This is NOT how Mick and I normally like to travel – driving places without knowing where we will end up for the night. But, we thought we would try it on our last few days in France. On what I am calling “Mick’s Tour of Brittany” – MTOB.

Since we left our final French house sit two days ago we have travelled quite a distance (well at least by French / European standards). And, the rate at which we travelled meant that much of what we saw became a bit of a blur!

After returning the hire car in Argentan, we caught a train to Le Mans where we collected another hire car. It took us about 40minutes to get out of Le Mans, even with the GPS. Mick was not happy the GPS was selecting some of the bigger roads and he kept overriding ‘her’ advice. Thankfully I had booked us some accommodation in Châteaubriant for the first night, and when we arrived at 6.30pm, it was pitch black. The owners warmly welcomed us and offered us a drink before we headed out for dinner.

When we returned later that evening, they B&B proprietors were waiting for us and they offered us some wine followed by tastings of their home-made flavoured gins and liqueurs. Neither Mick nor I were really too keen after we’d had such a big night the previous night at our final house sit, but of course we could not be rude.

After about an hour, we were joined by their other house guest, a Turkish man (who of course did not drink alcohol), but happily joined us while he (sensibly) sipped some warm milk.  We had a very interesting conversation with him and our hosts for about an hour before we decided that it was time for bed.

The following morning, after a great breakfast and a chat with the B&B owner, Mick and I and said farewell and headed off to visit the local château – Châteaubriant – with a ‘t’.

It was a very cold morning and there was quite a lot of fog, which actually hung around until almost lunchtime. This made our visit all the more interesting.

It is definitely not ‘high season’ at the moment, and in fact, we were the only visitors to the castle that morning.

Mick really enjoyed himself strolling around the empty gardens and courtyards.

Our next stop was Carnac on our way to the Quiberon Peninsula.

Our friends from Fenouillet had told us about them. Christian was originally from Bretagne and knew lots about these ancient standing stones knowns as the Carnac Alignments. I thought we’d see a few standing stones, but as we drove up to them there were thousands of them – apparently more than 3000, and they are in straight rows. Being ‘low season’ we were able to walk around them and we read that some of the stones were tombstones, and some of the mounds were burial grounds. These standing stones are the largest such collection in the world.

We had lunch in Carnac and this is where Mick was excited to see the Atlantic ocean.

Really it is the English Channel (or La Manche), and I think we spotted only two other people as we wandered around. We actually were very lucky to get something to eat as the dozens of restaurants and cafes we spotted were all closed for annual holidays (from the end of October until the end of February).

We only had about a 15 minute drive to get to the Quiberon Peninsula, where we thought we would spend the night. But as we drove around the area we both agreed that this would not do. It was absolutely dead. We didn’t even spot any hotel or restaurant open that we could ask if they had accommodation.

But, we weren’t too bothered, as we could make Pontivy by 4.30pm, which would give us plenty of time to find somewhere to stay. Pontivy is a much bigger town, and as we arrived, school was finishing. Police were directing the traffic and more than 30 buses were jostling for space in the very small streets to collect the students to take them home for the day. By the time we manoeuvred our way through the traffic and found a park, asked advice for directions to the Office de Tourisme, it was getting dark. We arrived at the boat that was used for the tourist office at 5.01pm, and it had closed at 5.00pm. After asking at one hotel we were told there was a convention on in the town and there was not a room to be had.

So, Mick got out the map while I got online to find somewhere in our general direction for tomorrow. We were lucky to find a vacancy in a very small village called Rohan at a chambres d’hôtes. The only hitch was that the lady would not be there until “a quarter to 6”.

We arrived at almost 6pm, and our spirits lifted when we saw the lovely old building beside a lock on the main canal from Nantes to Brest.

But, no one else was there.

So I phoned her and found out she meant a quarter past 6pm – her English was not so good she confessed. I must confess I had blamed Mick for the message mix-up and double checked with him she had said a quarter ‘to’ and not a quarter ‘past’, because he had to answer the call as I was driving us to Rohan. “Oh ye of little faith” passed through my mind after I spoke with the owner. I spent the next 30 minutes sitting in the car as it was quite cold outside, while Mick went off to investigate the lock. At this point, I made the decision that we would be booking our next night’s accommodation before we left Rohan.

We were very lucky that one of the two restaurants in Rohan was open for dinner. After which, Mick and I returned and were not too long out of bed. It had been a big day.

The following morning we got a better view of our accommodation – it looked more like this photo from its website. Charming.

Breakfast was served in a common dining room on the second floor. We were the only ones there at 8am, but there were other settings for other guests we assume.

As the sun came out a little more, we could get a nice view of the lock and the canal out the windows.

Now to the bubbles…

And some of you may choose to look away…

As there was no shower in our room, Mick and I enjoyed a bath in quite a tiny tub.