Becherel, books, bombard and beans

On a "normal" holiday, departure day marks the end of the journey. When you are touring, almost every day is departure day, but it is also arrival day somewhere new. We had the panniers packed and bikes loaded in record time this morning (just prior to 9am, definitely a Family ByCycle best!). Morgane invited us to have some breakfast, and Ruth really wanted to play with her new friend Brewen, so we took time with our hosts and lined up with our trailers for a group portrait before we left.

Ruth really really didn't want to leave, and threw her first full-power tantrum of the trip. I had to wrestle her, kicking and screaming into the trailer. I knew a little of how she felt. The stay with Morgane and Marin was like wandering into a little corner of heaven, and leaving was a wrench even with the promise of more adventures to be had on the road ahead.

We headed towards Becherel for our lunch stop, and back out onto roads used (in the opposite direction) for this year's Tour de France, passing the very pleasant-looking municipal campsite which we'd originally planned to use. Forewarned by Marin, we were expecting a decent climb up to our intended lunch stop, but were promised that the rewards would be worth it. Indeed, the warning wasn't for nothing. It was a long climb (on the road this time) with several false summits on the way which turned it from a "grit your teeth and struggle to the top climb" into a definite "get off and push" climb in places. Thomas Ivor and Daddy had fewer difficulties but still looked tired at the top.

Arriving into Becherel, it was clear why the town is such a tourist honeypot. Narrow, picturesque streets of bookshops, little eateries and lovely views back down that massive hill. Our appetite for galettes whetted by Morgane's lovely cooking, when we found a crêperie, we couldn't refuse, and the Family ByCycle caravane was soon safely parked up at the roadside. Five galettes, four crepes and about a million litres of water later (it was thirsty work getting up there!) we emerged back into the sunshine to look around. Becherel isn't called the 'Cité des Livres' for nothing, and we had arrived during a book festival. Long trestle tables loaded with books lined the street. The art galleries exhibited works inspired by French literature. The whole atmosphere of the place breathed culture.

We were therefore delighted to pause to listen to two young Breton children who sat down in the street and began to play Breton folk music. Since our ferry wake up call, Thomas Ivor had been asking about what French music was like, so this was a great chance to stop and soak up the atmosphere. The two young people were very competent musicians, and they soon gathered a crowd and accrued (to their innocent surprise) a fair few well earned euros in their instrument case. Tom has come away wanting to acquire a double reeded 'bombard' (in addition to the billig - the Breton shopping list is getting expensive!) to join the three trombones, tuba, piano, saxophone and assorted recorders in the Family ByCycle musical collection. Ruth and Rhoda were surprisingly engrossed in the music given that they were both due a nap, and we lingered in Becherel for an extra hour.

It was therefore with some relief (given that today was another relatively long mileage day) that we knew the next section of our road would very definitely be downhill. It turned out to be the steepest and longest descent of the trip. Thomas Ivor in particular did us proud, confidence restored after his spill earlier in the trip, and we made good time towards the Ille et Rance canal.

I reached where Tom and Thomas Ivor had stopped at the canal, to find Tom looking at his watch. It was later than it looked, and we needed to warn our next hosts that we were running an hour or so late. Tom dropped his pace to keep me company for the last stretch, which was along more traditional, waterside tow path with a sandy surface (really loose in places - drive chains caked with grit again after five minutes!). We passed plenty of families out walking and fishing together, and a decent number of other cyclists (mainly leisure riders rather than cycle tourists) who without exception all shouted a cheery hello. Perhaps, like yesterday, that Breton flag on the trailer does make a difference! Betraying our true nationality, Tom called out a greeting to a slightly bewildered couple on their boat, with an Ullapool registration, telling them that was where we'd cycled last summer!

I was looking forward to some more nice level canal path after the morning's exertions, but after passing a number of locks and with the tourist count thinning out, we took to a section which was not really canal towpath, but rather cycle path climbing up the hillside alongside the canal through the trees. It was shady, which was nice, but otherwise quite tough going with the trailer since the surface was loose and criss-crossed with tree roots. Before long, I was lagging far behind the boys, and running out of steam. The girls woke from their nap (probably due to the sudden change in surface). I wondered what they would make of this, but I needn't have worried. They were delighted with the bumps and wobbles, promptly deciding that mummy and the trailer were the "Ninky-Nonk" and they were off for a bumpy ride. Mummy was slightly less delighted, but happy children makes for an easier ride even if you do think you might be about to lose your teeth as the trailer snags on tree roots for the millionth time. In due course, though, it flattened back out and we joined the road, passing the railway station (Thomas Ivor's first sight of French trains in the flesh) as we entered town.

Our hosts for this evening are Yves and Christine, cyclists who had taken their two daughters in a trailer and cycled round France when they were not much older than our girls are now. We had a delicious meal al fresco in their garden and enjoyed learning from them how they thought their travels had benefitted their girls, and listened to their plans for their next trip as a couple now that both girls are off to university.

Violette and her father Yves, pictured by Thomas Ivor

When we tell people that we are taking our children cycle touring, most think we are mad. It is so nice to meet families who have put doubts to one side and gone out and done it. Our circumstances and resources mean that we are not really able to throw caution to the wind and take off for months or years at a time, but hearing about their experiences inspires us to believe that we have more in us, even in our shorter holiday rides.

Who will buy...?

I'm not a morning person. I never have been. I'm just not the sort of person who wakes, or is woken, and automatically dives headlong into a new day, full of bounce and vitality, like  a character in a breakfast cereal advert. At the other end of the day, I can keep plugging away into the night, but don't call me in the morning.

Alastair Humphreys wrote "Mornings come peacefully on the road". Now that I am settled back into being 'on the road', even a broken spoke isn't disturbing that peace.

In a complete reversal of the normal order, I woke first this morning, at dawn. Instead of fighting the daylight, or being aware of other people having beaten me to it, I heard the sweet silence of the morning, punctuated only by birdsong, the occasional call from Morgane and Marin's rooster, and the tolling of a distant church bell, quite unlike those we hear at home. All the moment wanted for was some Grieg playing in the background.

Tempting as it might have been on another day to vegetate and luxuriate in the calm, and despite the mileage we've done, which at the moment amounts to more strenuous exercise than I am ever used to at home, I got up, got dressed, and, taking the camera, slipped out into the crisp morning air. With the lifting of the burden of a day already being accounted for before it even begins, and with the children still asleep, I was wound back a decade or more, to the days when I would have gone out to take photographs, just for the pleasure of it, and because I could. Nothing earth shattering, but a wholesale and liberating paradigm shift all the same. Shades of the first scene after the intermission, in 'Oliver'; "Who will buy this wonderful morning...".

I can only attribute to the invigorating power of the road, the slowly settling change in me.

That's not to say we didn't have things to do today, because that spoke wasn't going to fix itself, and our bikes were literally caked in sand and grit after many miles on the voies vertes. The resulting mess was like having oiled your bike with cutting compound.

I returned to the house, where everyone else was starting their day. We breakfasted with our hosts, the girls taking the opportunity to show their new friend Brewen 'In the Night Garden' on the iPad, in between playing with his toys. Oh, add rhubarb jam to the menu when we get back home!

Morgane, Marin and Brewen were off to a baptism, so we let them get on their way and got ourselves ready for a trip into St Méen le Grande, the nearest town, to try and get my spoke fixed, and source some kit to clean the bikes with. Riding the bikes unladen was something of a novelty!

A beautiful new mural adorns the water tower as you enter Saint Méen Le Grand.

Saint Méen Le Grand is a cycling town, justifiably proud of her most famous son, three-time Tour de France winner Louison Bobet. We have seen, again, levels of civic pride we just don't recognise from home, heightened of course because of the passage of a stage of the Tour this year. Every shop in town has a picture of their 'local boy done good' in the window. To think all we managed for our Olympians was a thin coat of gold paint on a post box.

In the midst of this cycling fervour, rolling into town we were stopped by a Police  roadblock - for a bunch of roadies! We never quite got to the bottom of what the event was, but there were loads of them knocking about town. The first guys we stopped to talk to told us the bike shop wasn't open all day, so we got on with that bit of the job first.

In a town like this, we were unsurprised to find a nicely-appointed bike shop, with something of a racing bent; lots of lovely rims hanging up, but nothing of the kind that might have tempted me to buy a replacement wheel. The mechanic took the view that rebuilding the whole wheel would be uneconomic, so we had him crack on and change the broken spoke, whilst we had a whizz round the shop buying cleaning materials and a couple of new chains. I'd had some slipping a couple of times yesterday, and having previously broken one (embarrassingly, in the middle of a road-rage incident, whilst on a roundabout, towing the trailer) in Exeter last year after our trip to Scotland, I figured that whilst they've not done massive miles, at almost a year old, and now covered in rubbish, they could go.

I also managed to source a cycling-themed souvenir from our trip, which will appear in due course...

It was back into town for lunch next, via a cracking patisserie, with their obligatory picture of Bobet in the window. We're learning not to miss lunchtime now! 

We struggled to find somewhere to park the trailer, and our bikes, in the blistering midday heat. In the end, the bikes were locked up at one end of the town square and the trailer came with us to the other. We got some funny looks for parking Ruth and Rhoda a few metres from our table outside the restaurant, but the shade was critical, not only for the comfort of the sleeping girls (and 'Froomey') but for the cakes nestled in the back!

Unsurprisingly, it was galettes for lunch, with some new fillings. Smoked salmon and crème fraîche couldn't be passed by, but when we translated 'Noix de St Jacques', I had to order one of them as well...

Thomas Ivor put away another plateful of steak haché without blinking. It makes such a change for him to just demolish meals without fuss - the lad's clearly been working hard.

Lunch concluded (crêpes all round!), we went back out down 'Rue Louison Bobet' (that man again!) to the industrial estate, to visit the supermarket for some provisions, and for a naughty trip to the jet wash. A bottle of degreasant later, we had the worst of the muck rinsed off the bikes, ready to ride back to base to change the chains and give the drivetrains a thorough clean. This went well enough except for the heart-stopping moment when Thomas Ivor, who was supposed to be keeping an eye on Rhoda as I linked up my new chain, took my filthy old one and made for the house and our hosts' living room. Mercifully, we got to her just in time!

We've had a lovely day in Saint Méen Le Grand, although we must move on once more tomorrow. Another time perhaps we will be able to make time to visit the Bobet museum. We have dropped the shortest day of our schedule to stay here, so we do have mileage to make up tomorrow once more, but we and the bikes are refreshed, the distance won't break any records, the weather is nice, and perhaps I can even look forward to another relaxing early start in the morning.

Religieuse, Ribot, Rayon, Relax

At the conclusion of today, four things stick out in my mind, and it all began at the end of the street where we stayed last night in Loudéac.

Rolling into town, trying to balance Google maps with not leaving Katie behind to keeping Thomas Ivor on the anti-clockwise-and-narrow at roundabouts, I didn't take in much of Loudéac, but upon turning onto the street the hotel was on (for 'hotel', read 'promised land' by this point!) I would have had a job missing the boulangerie/patisserie at the head of the building line. 

In the first glance I formed the instant opinion that upon checking out from the promised land, manna was likely to be found therein. 

I was right. And some!

With the novel advantage of having neither bedding nor tent to pack away, and our bikes still half loaded having spent the night slumbering in the back of the hotel kitchens, we were rolling sooner than usual this morning, and Thomas Ivor grabbed a quick picture outside the hotel before the shortest leg of the day, back to the bakery.

Ruth has so far not spoken much French, it is fair to say, but my word, can she work the 'international language of the gesture'! It was one of those moments when your heart melts, as she entered the shop and just gazed for a moment in wonder, trying to take in the bewildering array of sugar, cream, chocolate, fruit and pastry before her. She couldn't quite believe her eyes.

Soon, she very much could believe her eyes, and had not only decided what she wanted to order, but that she was going to conduct the necessary procurement exercise herself. Not only did she manage to say 'please' and 'thank you' in French, but she managed to pay for the cakes herself, with but a sotto voce reminder from Mummy to take her change.

Oddly enough, the Religieuse which Ruth had so carefully chosen and delicately carried out of the shop was subsequently demolished with great gusto...

All we had to do before we left town was to pick up some milk for the girls. 

That sounds simple enough, but we've been surprised to find how difficult it is to get milk round here. Yesterday in Gouarec our lunch stop told us they only had cream, for cooking with. I am neither a milk nor a tea drinker, but it would seem that the absence of the latter from the local diet makes it harder to obtain the former! Where we have bought milk, it has generally been semi-skimmed or lump it. All we needed was a supermarket and we could be on our way, and the sat-nav was telling us that we would go right through the middle of town to rejoin the voie verse. There had to be somewhere selling milk, somewhere along that route - surely?

We were almost back on the railway path and fearing that we would have to backtrack right the way through town, our early advantage wiped out, until, half way round a roundabout, I spotted out of the corner of my eye a branch of Netto. Sorted!

The day's heat was sneaking up on us as I waited in a car park with Katie's bike, the trailer, and all three children, as the former dashed into the supermarket, returning a while later with water for our bidons and 'milk'.

'Lait ribot' turns out to be quite unlike ordinary milk - it would seem to be partially fermented buttermilk, with salt added. Katie described it as 'like drinking sour yoghurt' and frankly her facial expression upon tasting it told me all I needed to know about its suitability for the girls' morning lactose fix. Seriously frustrated, Katie trudged back across the street and further along, found an organic supermarket (beware genetically-modified supermarkets) with something a little more palatable. Finally, having found a storm drain for the other stuff (lest it become cheesy as well as salty, in the back of the trailer), we got back on our way out of town. 

The remains of the Réseau Breton

The relaxed French way of doing things, which gives rise to the sacrosanct lunch period, actually becomes a source of stress for us, because it gives us a deadline in the middle of the day and reduces flexibility. As it became apparent that we weren't going to make it to Merdrignac for lunch, we took the decision to take a signed link off the path to a fair-sized village where we reckoned we should find somewhere to eat.

A short but very sharp climb later (ideally accompanied by the 'Hovis' music, played on an accordion) past a number of encouragingly-named but distinctly 'ferméed' buildings, we arrived at what turned out to be the only outlet in the village these days, a sports bar with an en suite village shop.

Thomas Ivor and I walked into the bar and practically everyone turned to look. It was like I'd burst into a wild west saloon with a gun in each hand. I'm not sure they see many English families there, in fairness. I had a quick scout of the place, looking for signs of food, but was aware of the eyes following me.

"Who are they?" asked maillot jaune-clad Thomas Ivor, pointing to a frame on the wall filled with pictures of cycling legends. Channelling my inner 'Fraülein Maria', I put my 'confidence in confidence alone' and spoke loudly enough for my audience to hear, too. "That's Jacques Anquetil, son. Big Grandad remembers going to watch him in the tour. There's Eddie Merckx - they used to call him 'the Cannibal'! That man there is Laurent Fignon, I can just about remember seeing him when I was first watching bike racing on the telly, and Bernard Hinault, there, 'the Badger' - these are all very famous, very talented riders, Thomas..."

I glanced over my shoulder; it had worked. The faces were smiling. Suddenly, it seemed, we were accepted. Come to a rural sports bar in Brittany and talk cycling, and it's like a French family arriving in a working men's club in West Yorkshire and talking about Rugby League. I imagine.

Katie, having decided that it was here or bust for lunch, spoke to the genial proprietor of the establishment. No, they didn't serve food, but if we bought our drinks from the bar, we could get something from the en suite shop and sit at a table to eat it. It was the next best thing in the circumstances.

We cobbled together a lunch of stale sliced bread, ham and cheese, a big bag of crisps, and since we didn't have a handkerchief to eat it off, like the local men around us, we fetched out food boxes and sporks from Thomas Ivor's panniers to use as crockery.

We rolled back down the hill to rejoin the voie verte and pressed on, sheltered from the heat by the trees for most of the way. The surface was more sandy in places, but it had generally been tamped down well; the gradient profile was also far more gentle than we'd experienced on the run to and out of Carhaix.

We were in good time for our arrival with our Warmshowers hosts for the night, so much so that we took the time to get the girls out for a nappy change, clean clothes and a leg stretch towards the end of the run, where Ruth learned about the workings of a combine harvester, of which we've seen a few in Brittany. All was going brilliantly until I picked my bike up. The load on the wheel as I raised it up managed to pop another spoke. Just when we were gaining confidence!

The last couple of miles passed in a more circumspect fashion, as I tried to keep my wheel as straight as I could. Thomas Ivor and I stopped briefly to talk to a couple who were evidently impressed with the little guy's progress. Their English, unusually, was no better than my French, at which as I ran out of vocabulary I had to explain that my wife would be along shortly!

As we homed in on our destination, we turned off an already bucolic, rural railway path, further into the backwater. Following field boundaries we came upon a sign for a road serving only two houses, and as we approached the end, out came Morgane, our host, to meet us. After ferries, campsites and a hotel, it was like arriving home. Soon we were joined by little Brewen, and with Thomas Ivor playing photographer, despite sharing not a single common word between them, the children hit the slide together.

We've been welcomed like old friends into Morgane and Marin's home, as have the bikes and the trailer, who are tucked up with our hosts' Chariot in the workshop. We've enjoyed our first galettes of the trip (more of which tomorrow), and been introduced to some of the more vernacular aspects of contemporary Breton culture - like 'Breizh Cola'! It's clear to us that there is a tremendous sense of civic pride here - both at a local level and in Brittany as a whole. Although many of the closest cultural similarities are to Cornwall, the identity reminds me a lot of Wales.

We're reliably informed that there's a decent bike shop in St Méen le Grand, just up the road, so today's spoke can be attended to tomorrow. After a couple of days of logistical difficulties, the Family ByCycle are tucked up in their little outhouse in rural Brittany, and we're feeling quite at home!