Dinan, Vire, Rennes to Cork, France to Ireland
After St. Malo camping fun time we were off to enjoy a leisurely Help Exchange in Dinan, just an hour up the Rance river from St. Malo. Though we tried, we couldn’t take the riverboat because of the tides so we settled on a very affordable coach bus. Our host Anne, a nice Channel Island* lady in her sixties, met us and whisked us away to a very large supermarket and bought loads of stuff, encouraging us to get whatever we wanted. Now this was quite a welcome!
As it turned out, Anne is an exceptionally generous host who let us use her motorscooter, swim in her pool, cook whatever we wanted, sleep in a very large and comfortable bed, and work at whatever pace we deemed sufficient. To put it mildly, Anne is the Helpxer’s dream host and we were really grateful to be there.
Dinan is an old fortified city on a hill overlooking the Rance river which meanders by almost directly below. The walls and fortifications rising out of the steep slope have been restored and many of the buildings in the town are very old, but not that old.
The town was seiged and taken by Edward, then a duke of England, and his Norman duke friend William whom he would later betray by usurping the crown of England, only to invite William’s raging invasion of 1066, when Englang was changed forever. But Dinan would survive as a Breton town in France, escaping major damage from more recent wars, although losing it’s Breton language along with most of the rest of Brittany.
Here’s Christine looking out from our window in the country – about 10 minutes drive from Dinan.
Anne kept company at her place through many friendly dogs and a few cats, along with some chickens out near the fruit orchard. Her friend Stephen was a nice British chap who helped out by walking the dogs and doing the occasional yard work and taking heavy junk to the tip. He also owned a rental property in nearby Normandy close to where our friends Brian and Annie were Helpxing. One Saturday, after helping Stephen turn over the house for the next week, Jonathan realized that the house was in fact very close to the town of Vire and that toggled a memory switch. The following Friday evening, as it worked out, Stephen took us out on the hour-plus drive to his place where we stayed the night. The next day he was kind enough to drive us to the Helpx host where Brian and Annie were staying so the four of us could visit for a day! Whoopee!!!
We wasted no time catching up with each other and walking around their helpx site and visiting briefly with their hosts over lunch. Then we were dropped off in nearby Vire where we toured around and enjoyed a few pints of beer together.
Too soon it seemed, it was time to leave Dinan and head for Rennes where we would catch our flight to Ireland. But to top it all off, Anne decided we could all go out for dinner. Wow! Christine and I hadn’t had Chinese food in a long time so it was an unexpected treat and we ordered all four of the vegetarian side dishes. It was super yum!
While in Dinan we had two opportunities to ride/drive into town for the weekly market. As we mention before, Brittany is known for its crepes and galettes – well here you can see them as they’re made. Most people were buying the galettes wrapped around a sausage with grilled onions but you could also buy them plain – they’re good but not very filling by themselves. (yes, that’s a big pile of them in the foreground)
So we said our farewells to Anne, Stephen, and the dogs and hopped on the bus to the capital city of Brittany, Rennes just an hour to the south.
Here we were met by our couchsurf host who took us via tram (same system as Toulouse) to his apartment to deposit our bags. Then we took the more scenic bus back into city center for a lovely walking tour. Unfortunately, we had forgotten to bring the camera but the buildings were lovely and had similar construction as Dinan. More buildings were modern (19th century style) here because fire had damaged the city many times over. There was a bit of art deco and the main public gardens were beautiful and immaculately groomed. They even had a small aviary with small sub-tropical birds (sad for the birds, exciting for kids).
Our host, a friendly and informative teacher named Lucien, prepared a nice meal for us when we returned and we were very happy to enjoy a nice sleep before waking up on travel day part 2.
When we awoke, Lucien had prepared a nice breakfast for us and we couldn’t thank him enough for his kindness. He was going above and beyond our expectations of a Couchsurf host. Well, Brittany was just too good I guess. He even sent a check for us in the mail after the post office option was too expensive. Super nice guy.
Well we tried to thank him as best we could, gifts were exchanged and we were soon off to the airport via city bus, after he ran out after the bus driver to flag him down for us. Super nice guy. Merci beaucoup Lucien!
The airport was smooth despite Christine’s over-extended stay in Europe – no hassles, thank goodness. We landed in sunny Cork, Ireland and grabbed a bus into town to meet our next couchsurf, also a nice guy but he left us to ourselves to enjoy walking around the city after we exchanged personal backgrounds and directions.
After a nice walk, we purchased groceries for dinner and dined at the steps of the theater house on sprouts and hummus sandwich. It was fine for us but we’d looked in vain for a better eating spot, surprisingly there were barely any public benches along the river Lee. After the requisite pint and some live traditional Irish music, we called it a night. We had to wake early the next morning to catch a bus to Kenmare where we’d begin our next Helpxperience.
Tags: 2009-August, Annie, Brian, brittany, Cork, Tag Index
seeingspain
May 16th, 2018 at 1:23 am
Keiko Decinti
I found a great…