it turned out, the only way via road to Dinard was on such a highway. And even worse, the entrance ramp to the highway was steep and curved and narrow with no shoulder. I will make a very long story short by saying we pedaled all around the area, all the rest of that day (remember, we had spent up til 230 just getting our bikes) with me refusing to go on the highway, and pretty much freaking out anytime Mike suggested we just do it.
The up side is that the country was really gorgeous and the roads we were on were nice quiet country roads that you could have driven a donkey cart down. The down side was we made no progress, because in the end we just went back to St. Malo and Mike was pretty sure I should never even get on a bicycle again for the rest of my life. We went to sleep thinking to take back the bikes and just go back to good old old-fashioned train and bus travel.
Except that I found out there was a ferry from St. Malo to Dinard, a frequent and cheap one at that. And the next morning Mike relented and decided maybe I didn't have to be banned from bike travel just yet. So, we headed back to the bay, and as promised, there was a ferry, 12 euro for us and the bikes, coming in just 30 minutes.
 |
| No ferry troll this time, just walk right up on the boat! Biking Brittany |
So, we got on the boat and headed over the bay... no awful highways and no blood thirsty motorists. Fifteen minutes later we had crossed over the water and were safely deposited on Dinard's coast.
 |
| Even Mike liked the ferry better than Death Highway. Biking Brittany |
 |
| No cars! Biking Brittany |
In Dinard, the first thing we do is find this awesome little walking path, wide enough to push the bikes. It follows the entire coast around to the old city, just up a ways from the ferry drop off. We eat lunch on the rocks, watching sailboats and speculating about the offshore islands. When we get to the beach, it is this huge wide sandy thing, powdery and perfect, with gold flecks! Go to the album if you want to see a crappy picture but I am not kidding, the entire beach sparkled. Mike went for a swim and we walked on the beach for awhile and it was all really awesome except that we still hadn't really started our biking part of the trip.
So, we headed for old town and the tourist office. Riding in Dinard was like going to Mayberry. There were maybe a couple of cars cruising around here and there, plenty of people walking around, and none of the motorists looked like they really had it out for anyone possibly jamming up their roads.
Dinard is where we found out about the Green Route. We did have to go back into the tourist office three times to ferret out where this route was. The secret to European travel and tourist offices is that you have to be REALLY REALLY specific. What you ask is exactly what you get. You kinda have to dig a little.
In the end, we ended up with this awesome map that had walkable and bikeable offroad routes, as well as all the auto routes, varying from teeny one lane country lanes up to the kind of highway that had almost been our cycle trip's demise. Mike had read about the green route online before we left, and said it sounded really awesome. And since it started just down the road from where we were, we decided to head inland, following the old railroad down to the town of Dinan.
 |
| Riding the rail from Dinard to DinanBiking Brittany |
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment