One More Croissant for the Road. Felicity Cloake
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relative peace and watching groups of excited human ants racing round on the treacherous sands below. Next to me, a British woman tells children more concerned with chasing seagulls that ‘apparently the thing to do with quicksand is not to panic and try to move – it agitates the sand and turns it liquid so it sucks you down’. Clearly the ants didn’t get that particular memo, I think, half hoping for a minor emergency to brighten the view. Suddenly an incongruous crocodile of heavily armed policeman, clad in what appears to be riot gear, march through the gardens beneath the wall on which I’m leaning. Be careful what you wish for, I think with a shiver, remembering the earlier warning about elevated security levels.
At that moment, Matt reappears blinking into the sunlight to rescue me from my morbid thoughts, and I slip into the abbey. I have a bit of a thing for monastic architecture (why, since you ask, I do have a favourite: the lovely light-filled Cistercian Abbaye du Thoronet in Provence), and this place delivers in spades, particularly in the quieter nooks and crannies, like the draughty room in the cliffside once reserved for the laying out of dead monks. I close my eyes and try to imagine the gloomy scene; the stinking guttering candles, hooded figures and howling winds. Above a child wails, ‘Bird BIT ME!’ The moment is lost. Time to go.
As we break free from the mercenary Mont without so much as a commemorative fridge magnet between us, clouds begin to gather above, and by the time we’re back at the bikes, it’s ominously dark. It’s not far to Dol-de-Bretagne, our ultimate destination, barely 30km in fact, but shortly after leaving Normandy, and well before we get there, the heavens open to discharge rain so hard and all encompassing that we’re forced to seek refuge in a handily placed bus shelter until it slackens off. Parents waiting for the school bus in their warm, dry cars watch us watching the rain, and for the first time I wish I wasn’t on a stupid bike. It certainly won’t be the last.
Finally, we tell ourselves it’s definitely getting lighter on the horizon and push off miserably into a road already lit for evening at 5 p.m. in the dying days of May, arriving in Dol-de-Bretagne damp rather than actively dripping, though clearly still a sufficiently tragic sight to merit the sympathetic offer of a hot coffee as we check in. Though our beds for the night are considerably cheaper than our lunch, the hostel is a sweet place: new and clean and cleverly designed, and Matt is even kind enough to let me have the top bunk, which immediately puts me in a good mood. If there’s an age when you grow out of the thrill of sleeping near ceilings, I’m still waiting to reach it.
I duck into reception to ask about food. There’s a terrifying pause as the staff confer, and then I hear the glorious word crêperie: ideal, given this is Matt’s first and last night in Brittany. Monsieur is even kind enough to ring to check they’re open on a Monday evening – ‘you must hurry; they are open, but it is quiet, so they want to close soon’. In fact, once installed in the cosily lit, low-beamed dining room with the customary bowl of cider in front of us (‘Are you sure we’re meant to be drinking out of these?’), we prove to be quite the trendsetters, and thanks to the crowd that pour in after us, the poor proprietors of Le Dol’Mène aux Saveurs don’t get their early night after all.
I order a galette with cheese, ham, egg (another egg! I think belatedly – why do I do this to myself?) and a local speciality, the andouille de Guémené, a sausage made from 25 layers of intestine and stomach, smoked, yet not sufficiently to mask the odour of its main ingredient. It looks strangely beautiful, like an optical illusion made from offal, but tastes more challenging – and I’m keen for Matt to at least smell it before he goes home.
He’s not exactly effusive, but actually, fried until crisp, these andouilles are markedly more pleasant than my previous experience of them cold from the butchers, and they certainly don’t dent my appetite for a sweet crêpe with apples and the famous Breton salted caramel sauce. Matt goes for one flambéed at the table with booze poured from a little copper pan, which embarrasses him no end to my actual and lasting delight, and we celebrate with a glass of cider brandy before wobbling back through Dol’s charming half-timbered, solid little main street, with its medieval houses and plaques proudly celebrating the town’s unlikely links to the Scottish House of Stewart. Haggis crêpes, there’s an idea, I think as I fall asleep with my nose pressed up against the ceiling.
STAGE 4
A Platter of Oysters
Oysters need little introduction, save to say that Brittany produces some exceptionally fine examples, which are best – as with all oysters in my opinion – served naked or perhaps with the merest dribble of shallot vinaigrette, preferably within sight of the salty waters from whence they came.
The next morning brings two excitements. Firstly, it’s Matt’s last day, a terrifying fact that I’m trying to avoid staring full in the face, and secondly, this comes just as he’s proved himself indispensable with the information that there’s a drive-through boulangerie round the corner. A DRIVE-THROUGH boulangerie. I literally could not be more thrilled if he’d added they were giving out free croissants.
The reality is even more perfect than I’d imagined: as a former petrol station repurposed to dispense human fuel, it even looks the part. Obviously I make Matt hang back to take a photo as I pedal up to the window. The girl serving seems amused to see me pop up in front of her: ‘No, we don’t get very many bikes!’ she says cheerfully, handing over the goods 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