Day 17: Mon 27th July
Beautiful scenes alone the Le canal d’Ille-et-Rance
A beautiful day cycling alongside the River Rance and its canal. Here are a few photo.
When you’re cycling on the side of the canal, you’re cycling on what’s called the Chemin de Halage, and this is where the horses would have walked, pulling the great canal barges along back in the day when the canal was built.
The canal itself stretches all the way from Saint-Malo, out into the English Channel, right down to Nantes, which takes it into the west coast of France and the Atlantic. In its day, it was a major transportation route for goods, only becoming redundant because of the railways. Now it’s a recreational route, and the French regional government here do work hard to keep the canal open. As you can see below, there’s a machine here which gathers up all of the surface weed and algal bloom to ensure that both the canal remains navigable and also the canal is not starved of oxygen.
I stopped for coffee at a wonderfully sunny open-air cafe en route and turned off the canal into a nearby town at one point to get a fantastic meal for just €18.50. Three courses, absolutely delicious, including wine. This is my kind of France. Thank you to José Julio the proprietor of Chez Myriam in Montreuil-sur-Ille
At one point, there’s a massive flight of locks, which I’m sure canal enthusiasts would love. It’s quite picturesque as well.
