September 17, 2021
Mont Saint-Michel to Saint-Malo
Let's talk about birds, shall we? When you camp, and when there are lots of birds, and when the birds are noisy, they quickly become a memorable part of your touring experience. I wanted to take photos of each of the common birds that visit the trees around us, but this proved to be a difficult task. Instead, I installed the BirdNET app to identify bird calls I wasn't familiar with. I'm not a birdwatcher, but/so this app is awesome! While sitting in the backyard during our rest day, I recorded for about 15 seconds and it correctly identified three different bird species that were making a ruckus all at once!
The one constant from the first hour in Paris to the present moment is the Eurasian Collared-Dove. At first I thought it was an owl, and I thought it was weird that an owl was hooting in the middle of the afternoon. It makes a hoo-hoo-hoo-huh-hoo cry. At times it irks me. Usually it's more like the cicadas during the summer in Korea, where it just becomes meaningless background noise.
There are urban pigeons and crows and seagulls and magpies too, and a bunch of little wren-like birds (BirdNET identified one species as the Goldcrest) that are super chirpy when they feel like it. Sometimes the birds get going an hour before dawn, and other times they wait until dawn or even later. I'd say that in general, the birds are a net benefit to our tour. They watch us, we watch them. We certainly hear them! They probably hear us too and wonder why our calls are so inconsistent.
Today's ride was fueled by pastries. We knew that the "second breakfast" thing was going to start happening at some point. I'm surprised it took so long. Fresh croissants and coffee at the campground were an affordable treat. Our late-morning break found us at a boulangerie, which, to our astonishment, also served coffee! We sampled a kouign amann, a pain aux raisins, and something we both liked which we think was called a pépite -- a long thin pastry with mini chocolate chips. I'm pretty sure we consumed more calories today than we burned.
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We knew we were finally, assuredly in Brittany when we saw these signs:
The first bit of the day was hardpack lined by trees, which transitioned to a beach that confusingly alternated among road, hardpack, and singletrack. It was very flat, and since it was morning, the wasn't much headwind to slow us down. We made good time.
La Velomaritime eventually made us sweat a bit by bringing us up and inland to Saint-Coloumb, a charming town that we used to our advantage. We bought food, had lunch at a cute little park, and stopped at La Poste for stamps. We then found ourselves wending through small farms. Lots of chard, onions, and brightly-colored squash:
Much sooner than expected, we encountered the no-longer-familiar urban milieux, with sketchy bike lanes, stoplights, clueless pedestrians, etc. I was beginning to wonder why people praised St. Malo. It looked like just another beach resort town. Then we came to the old walled city. We didn't go inside, as cobblestones and fully-loaded bikes don't play too well together, but we could tell that it was pretty cool. We'll head back that way tomorrow.
Where we ended up was this almost-island called La cité d'Alet, which is interesting in its own right. The views are lovely, and there's a walled fortification which housed bunkers during World War II. We capped off the evening by visiting an outdoor bar at the other end of this sprawling campground. There's a guy there playing guitar and singing classic pop. We can just barely hear him from our camp site. It's nothing to write home about, but it's nice to hear live music again.
We're expecting rain tomorrow. Our goal is to push on through it and see how far we get. We're going to take the ferry across to Dinard to start the day, which will save us a few kilometers. If we have to make it a short day, we'll still end up "on schedule", whatever that means.
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Today's ride: 61 km (38 miles)
Total: 630 km (391 miles)
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