by Philip

Miles : 45. Ascent : 1,529’

*** our internet service tonight is very poor so there are no photos – we will add these tomorrow hopefully ***

Having fought with the hob last night we had a good dinner of salmon and salad, with peach and apple as dessert. It was a good first day and we both felt weary at its end. We agreed to set our alarm for 6:30 so we didn’t feel rushed in the morning before our 45 mile day – but somehow time behaved differently compared to the US last year, and we were up, fed, packed and on the road by 9:10. Not sure how we managed that. 

The sun made a brief appearance as we left, and we had the delight of a deer with fawn in a field to our right and a bird of prey which may or may not have been an owl on a telegraph pole. Today is our 35th wedding anniversary, and had started with opening a few cards over breakfast – mine to Liz featured owls, which have been a recurrent theme over these 35 years, so it seemed apposite that one came to greet us as we started the ride today. 

We had narrow country lanes for a few miles to get us back onto the trail from our cottage, and then a good number of miles on a delightful trail, possibly a disused railway line, tree lined and very peaceful. We saw pinnate plants along the trail, and cyclists in both directions from time to time. All uphill for the first 5 miles though! As I write this first piece, we are snacking on a bench, with a lake behind as and the patter of rain drops beginning. The forecast is for a little rain this morning but hopefully not too much. 

Leaving our bench we soon reached the top of the hill, and then enjoyed a couple of miles freewheeling … because it’s an old railway line, the gradients are very gentle, but with our laden bikes momentum soon builds and it was a lovely spell after several miles uphill. 

The route continued to be peaceful, with many small birds flitting about and at one point a buzzard flying along in front of us. We passed several old railway stations, one of which boasted an “atypical restaurant” open 7 days … which was closed. We rode through a place which had various mobile shepherd’s huts, yurts, and bonfire places, and then had to pull off the trail as a rickety horse drawn cart passed conveying local tourists. Coming out of the forested trail at one point we enjoyed the beauty of large fields of maize, buzzards overhead, and a sign showing that we were on the Morlaix-Carhaix green path. One great thing about today’s ride is that, so far, most of it has been on this path – no traffic to contend with (other than horse drawn carts) – we’ve seen more cyclists today than we did altogether in Washington and Oregon put together last year! 

Lunch was on a welcome bench after 20 miles, interrupted by a little rain. Several people passed, wishing us “Bon appetit”, and one lady cycled past with a large fluffy dog in a trailer behind her – very cute. 

After lunch it was largely downhill in to Carhaix. Up to this point we had been in the “Parc Naturel d’Armorique” which was largely forested, but at Carhaix the vista opened up. We had done our research and knew we needed to shop in Carhaix as there’s nowhere else before Glomel – we had carefully planned to detour to a supermarket only to find a LeClerc hypermarket right on our route – very convenient!  

Having wound our way through Carhaix, we were back on the railway line for a couple of miles, and then without much warning found ourselves on the towpath of the Nantes-Brest canal. We had a good ten miles along the path which was well maintained, generally flat with little 6-10’ climbs as we approached each lock. We noticed that the water level was very low in places and at first wondered if the hot summer had caused this, but as we progressed it became apparent that the canal is derelict. There were several notice boards but they all provided information about the history of the canal (eg its construction in part by PoWs in 1832) – not what happened more recently. The demise of a canal is sad – but it was still a haven for wildlife – we saw two kingfishers, an otter, an egret, many butterflies, dragonflies and numerous other unidentified birds – we had our eye glued to the water and managed to keep ourselves out of it!  

After 46 miles we found our little AirBnB and were rather pleased to be out of our saddles.