A Day in Saint Malo.

April 28, 2023

The old town, La grande plage and the crazy swimmers.

Disembarking from our Brittany Ferry Early morning, Saint Malo is quiet. The harbour activity is beginning and there are fishing boats either just come in or about to go out. There are also craft like orange lifeboats ferrying passengers from a cruise ship.

Paddle board style, heading for a yacht.

We stop and chat for awhile to a fellow passenger/ cyclist who hails from Cambridge. A number of UK cycle tourists have complained to us about the restrictions Brexit has resulted in as far as time on the continent allows. An Irish passport is the answer for some. We wish each other bonne route and head to the town.

We walk our bikes under the city ramparts and following an obligatory coffee and croissant we take a leisurely walk about the cobbled streets. In the summer of 1976 we visited here in our old lime green Ford Escort van, an affront to French sensibilities, even then, I’m sure. I see the sea swimming pool outside the walls is still there.

Sea pool and diving board just visible in distance.

L’Eglise de St Nicholas exudes calm with its dimly lit interior and has stained glass windows that are both pictorial and abstract, but the colours are beautiful.

I didn’t realise the colonisation Canada went back this far. Makes NZ’s seem very recent.

By midday it’s starting to warm up a little and we head for the beach and lunch.

The plage is a wonderfully long strip of golden sand, which even on this coolish day hosts water based activities. Two in particular take our attention. One is a class for children involving kayaking, but what is astounding is how far the Zodiac takes the children out towing kayaks and then puts them into the kayaks to paddle back. All carefully monitored, but the distance is almost out of sight.

The other is a woman of middle years and carrying some bodily protection against the cold, who wades up and down, then dives under a wave or two and resumes her march. There are other swimmers but she outlasts them all. We talk with her later as she makes her way hotelwards wrapped in a thick towelling robe. She explains how invigorating the dip is and how she comes from Lac Annecy ‘which is not the same’. Maybe warmer. She works as a travel agent and lived in New Caledonia for five years so her English is good.

Just visible, or maybe not, our lone swimmer cavorts in the waves.

The beach has history, and the story of its time as an attraction and asset to the public is recorded in noticeboard images along the sea wall.

We then wend our way past the open public area in the direction of our apartment.

By now the effects of waiting in the rain for the ferry at Portsmouth are coming home to roost and I’m feeling somewhat feverish so finding a warm cosy apartment is a vision of bliss. Our velos stashed in a lean to shed at the bottom of the massive back lawn, I lock them up, and cover them with the protective security blanket- our plastic blue drop cloth and head into the warm.

The massive fireplace. Purely ornamental, it looks as it belongs in a castle.

Two, not massive, but thoughtfully left, madeleines.

Today's ride: 15 km (9 miles)
Total: 342 km (212 miles)

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