One More Croissant for the Road

When the funnel begins to smoke, I reluctantly suggest we should probably make a move and insist on chaperoning him all the way to the ticket gates, more for my benefit than his. As he disappears cheerily through them on his way to that much-anticipated buffet, I feel cast adrift like a tiny oyster larvae floating free in the bay. Here I am, on my own, in a strange place, not knowing where I’m going to stay or eat tonight, and a whole month stretching terrifyingly ahead of me. Well, nearly alone. I still have that pied de cheval to keep me company.

Km: 51.8

STAGE 5

Saint-Malo to Redon (#litres_trial_promo)

Crêpes Complètes

Buckwheat crêpes were once the bread of Brittany, a region too poor and damp to support much in the way of wheat cultivation. Indeed, Anne Willan claims in her excellent guide French Regional Cooking that they formed the basis of whole meals, starting with yesterday’s crumbled into soup, followed by a main course of fresh pancakes spread with salted butter, and concluding with a second filled with butter and sugar or jam. They remain incredibly popular, though buckwheat is now generally saved for savoury dishes: look out for the galette-saucisse, the Breton equivalent of a hot dog, at markets throughout the region.

It feels weird not to have someone behind me as I pedal towards my first campsite; terrifying yet also strangely exhilarating. If the last five days have been half-holiday, a gradual easing into this new normality, then the tour proper starts now – and a wet evening in a tent feels like an appropriate baptism of fire, or damp squib, depending on your perspective.

Riding past Bernard Hinault’s son’s bike shop, which saved my silly bacon in 2016, when I’d brought a bike with no functioning brakes on a cycling holiday, I thank God I have no need of it today. I do, however, need somewhere to lay my head before the rain starts again.

Saint-Malo’s municipal campsite may be some way outside the city limits, but to my relief it is at least open, something not entirely clear from its website. The nice chap behind the desk, visibly surprised at a lone female camper, directs me to ‘a very quiet’ pitch behind a hedge, among the trees, which is kind of him, except, as I realise when I get there, it’s overrun with mosquitoes and separated from the rest of the site by a small but significant bog. No matter. I open the pannier with the camping stuff in it for the first time since KnifeGate at Portsmouth, and merrily tip the contents out on the wet grass. Rookie error, but I’m so proud that it only takes me 10 minutes to pitch my tiny tent that I promptly message last summer’s touring buddies to tell them so. ‘Challenge: down to 8 mins in a week,’ one of them responds immediately. Tough crowd.

As it’s raining again, I repair to the bloc sanitaire to wash almost everything I own, and in the meantime, perch stylishly on a plastic chair in nothing but a waterproof jacket and towel, taking advantage of the warmth and free electricity offered by an unplugged* tumble drier to try to plan ahead. There’s nothing to eat on site, and the huge oyster is still making itself comfortable in my stomach, so I end up spending about three hours in there, squinting at train timetables and maps, before finally dousing myself in mosquito repellent and taking my bundle of clean laundry to bed. It occurs to me as I lie there in the dark that perhaps a secluded corner of the campsite is not the best place for a single woman to pass the night, but to be honest, I’m too sleepy to care.

Something I’d conveniently forgotten about camping, though, is that however tired you are, the local birds will still be up with the lark. In fact, given the noise they make from 5 a.m. onwards, possibly they are all larks – in any case, my bijou residence, which has in the past been unkindly compared to a body bag, isn’t really somewhere for a luxuriant lie-in, so after taking at least three times as long to strike camp as to set it, and allowing myself five minutes to sit on a pannier and eat the other half of yesterday’s kouign-amann, I make my way back to Saint-Malo, where I have a reservation on my first train of the trip to Finistère, home to the best crêperie in Brittany, and thus France, and so, I think it’s fairly safe to say, the world.

The department takes its name from the Latin finis and terre, or ‘end of the earth’. Unsurprisingly, it’s not the easiest place to get to, and last night’s reality check in the laundry has put paid to any fantasies of exploring mysterious Arthurian forests. It’s a shame; Brittany, which feels a lot to me like Cornwall – it even has a region called Cornouaille – is a place with a lot to offer the greedy visitor: apart from the aforementioned oysters and kouign-amann, and the inevitable crêpes, its rocky coastline gives forth fabulous fish and seafood, and the land is famous for its butter and cream (though, interestingly, Brittany does not have a great history of cheesemaking: indeed, the old Breton word for cheese was lait pourri, or ‘putrid milk’. Yum!).

Instead I’ll be whizzing through all that on a TGV bound for the port city of Brest, on Brittany’s westernmost tip. It doesn’t leave Saint-Malo until mid-afternoon, leaving me with a lot of time to kill, and not a boulangerie, café or restaurant in sight. For all my grand plans of reacquainting myself with the old town, the remarkably persistent rain makes me disinclined to explore much further afield than the immediate vicinity of the railway station, which is how I end up sitting in the Relay convenience store with an acrid espresso, an Innocent smoothie (the closest thing I can find to fresh fruit) and a family packet of St Michel galettes au bon beurre for breakfast, probably produced in the biscuiterie we passed near the Mont.

After waiting in vain for the sky to brighten, I make an executive decision to retire to the médiathèque round the corner for an executive planning meeting. Even in the May gloom it’s a lovely light-filled building that would be a peaceful place to wile away a few hours if it wasn’t filled with gossiping, flirting teenagers from the local college, fortunately too absorbed with each other to notice me and my very loud shoes. It’s amazing how long everything seems to take – I’m in there four hours, and come away with three restaurant reservations, a campsite for tomorrow night, a strange apartment-hotel for this evening, and some train times scribbled in my journal. All in all, it’s not a great start to my first day on my own. I’d hoped to feel like Paddy Leigh Fermor; instead, I just feel like myself, in a bad mood.

On the plus side, the train is a swanky new one, and I seem to be the only bike booked on it – fortunately, as on locating the correct carriage I realise there’s only one space.

PAUSE-CAFÉ – French Trains

I’m not saying I’m an expert – the French railway is a byzantine operation – but it may be helpful to pass on some of the scanty wisdom I acquired after six weeks of travelling the network.

First off, if possible, speak to an actual human being rather than doing battle with the SNCF website or (even worse) one of their various apps, all of which are hard to navigate, even in French, and can be temperamental.

Secondly, if you’re taking a non-folding bike, you’ll need a reservation for it (€10) on high-speed TGV and other grandes lignes – unless, that is, you want to take it apart and transport it in a housse, or bike bag, maximum dimensions 120 x 90cm, in which case it travels free. Though the website makes great claims about how many spaces each train has (marked with a blue bicycle symbol on timetables), I found they were rarely available, so make sure you check ahead.

That said, if you don’t mind travelling at a snail’s pace, you can take your bike on any regional TER service for free – the bike carriage is usually at the far end of the train, and newer ones have hooks to hang your front wheel from (top tip: take your panniers off first). Though the steps can be a nuisance to navigate on older rolling stock, there’s almost always staff around to help. Try to lock the bike to something, or itself, if you’re going to sit elsewhere; it’s generally safe, but I have seen things stolen in the past.

Both ferries and Eurostar require separate bike reservations – the latter may claim you’ll need to take the bike apart for travel, but quite often they don’t when you actually get there. Bear in mind that the place you’ll need to collect the bike from or drop it off at Paris’s Gare du Nord is so far down the left-hand side you’ll think you’ve gone wrong – follow signs to ‘Bagages Enregistrés Eurostar/Geoparts’. (Note that, at the moment at least, they only take bikes between London, Paris, Lille and Brussels.)

As I gaze out at the countryside through the steady stream of water running down the window, I’m reminded of an old joke from Robb’s book in which a visitor to Brittany demands of a passing infant, ‘Boy, tell me, does it always rain like this here?’ ‘I don’t know, sir,’ replies the child. ‘I’m only eight.’

It only gets worse as darkness falls, and thanks to the sea mist smothering Brest to its damp bosom, I end up seeing little of the city beyond my front wheel. The ‘apart-hotel’, the cheapest of my very few options for tonight, is clearly aimed at commercial travellers, perhaps staying a week or two, and its strip-lit corridors are full of the smells of cooking. When I ask if there’s a garage for my bike, the lady behind the desk shakes her head in apology, before adding, almost as an afterthought, ‘Of course, you’re welcome to take it up to your room if you don’t mind that.’ I can’t believe I’ve heard right – really? She looks puzzled by my reaction and points out the lift as if I might be above hoiking him upstairs. I don’t need telling twice, and Eddy spends his evening in three-star comfort, propped against a trouser press. The French know how to treat a bike.

Having patted him dry with a hotel towel, I turn to the urgent matter of sustenance: I haven’t eaten a proper meal since the crêperie in Dol-de-Bretagne, but this is not a neighbourhood replete with restaurants, and having lugged Eddy all the way up here, I’m loath to take him out foraging in the rain. Thankfully, Madame at the desk saves my bacon for the second time by pointing me in the direction of a supermarket, which, small as it is, offers an embarrassment of options for anyone as easily thrilled by food shopping as me.

I wander its aisles in a distinctly suspicious daze, picking things up, putting them down, goggling at the possibilities (Provençal fish soup! Microwave tartiflette! Instant noodles!). Experience has taught me that the opportunity to ingest vegetables is not one to be sniffed at in France though, so after about half an hour, and just before they chuck me out, I approach the checkout with half a kilo of spinach, a packet of potato pancakes, some salted cream cheese and a block of Brittany butter, and then go back for a bottle of local cider, because I feel like I deserve a drink.

I won’t pretend it’s the most gourmet feast I’ve ever prepared but I do feel better for having swallowed almost an entire bag of spinach drowned in butter and cheese, even if Eddy doesn’t prove the most loquacious of dining companions. It’s nice to see him there when I wake up at some ungodly hour though (curtain check: still raining, but perhaps a little less), and at least I don’t have to share the rest of the powdery pancakes, which are, as with so many things, much better slathered in butter and Marmite.

My first proper solo ride is to Le Faou, a ‘village of character’ about 30km south-east of Brest whose chief attraction is La Frégate crêperie, run by Christophe Beuriot, three times crowned the best crêpier in Brittany. As it’s closed from Sunday to Thursday in winter (which apparently lasts until June here), I’ve grabbed the first free table they had, and after reading woeful reports of people being turned away, even out of season (‘Drove 150km for a nice lunch …’), I’m keen to be on time, which means an early start – it’s not far, but I have no idea of the gradients along the way, and of course the weather still doesn’t look too jolly.

Though it’s rarely pleasant cycling into or out of a city, Brest has the great advantage of being on the coast; even I would struggle to get lost following water, despite the fact I can’t see more than a couple of metres beyond my handlebars. A huge bridge gradually looms out of the fog: the pedestrianised Pont Albert-Louppe, partially destroyed by the German Army in 1944 to halt the Allied advance, has a satisfying 888-metre span, bookended with rather grand 1920s gatehouses – and, on a wet Thursday morning, I have it entirely to myself. Though the tarmac is slick with standing water, and the views all but non-existent, it’s still a buzz to look out and imagine Newfoundland somewhere out there to the west, though in fact, when I look at a map that evening, I realise a fair bit more of Brittany stands between me and my romantic Canadian dreams.

On the other side, I discover that Finistère is a spiky place – the highest hill may be a mere 163 metres, but it gets there with commendable rapidity, and by the time I reach the top, it’s so muggy I tear my waterproof off with claws of desperation. While stuffing the damp garment into a pannier, I get the funny feeling I’m being watched and look up to find myself an object of intense interest for a field of cows, who have silently gathered near the fence for a better look. I feel the weight of their judgement upon my red face, and hastily move on.

Now that it’s finally stopped raining, I can see what I’m riding through: a landscape of stone walls and dripping trees and old-fashioned blue-and-white enamel signs to places with too many vowels stuffed into them – Kerouant, Goarem Goz, Stangmeur, Squivit.

The constant up and down slows the pace, and I succumb to low-level but mounting anxiety regarding my 12 o’clock reservation. The last 10km or so seem to stretch out forever, so I’m relieved to finally see the magic sign proclaiming I’m in Le Faou, twinned with Modbury, UK, and somewhere else in France, just in case Devon proves too exotic. I cross a medieval bridge, pass a 16th-century church and there, at the end of the main street, is the equally ancient-looking building housing La Frégate, the first floor overhanging the ground floor, and the second floor overhanging that, all rising to a slate-tiled point. A wrought-iron frigate in full sail dangles from the corner gable, and outside, men from the town hall are installing great boxes of flowers ready for the summer season.

As I tie Eddy to the tiny stretch of railings they’ve left unencumbered, I watch an elderly couple slowly peruse the menu outside. Had they then walked away, I would have been tempted to run after them to stop them making a terrible mistake, but fortunately they’re already seated by the time I bumble in, covered in chain grease.

Though the restaurant is otherwise deserted at 12.01, I’m still gratified when Madame remembers my reservation, and leads me to a table right by the open kitchen. Perfect. Once furnished with a bowl of cider, I turn my attention to the weighty menu, which kicks off with a lengthy mission statement outlining the criteria La Frégate has had to fulfil to be recognised as a Crêperie Gourmande. These include devoting at least 76 per cent of the menu (!) to crêpes and galettes, and retaining a crêpier with a solid knowledge of local and regional products, such as those provided by the list of suppliers underneath. It concludes with the plaintive note that ‘a Crêperie Gourmande is not a fast-food restaurant – thank you for your understanding’.

There are a handful of seasonal specials – a crêpe with wild asparagus, locally cured coppa pork and Parmesan, and one with abalone (ormeau, a new piece of vocabulary for me), purée of chervil root and more of that asparagus – on top of the standard menu, which offers 48 different possibilities, from ham and egg to seaweed and scallops. I feel panicky, much as I did when confronted with all those oysters, and briefly flirt with the idea of ordering them all in the name of research.

Fortunately, help is on his way, in the form of Christophe himself, who is doing the rounds of the rapidly filling restaurant to greet his guests and show off the ingredients of the moment – the spindly asparagus and fleshy abalone, a sea beast popular in Asia, though these hail from nearby Plouguerneau – ‘€75 a box, shell-on!’ – and a box of the chervil root: ‘Very, very rare!’ he says excitedly. ‘Not common at all.’ I agree I’ve never heard of it. Should I have it? Well, he says, abalone is abalone (unarguable); me, I’d have the asparagus and coppa. It’s made by a friend of mine up the road, and it’s really good.

I feel a great weight lift from my shoulders; the asparagus it is. Relieved, I sit back and indulge in a bit of people watching. There’s a party of pensioners, arguing over who’s going to order what, and a couple next to me signing at each other, which is annoying, because I can’t earwig on their conversation. Opposite is a lone man who looks like he’s on his lunchbreak. I smile tentatively, and then remember I’m covered in mud and oil, and go and discreetly try to mop some from my legs in the loo.

To be honest, he doesn’t look much more impressed on my return, but I don’t care because Madame has brought my crêpe, whose dark golden colour reveals the principal ingredient to be buckwheat. It’s a particularly fine-looking example, a neat triangle, with leggy stalks of asparagus snaking out from underneath a blanket of crisply fried coppa on a mattress of melted Parmesan. There’s even a proper salad, with batons of candy beetroot and discs of purple radish, rather than the usual limp green leaves. God, it’s good – the crêpe itself the best I’ve ever tasted, crisp on both sides, but soft within, its earthy flavour gilded with generous amounts of butter. I think I’d love it even without all the bells and whistles on top, delicious as they are.

I confirm to the young waiter that, yes, as the empty plate suggests, I enjoyed it very much, and naturally I have room for pudding, thank you for asking. On the sweet crêpe menu, which is barely less extensive than the savoury one, a summer special of local Plougastel strawberries with vanilla ice cream tempts me, but then my eye alights upon the Bretonne: a scoop of Breton butter biscuit ice cream, sautéed apples and salted caramel sauce, a description that suggests copious amounts of butter. The reality proves even better: there’s a shard of unadvertised almond brittle, plus a buttery little biscuit that crumbles in the mouth like a sweet and salty sandcastle. The crêpe, finer textured and softer than the buckwheat version, is consequently less interesting, though I still manage to polish it off without too much trouble.