We stayed in a modern apartment in Brest, small but comfortable. While the building had an elevator to take our bikes up to the floor where were staying, we just left them on the ground floor locked to each other in an alcove. They were still there the next morning.
In the morning, the forecast looked pretty good, with winds from the WSW giving us a boost in the morning and promising some headwinds in the afternoon. There was little chance for making any shortcuts today so we left on the dot of 9:00AM and took to the road. The weather was nice. Lovely clouds dotted the sky and the temperatures stayed below 70F.
We went through the town of Daoulas about half way between Brest and Le Faou, where the Tour de France passed through in 2021. The roads still bear the celebratory pavement markings going all the way up the Main Street, two years later! I remember watching the TDF that year and thinking again that Brittany would be a great place to cycle.
Breton is the language of Brittany, and it’s quite different from French or English and so it’s always hard to tell people where you have come from or where you are going, since they never understand my mangled pronunciation. Breton is in the Celtic language group and is most closely related to Cornish.
We stopped in Le Faou for lunch, and a woman came up to talk to us, and I spoke to her in French for a few moments before she asked me where we were going. Damn it! I tried in vain to tell her, but multiple attempts failed. So she rather curtly stated “so, you don’t speak any French at all?!” To which I responded that I had been speaking to her in French for the past 5 minutes. That confused her and she left. Chris and I decided that she might be that villages idiot! There’s one in each town, for sure.
Le Faou is lovely, so we stopped to eat some lunch from our bags, admiring the church, the flowers and the inlet from the sea.
After lunch, coffee was clearly necessary, and somehow a crepe was ordered as well in a cafe a few hundred feet from the bridge where we ate lunch. We didn’t get far.
After lunch, as we headed down the coast, the terrain started to get a bit more gentle. The fields were mostly wheat, ready to be harvested. The sea beckoned as we descended towards Douarnenez, with panoramic views. We enjoyed that long lovely descent, knowing that one last steep long climb remained after that descent until we could really get to our apartment. May as well enjoy the downhills since you have to pay for them in uphills! Getting to the summit, we enjoyed the steep labyrinthine route through the narrow streets of Douarnenez to our apartment. There, we parked our bikes in the dining room/kitchen area, and then went shopping for groceries, cooked dinner and got some sleep!
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