One More Croissant for the Road. Felicity Cloake
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for me to clutch awkwardly in one hand while steering with the other. Matt and I reconvene on the forecourt as a huge dog in the car behind actually attempts to climb over its owner and through the hatch: my croissant is a bit burnt, but I have absolutely no regrets – 10/10 for both novelty and practicality (and 7/10 for the actual goods).
That said, Matt’s imminent departure seems a fair excuse for a second crack at a final breakfast, especially when we pass a boulangerie whose window proudly displays golden laurels for baking the second-best baguette tradition (see here, Pause-Café – French Bread: A Bluffer’s Guide) in all of Brittany. Their croissant isn’t bad either (7.5, well flavoured, let down by a slight sponginess in the middle), but it’s overshadowed by my impulse purchase: a golden kouign-amann apiece, sporting a jaunty Breton flag, which I immediately stick on my handlebars.
If I think too hard about the 30-odd years of my life spent in ignorance of these unassuming-looking pastries, I start to feel a bit sad; like a sweeter, crunchier version of the best croissant you’ve ever eaten, soaked in buttery syrup and baked until crisp, they’re incredibly rich and stupidly delicious, and I can’t in all conscience let Matt leave Brittany without trying one. Even I struggle after two croissants, however, and the second half of the little cake ends up in the bag on my handlebars for later – something that will happen so often in the weeks to come I’m surprised I don’t have a fully-formed bread-and-butter pudding in there by the time I get to Paris.
On the way out of Dol, wobbling through pretty but uncomfortably cobbled streets, we pass a huge cathedral with a tower that looks like it’s been abruptly snapped off. Actually, as I discover from the information boards with which Dol is well furnished, it was never finished, due to ‘insufficient funds’ (or the devil throwing an enormous menhir in the works, depending on whose version you believe). The unexpected grandeur of the church is explained by the fact that, until drainage work took place in the 11th century, the sea reached as far as Dol-de-Bretagne, making this morning’s route a ghostly seabed.
Having undergone serious adjustment at the hands of the hostel receptionist, who refuses to check us out until he’s politely pooh-poohed my plans, this meanders towards the modern coast by way of Mont Dol, which, at 65 metres tall, counts as a significant peak in this part of the world. Indeed, once upon a time it was an island, just like Mont-Saint-Michel. Apparently, St Michael, patron saint of France as well as sensible knitwear, fought a duel with Satan at the top, but Matt doesn’t show much enthusiasm for climbing it to see the ‘certain curious marks’ the battle left in the rock, so we leave it be and head for the sea instead.
The D155 is one of those glorious roads that spools out in front of your wheel, allowing you to see exactly where you’re heading for miles before you get there, lined on one side with squat granite houses staring out across the marshes and clusters of corrugated sheds advertising ‘creuses de Cancale: vente au detail’ (creuses, or hollow oysters, being the French name for what we call rock oysters).
The air is heavy with the iodine reek of shellfish, whetting my appetite for what I hope lies ahead of us in Cancale, known across France as the oyster capital of Brittany – though first we have to contend with one of Google Maps’ helpful cycle routes, which takes us up a road at first stony, and then muddy, and finally all but impassable on a delicate beast like Eddy, whose mudguards quickly fill up with the stuff. Eventually I have to get off and push before I’m thrown off like a questing knight who has finally pushed his patient steed too far.
Though I haven’t got round to mentioning it to Matt, I’ve plotted a course that just happens to pass right by La Ferme Marine de Cancale, which, its website promises, offers ‘a fantastic one-hour-and-a-half tour!’ Fortunately, it’s well signposted from the road, allowing me to discover it with delighted surprise, a surprise that becomes all too real when I learn that it’s closed, so instead of prying into ‘the secrets of the oysters’, we pedal on to the town of Cancale proper, and the not-so-secret oyster market at the end of the harbour (‘#1 of 11 things to do in Cancale!’). The wide road along the bay is fringed with seafood restaurants gearing up for the Tuesday lunchtime trickle, culminating in the market, a clutch of striped tents above the concrete slipway, facing inwards against the wind.
PAUSE-CAFÉ – The Mysterious Fruits of the Sea
For some reason, this is the kind of vocabulary that runs in one ear and out of the other like the tide – possibly because I’m not quite sure what the name for all those little shells is in English, let alone French. Here’s a crib sheet:
Coquillages – seafood
Moules – mussels
Huîtres – oysters (creuses are rock oysters, plates what we know as natives, the flatter, rounder shells that aficionados believe to boast a sweeter, more complex flavour than cheaper, pointier rocks)
Bulots – whelks
Bigorneaux – winkles
Coques – cockles (amande de mer is a common variety known in English as a dog cockle, though disappointingly it bears little resemblance to either a dog or an almond)
Crevettes – prawns (géante tigrée or gambas suggests the larger variety, crevette rose are average-sized North Atlantic prawns)
Crevette gris – shrimps
Langoustine – Dublin Bay prawn (like a little lobster)
Palourdes – clams
Couteaux – razor clams
Homard – lobster
Crabe tourteau – brown crab (sometimes just listed as tourteau)
Araignée de mer – spider crab
Crabe mou – soft-shell crab
Their custodians loiter in front, waiting for customers. I experience the same mild panic as when confronted by a weighty wine list in a smart restaurant – how on earth is one supposed to choose between baskets of bivalves? I do a slow circuit of the stalls, trying hard, like everyone else, to look like I know what I’m doing, and end up back at Aux Délices de Cancale, run by two brothers, Fabien et Gildas Barbé, attracted not by the subtle curve of the shells on display, or the quality of their barnacle build-up, but by the fact that they have the largest oysters I have ever seen, propped out front to draw in the kind of shallow people impressed by size. People like me, in fact.
I go for half a dozen ordinary number 4s (they’re graded by size, from fat 00s to tiny 6s, and in general, I think smaller shellfish have a better flavour) and one complete beast of a pied de cheval, or horse’s hoof. Come on, it had to be done!
People gather round murmuring in wonderment as the stallholder, who has opened the others as easily as a can of Coke, braces Monsieur Big against the back wall and sets about him with a chisel. ‘How old is he?’ I ask as he hammers away with gritted teeth. ‘Oh, about 15.’ Fifteen! I think. That’s the same age as my oldest nephew! When this animal was born (spawned?) I still naively thought I was going to have a proper job by 30.
Holding his prize carefully lest it spill out, Gildas, victorious over the shellfish at last, explains that the creature weighs about 180g, well over twice as much as the others, and will need to be tackled with a special knife, which he will lend me for the purpose. The assembled crowd goggles as I escort my victim over to the sea wall, where Matt is already sitting with his slightly more modest order. He raises one eyebrow, which in Matt terms is pretty serious stuff, and don’t I know it. I like oysters you can eat in one gulp, that are easy to chew and slip down as smoothly as an ice-cold martini, not ones with the strength to fight back in your digestive system. Nevertheless, I’ve paid to have this chap’s shell wrenched off, and he deserves to be done