Bon Repos to Carhaix and Fouesnant

23 August

The last stretch for us on the Nantes-Brest canal was from Bon Repos to Carhaix, which is about 55km of very varied countryside. There are very few stops on this section and it was good that we had stocked up with food for lunch, as there just wasn't anywhere to buy anything without leaving the track for a good few kilometres. It was very pretty, heading upstream (at first), with weir, lock and floodgates at regular intervals.

Interestingly, since this part of the canal isn't used any more by barges or pleasure boats, many of the locks have only one gate but they have a waterslide that rubber boats or canoes use to come down the canal. You can hire these boats in various spots and it looks like a lot of fun. 

There is a rare (on this canal) double-lock that makes a huge leap uphill (we were going uphill too). 

Famous, or infamous, is the Great Trench, 3km long, 100m wide, 23 m deep dug out of schist over a 9 year period by prisoners during the 1820s, doing forced labour. 3 million cubic metres dug by carried out by wheelbarrow, cart or on men 's shoulders. This is the highest point on the canal and perhaps the lowest for mankind. Hot summers, freezing winters. There were many deaths from disease -  a cholera epidemic put paid to the forced labour and the work was finished by locals.

From here, for us, it was all downhill for a while - quite exhilarating when the locks are so close together - there were 19 in a row in one section, then another 20 or so in the last 12km. But reality catches up. To get to Carhaix we had to leave the track and take the Voie Verte 7 into the town. Or at least, so we thought. That was all the information we could find, and of course, Carhaix being just over the border from one district to the other, there was no possibility of getting a map of Carhaix until we got into Carhaix. 

Google maps tell you where you are but not how to get to where you want to go on a bike track. We didn't check it out by bike, but on our map of Carhaix it looks as if we could have simply followed the river (not the canal) around to where the camping ground is, without having to climb all the way up to Carhaix, along an old train track and quiet roads, which added a number of km to the end of the trip. 

Typical of many houses here

As we'd already done the climb up, we decided to stay in a recommended hotel in Carhaix, as we wanted to wander around the town after we had settled in, showered and had a thirst-quenching cider. There is even part of a Roman aqueduct  in Carhaix - quite small part but interesting all the same. Local pancakes called again - they are all reasonably priced in central Brittany. 9€ for a fixed menu of one savoury galette, one sweet crêpe and cider to accompany. This hotel had an excellent shower - and even a bath - but no plug…

Before we left the following morning we walked across town to where the Roman remains are, past the open-air market, to the boulangerie, where we stocked up for lunch and bought a couple of patisseries for breakfast. They were called 'allumettes' but not all like present day matches, being larger and squarer, roughly the size of a croissant. The woman in the bakery said that it was an old family recipe, that her grandmother used to visit every 6 months and they would make a batch, store them in a tin and they would last 6 months…flakey pastry on the bottom half and meringue on the top half. Very very light.

24 August

The route from Carhaix followed the Voie Verte 7, an old railway line (1896-1967), climbing up gradually, with a small amount of 'down' just to make us think that the 'up' had finished! The track was mostly shaded and very pleasant. We passed a few former stations and after a fairly gruelling (=never-ending) climb of X (unknown) km, stopped at a converted railway station for a restorative drink of non-alcoholic beer in the cafe. 

The station also had a museum section, sold books, had an exhibition of the history of the Breton railroads and had cute seats in the shape of a railway track, which I didn't take a photo of, unfortunately. The good news is that from there on it was more-or-less downhill to the end of the railway line, ending in a place called Rosporden. From there there was fantastic signage getting us out of Rosporden onto another route with LOTS of downhill, until we passed under the motorway and eventually came out on the main road. 

It wasn't far from there to Fouesnant but we were already nearing 70km for the day and the hills were long and the traffic relatively heavy, as it was a Sunday near the end of the holidays, so it felt quite a lot further than it was. Fortunately I still remembered how to get to Françoise and Keith's once I reached a crucial spot in Fouesnant, and it was with great pleasure that we arrived. We knew F and K wouldn't be there but they had left us instructions and we quickly settled in to their newly renovated set of rooms which double as teaching space and living quarters for visitors. It is light and spacious, with a sleeping loft, kitchen area and bathroom. Really lovely. Sigh. How lucky we are!