Unexcused Absences Canal Trip Through Brittany (he said)

Canal Trip Through Brittany (he said)

by Kent 27 Sep 2016

As if spending the summer on our canal boat in France was not enough, after putting Après Ski to bed for the winter the three of us (me, Heather, Dad) drove to a little village in Brittany and rented a canal boat with our friend Jen and her parents.

Our rental boat on the pontoon at Sucé-sur-Erdre

Cruising in Brittany is special for us, because the western France canals do not connect with the rest of the country’s inland waterway network. So bringing our boat here would require an expensive over-land journey.

The crew of “Classique 46”

The rental boat was about 45 feet long, with four staterooms, quite a step up from our little canal boat. We started our trip from Nort-sur-Erdre, a small town 15 miles north of Nantes. After the obligatory checkout procedure – “Have you ever piloted a boat?” “Yes, a few times…” – we provisioned at the local store and cruised a couple hours south to Sucé-sur-Erdre, where we had a delicious “welcome-to-France” meal with our friends.

One of many Châteaux on the Erdre River

The following day, after a short cruise through “château alley,” we backtracked up river and entered the Canal de Nantes à Brest. Our stop for the night was in Blain, home to Château de la Groulais.

Château de la Groulais

From Blain, our next stop was Redon, the crossroads of the Brittany canal network. I took the train back to Nort-sur-Erdre to bring the car forward to Redon, so we’d have some transportation for a road trip in a few days’ time. The harbor in Redon connects to the river La Vilaine, which in turn connects to the Atlantic Ocean, so the harbor had some ocean-going boats, in addition to the usual canal boats.

The harbor at Redon

The following day we continued westward and turned up a very narrow (VERY narrow…) side river, which ended at a small boat harbor in La Gacilly. The town bills itself as an “artist’s town”, and was full of shops featuring local painters, sculptors, and potters, and also had a large outdoor display featuring photographers from around the world.

The narrow river to La Gacilly

Champagne for happy hour

An ornate support post

The entrance to the Canal de Nantes-a-Brest

The next day we backtracked to the Nantes-Brest canal and again turned west. Our stop for the night was in Malestroit, with its beautiful (and very old) village center. The town’s favorite son is Roger Plisson, who built, by hand, a tiny wooden sailing ship in the mid 1960’s, launched it into the canal, cruised downstream to the Atlantic, and then sailed around the world over the following 18 months. The boat, on display in the town hall’s parking lot, can’t have been more than about 20 feet long.

Roger Plisson’s tiny boat

Our boat leaves a lock

Malestroit centre-ville

Just outside of town is a museum dedicated to the French Resistance, which we toured the following morning. We didn’t have as much time as we wanted (the only taxi driver in town needed to go to another appointment) but it was still very interesting, and filled with artifacts from the resistance effort. The local area was famous during WW II as a large resistance camp that successfully fought off an attack by the Nazis.

Radio transmitter hidden in a suitcase

Portable electric generator for a resistance radio operator

US Army magazine from WW II

Malestroit

Turning back to the east, we parked at a rural mooring on the Oust River, beneath some cliffs that were very popular with the local rock-climbing club. I should note that other than the first day, which was cool and breezy, the rest of our cruise featured warm, sunny days, quite a rarity in Brittany.

Rural parking

Once back in Redon for our second visit, the six of us took our rental van and drove to Josselin, further west on the Nantes-Brest Canal but unfortunately too far for us to visit by boat. The main feature of the town is the imposing Château de Josselin on the hill above a bend in the canal. We ate a delicious lunch in town (Pizzeria du Château), visited the church (including a climb up the tower), then toured the Château and the grounds, before driving back to Redon.

From the church tower in Josselin

The Château seen from the canal

Château de Josselin

On our final full day, we cruised north on the Vilaine river to Messac-Guipry, a beautiful trip on a wide river. We tied up below the final lock and packed up the boat, and I took a train back to Redon to get the car.

Heading north from Redon

After turning in the boat and dropping Jen and her parents at the train station, the three of us visited a nearby automobile museum in Lohéac, a truly amazing display of well-known (Ferrari, Peugeot, Mercedes) and obscure (Facel Vega, Delahaye, Panhard) cars. The main collection featured “regular” cars from the 1950’s through the 1970’s, but there were also some very old cars (Aries, Darmont, Amilcar) as well as a whole section of race cars. The town is pretty much in the middle of nowhere, the center of the triangle formed by Nantes, Rennes, and Vannes, but you owe yourself a visit if you have any interest at all in historical automobiles.

A Delahaye 135M from the 1930’s

The Tatra 603 from Czechoslovakia

A Panhard PL17 from the 1960’s

With that, we drove to Charles-de-Gaulle Airport north of Paris, spent a quick night, and were up at 5am for our flight home. We had a terrific time cruising the canals of Brittany, so thank you to Jen, Cynthia, and Mark Stange for the delightful cruise!

And so ended our sixth summer in France. We are headed back to America to our trawler, Miss Adventure, so our next post will be from a boatyard in southern Georgia.