My Penultimate Ride

France: Tour de Manche Stage 10 – Fri 31th July 2015 – Pleumeur-Bodou to Plestin-les-Grèves (55 Km)

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This morning I enjoyed petit dejeuner in the Panorama Room overlooking the golf course and the sea. This was not like the very basic continental breakfasts (baguette and croissant) that I have been experiencing up until now. There was an array of fruit, cereals, juices, teas, yoghurts, fruit breads, and brioche, all nicely presented and with a microwave to heat up the breads and pastries. Breakfast almost matched the 3-course Plat de Jour I had last night in the main restaurant. Golfers know how to live!

All fuelled up I set off on my journey from Pleumeur-Bodou to Plestin-les-Grèves. I was in no hurry to leave the resort because it was a short stage of only about 45 Km today and I didn’t want to arrive too early because check-in at Hotel Les Panoramas is not until 4 pm. After giving my bike some love (cleaning the rims and brake pads, checking all the nuts and bolts, etc.) it was around 10 am before I left for my next day of adventure.

Being the second last day of my tour I wanted to savour the ride, but the first 20 Km section to Lannion (Lannuon in Breton) was probably the least attractive I have encountered so far. Instead of roadside hydrangeas there was now bracken, and the little towns like Trébeurden (Trebeurden in Breton) lacked the lustre of most of the others I have seen. The weather was fine but unlike the fluffy white clouds yesterday there were now streaky grey clouds smeared across the sky. On a positive note, except for a few hundred metres of gravel path, the road surface was excellent along this stretch. Although there was fairly heavy traffic and no shoulder to ride on, there was at least a nice grassy verge to land on should I have the misfortune of being clipped by a car.

Lannion is a small cosy town in the Côtes-d’Armor department of Brittany, with some interesting tudor style buildings. I stopped at a boulangerie patisserie there to buy a salad baguette and a pain du raisin to take with me to eat along the way. Most of these shops describe themselves as “artisan” so I looked up the dictionary meaning … “a person or company that makes a high-quality or distinctive product in small quantities, usually by hand or using traditional methods”. Yes, I think they are justified in calling themselves “artisan”.

You may have noticed that many of the towns display the sign Ville Fleurie. This means “Flower City” and is a competition being run in France, which requires houses to display window boxes of geraniums.

After Lannion I rode on smooth, traffic free, country roads for most of the reminder of the trip. This stretch was pleasant enough, riding through farmlands and cornfields. Given that the French eat so much bread I would have expected to see more wheat crops than corn, but it is the other way around. Perhaps the crop that looks like corn is actually silage maize, used as fodder, rather than sweet corn.

Arriving at Plestin-les-Grèves at around 2:30 pm I had to hang around until 4:30 pm to check in at the Hotel Les Panoramas, but it was worth waiting for because the views from my window are indeed panoramic. There is nothing much in the town of Plestin-les-Grèves, in fact I rode around looking for the City Centre and then realised that I had been through it.

Tomorrow is the last leg of my journey, a 75 Km ride to Roscoff where I stay the night before catching an early ferry to Plymouth on Sunday morning.