STAGE 3 EUROPE
It was raining when we woke, and after a big breakfast we were looking for a break in the weather to walk down to the pier, when the hotel manager offered to drive us to the Terminal. We thanked him and received door to door service for free. He deserves his Tripadvisor rating.
We arrived in the ferry lounge at 10:30am and the ferry was not due to leave until 1:30pm, so Malcolm was able to spend the time reading and editing John and Catherine's Crazyguyonabike blog. When we were running late in Poole the ferry was ready to leave early, but today when we were very early the Ferry left 45 minutes late. That seems to be the regular case. We had to put our clocks back one hour, so we are now going the wrong direction for a circumnavigation.
The trip was quite rough for the first half of the journey, rolling unpredictably, but we were only 35 minutes late at St Malo, where we found Nicole and Alain Lepage waiting patiently for us. They had planned out our evening for us and started by driving us around the old town of Saint Malo. We ended up on the beach in time to watch our ferry, the Rapide, speeding back to the Channel Islands.
The fortification wall at the beach was very high.
Alain found a way to drive up to the road that runs around part of it. He followed the "toutes directions" signs away from St Malo, then crossed the "barrage" on the Rance river, which is there to control the tides of up to 14 meters. They took us to a few other features on the way to Dinan and made us feel like royalty.
They spent an hour showing us our attic apartment, which is beautifully finished and appointed. They pointed out places we should go to on the maps and said they would drive us to anywhere that we could not reach by rail or bus. Then they surprised us by bringing in a delicious salad meal for our dinner as a welcome present. Our communication is slow and sometimes halting, but we always get our messages through and back eventually.
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