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
