The wonderful thing about cycling along a canal is that it
is predictable yet always changing. You know the water will be there but round
every corner the water is never exactly the same and the surrounding landscapes
also continually change. I think I would
never tire of the locks and their houses and gardens, all carefully tended,
with manicured grass, flowerbeds and flowering shrubs. All the paintwork is a
glorious sky blue and there is nothing in the slightest forced. In fact, when I came across an uncared for
house and untended garden just after St Aignan I was shocked.
Inexplicably I became hopelessly lost on leaving the small
town of Rostrenen, goodness knows how, so I asked a bunch of Ascension Day
local cyclists who were blatantly relieving themselves into the municipal
bedding plants, how to get to the river. Maybe they weren’t happy about being
disturbed because five minutes later they shot past me in a Tour de France
peloton phalanx without saying a word. I was still finding this typical of a
lot of the people I was meeting along the way (the gardener and my Breton
companion yesterday were the exception rather than the rule) but I must admit
that this couldn’t be said of the three gentlemen I met on the way to Pontivy.
Two of them were cyclists and one of the two sported an Irish flag on the back
of his bike. Maybe a few years older
than myself they were enjoying a cycling holiday along the canal. We had a
right old natter. It turned out that
John lived in Ballinasloe, just up the road from my brother and promised
to call in when he got back home to report on my progress. There was too much to talk about and the Irishmen were
hungry after their morning’s cycling, and they were staying in a gite where the
cooking was very much to their taste. But before they left Des couldn’t resist
telling me a story. On learning that my surname was Heery, and knowing that the
Heeries came from County Cavan, Des said that people from Cavan were known to
be a bit stingy. “let me tell you a story before you go,” he said. “A man from
Cavan was scraping the wallpaper off his wall. His friend appears and observes that he must be decorating. Not all,
replies the man from Cavan, we’re moving”
We parted, chuckling.
There is a problem at
Gouarec. The canal, six or so kilometres later disappears into the Guerledan
lake, a man-made reservoir. The towpath has equally disappeared. There is a
“voie verte” but I preferred to take a short cut from Bon Repos through the
forested country lanes to Les Forges and on to Saint Aignan where it is
possible to pick up the main canal again after the “barrage”. A pleasant,
undulating ride, nonetheless, I was irritated by the difference between my VTT
tyres on the road surface compared to my slicks, and by the fierce easterly
headwind that had sprung up and which was to remain with me all day.
Slower they may be on the tarmac, I was, nonetheless happy
to have changed my tyres. Even yesterday, the normally quite firm towpath had
disintegrated into thick, clinging mud in places, and now between St Aignan and
Pontivy the newly laid surface of sharp gravel would have been lethal to the
slicks. When I met the Irishmen they had been pushing their bikes having
suffered a puncture; I wasn’t surprised.
The fifty or so kilometres between Pontivy and Josselin,
however, were lovely. The stiff easterly headwind was still there but the
surface was immaculate, the ascent and descent through the two series of locks
before Rohan, the water backing up between each lock into extremely picturesque
large ponds, an ornithologist’ and
fisherman’s paradise, a joy to ride, especially in the early evening slanting
sunshine. I took a short rest and detour at lock 41 La Tetraie to sit quietly for a few moments in
the astonishing church of Saint Melec, very highly recommended. Twenty minutes later I was in Josselin,
admiring the three towered chateau.
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