A Curiosity - the World's Biggest Baguette?

“From Corseul we went to Montafilant, a Norman Castle…”

As I will too, though first I need something to eat, so I head back to Corseul. Given the name of the townsfolk, the Curiosolites, entering the town comes with a slightly weird expectation, a delicious sense of possibility that something magical might occur around the corner. How does ‘diligent enquiry’ express itself as the essence of a people …?

I stop in a bakery for something fortifying - an open pizza bread with bits of cheese and ham and a pain au chocolat. And then it catches my eye: on the rack is the largest baguette I have ever seen in my life. The fact that it’s a metre long is not unusual, but in girth, this is no spindly adder. Pah! It is enormous, more like an anaconda that has gorged on an alligator. For a sense of scale I stand a tall can of fizzy orange drink next to it.

I find a shady spot to munch my pizza bread and keep an eye on the bakery door, in case someone comes out struggling under the weight of the baguette. You’d almost need a trailer to get it home…

It is not more than a mile to Montafilant, but this is remote countryside and the roads on which my gps leads me become smaller and smaller. Eventually I ride downhill into a wood. I don’t realise it, but straight on the land culminates in a ridge and small plateau on which the castle sits. However, a brown historical sign points down to the right, so dutifully I follow it and find myself bouncing downhill on a wooded track. I end up beneath the old castle walls, on a mown alley of grass that was obviously the moat. Perhaps the young Lawrence fetched up in the same place. He continues:

“…to Montafilant, a Norman Castle, whose moat, now rather swampy, we crossed by a narrow bank only a few inches wide, with water jumps.”

The water has disappeared entirely in the century since he was here. The banks are still visible in places, overgrown with bushes and trees, but the waterway is now grass bordered by cow parsley.

I make my way back up to the main entrance and into the castle, entering via a narrow neck of land between the remains of two walls; it opens out into a tear-drop of mown grass hemmed by walls and grass-covered banks.

“The remains are now much ruined,…” continues Lawrence, and it is true. Once, Montafilant (built by the Lords of Dinan in the 12th Century), had five towers. Sections of stone can be made out, but most of the walls have now become banks of earth. While the area has been carefully mown, elsewhere undergrowth has marched abroad and overgrowth scrambled atop it; the occasional tree has escaped the melee and launched skyward. At the far end sits a very pretty-looking Breton cottage, picked out in the sun by its bright blue shutters and window-frames. A washing line is strung across the corner, next to a tower. It turns out to be a gite, a place to stay *, but there is no answer when I call out.

I walk around the grounds. It feels so domestic that the few stone constructions can hardly do justice to the medieval legacy of the place, but then, past a section of animals and bee hives, through the long grass, I enter an almost perfect medieval tower…

As I emerge I feel a slight unease and realise that I am being watched after all: by a spikey blond man, bare-chested and lean, who might almost have been dropped here from the campaign in the Western Desert. Perhaps I woke him from a siesta. He remains unmoved as I tell him of the young Lawrence’s visit and my quest, but permits me to carry on taking photographs around the castle grounds.

“…the old well is still perfect; we pulled up a bucket of water and drank it, for the sake of the association.”

This I find, under a curved hood, but there is no bucket.

Soon enough I am back out on the road, pedalling through the heat of the day.

“After Montafilant we lost ourselves in a maze of by-roads, for about two hours: Scroggs had a dust slip, but was not damaged.”

It’s a reminder of how different the cycling was a hundred years ago. Most of the roads in those days would have been compacted gravel tracks, unstable when they got sandy, and presumably very muddy after rain. Whereas I am riding reliably on tarmac. The only time I end up on a track is when my gps loses it, or a historical sign points me there.  

“We had lunch at Plelan–le-petit, and paid 3 ¾d each [approximately 1 ½ pence in modern money] for this sum we had cider and soda-water, four poached eggs, bread, butter, biscuits etc. On the whole the meal was cheap.“ 

It is certainly true that there is a maze of roads. But I have no idea where they might have found somewhere to eat. This place is so closed up and dozy that I can’t even find café for a cup of coffee. The only noise I encounter in the is a youth on an underpowered motorbike who buzzes past me at top speed, a snarl cutting through the soporific sunshine more like a super-charged sewing machine than any combustion engine.

We’re a good way from the coast here, but it’s clear that some of the country farmhouses and cottages have been restored for modern country and holiday living, like the gite at Montafilant. On the other hand, on the outskirts of the small towns, I begin to notice other, newer styles of building. Later I understand that many are occupied by Brittany’s young families, who prefer not to be isolated in the countryside. It helps to keep them in the region.

I notice two main styles, one a nod to traditional Brittany, with faux stepped stones at the corners and around the windows on bare render walls; the other, more controversial I suspect, an assembly of cuboid structures, often in black. Neither sits terribly comfortably in the rural setting, but perhaps the half-timber houses that I love so much seemed out of place five or six hundred years ago.

“From Plelan we rode to Jugon, and walked a hill of two miles long: it was terribly exhausting.”

This I am lucky to avoid – or at least my gps does it for me. Jugon is a very pretty tourist town set on a lake. There are plenty of visitors, some boating, others walking on the grassy banks. A signboard explains the town’s history, which dates from pre-Roman times. It mentions a visit by Flaubert and Maxime du Camp on a walk through Brittany in 1847, which they wrote up in a book called ‘Par les Champs et les Greves’ (Flaubert writing the odd chapters and du Camp the even ones; it was translated as Over Strand and Field). In the main square there is no shortage of tables and umbrellas, so I stop for an ice cream and the unrequited cup of coffee.

“From Jugon we went to Lamballe.”

And again, so shall I. Though first I must visit another lovely castle, at Hunaudaye.

* The Gite de Montafilant, pictured at the top. I didn’t go inside but it looks rather nice.

A Long and Winding Road from Dinan to Lamballe

When I finally leave Dinan, at 11am, after finding Tiphaine (at least I think it was her), I realise I have a long day on the road ahead. Not because it is that far, more because there are so many places to visit - the young Lawrence cycled to four sites on this stretch in 1906 – some Roman ruins, a small castle, a tourist town and then a more significant castle. For most of these he was accompanied by his friend CFC Beeson, known as ‘Scroggs’, also 17, but he came back in 1907 when he had his father’s camera. And after the second castle I can look forward to a long stretch towards Lamballe. The day’s gps route is an almighty squiggle.

Off I set, progress now punctuated by commentary from the cheery voice on the Headwater app. It takes me south, initially along the River Rance and then west, straight up hill onto high ground, where the country lanes link villages through rolling scapes of agricultural land. The fields are given over to onions, potatoes and wheat.

These uplands are also criss-crossed by larger roads intersecting at round-abouts - the arteries and ganglions of modern communications. I find myself steered onto them for a few hundred metres and then released back into the soporific, sunny farmland buzzing with insects.

The rhythm of pedalling over this relatively flat ground, the sense of movement and light adventure, and the warm weather and pretty landscape put me into a ruminative state. My mind ranges over all sorts of subjects as I take in the surroundings. It’s fantastic, this. I realise how much I am enjoying myself.

The road dives into a dell; around me woods collect and mossy banks, a subterranean green hangs in the air, then an embrasure of roadside bracken. I climb again into an apple orchard, which gives way to the fields once more.

Cycling is a good way to get around. It covers the ground faster than walking, but it doesn’t involve finding a place to park your car if you spot something of interest. I find myself stopping to investigate things quite often; here a petanque court where petanque is not permitted (I believe it is for wooden rather than metal balls); there a grain mill; then a… well, what is it, a water tower? A windmill tower?  

But then I realise that I am stopping at every old-looking wall, so I get a little bit more sceptical.

My first destination is a small town called Corseul, which entails leaving the designated route, to the anxiety of the guide on the app, who tries and tries to keep me straight. ‘At the next junctions, turn around….’, she squeaks, but I’m ruthless, me, and I  just won’t do what she says.

The reason for the young Lawrence’s visit to Corseul was a Roman temple dedicated to Mars. He describes how he locates it.

“The ruins are down a by-road with poor surface, and many turns. Although we did not know if we were on the right track, and had no directions, still I walked straight to it. My bump of locality must be enormous.”

Not so mine... Bump of Locality was a well-used expression, though phrenology, the study of the outside of the skull to predict character and mental capacity of the brain within, was regarded as pretty silly even in Lawrence’s time. I arrive in Corseul from an unexpected direction, and when I see signs referring to a Roman archeological site, I ride down for a look.

Just off the main road, two lines of Roman columns run along a central gravel street flanked with the foundation stones of ancient walls. They contained a market place, warehouses and workshops and a basilica. The settlement survived for 300 years, from the start of the First Century AD till a fire destroyed it at the end of the Third Century. The Romans called the place Civitas Fanum Martis after the temple, but the settlement had been there since the Bronze Age. Known as Kersaout, it was the capital of the local Celtic tribe who went by the delightful name the Curiosolites.

A quick search on line tells you that the Latin curiositam meant a ‘desire for knowledge and inquisitiveness’ and its parallel adjective curiosus meant ‘careful, diligent, eagerly inquiring’ and a little less positively ‘meddlesome’. What a fantastic way to be remembered after two thousand years. Apparently the town’s folk of Corseul are still called Curiosolites…

But I see no temple. I re-read the young Lawrence’s letter and realise that this cannot be the right place at all. Turns out that the Temple of Mars is a couple of kilometres away. In my efforts to keep off the main road, I eventually arrive along a farm track. A wall rises above me, which the young Lawrence describes:

“The ruins comprise three sides of a hexagon, and are about 40 feet high. The walls, about 4 feet thick, are built of stone, with a lavish amount of mortar, and a slight admixture of Roman brick. The ground all round is strewn with pieces of brick and tile.”

It has been cleared up since he visited a century ago, and it is considered important enough for a school visit - as I arrive I momentarily become a curiosity for a bunch of 15 year olds on an outside study day (well, it is sunny and nearly the end of the school year…). They’re sitting on a nice section of mown grass, supposedly concentrating on something.

Sadluy it still feels a little lifeless. It is just three walls and the foundations of the courtyard and cloisters.

However, in the same way as the young Lawrence, I am taken by the fabric of the walls, which are cubes of stone. I remind myself that I do not know enough. Were they there to contain plaster, or were they decoration in themselves?

“The facing of the ruins of the walls is formed of small blocks of stone, each exactly a cube, and laid with the most precise mathematical certainty. The courses are perfectly level, and the whole is more level than a brick house or a chess board. The blocks are about half an inch apart and the total effect is excellent. I will try to get a photo of it next time I visit it.”

Quite so, I think, though in my case I can whip out my cell phone and snap away happily then and there. I don’t think he ever did return to photograph it.

A Second Side Trip to Lehon

This morning, instead of taking the towpath of the River Rance to Lehon, I leave through one of Dinan’s hulking city gates - to a brief echo of motors from the machicoulis and murder holes above – bounce downhill over cobbles and battle the morning traffic. It is not far though, and soon I am in the calm of a quiet section of Lehon.

If the young Lawrence passes over Lehon Castle in just a few lines - I nod in silent salute as I ride by - he breaks out with effusion when it comes to the abbey, and about one effigy in particular in the church. He writes almost a whole page:

“Lehon Abbey (more properly a Priory) is splendid: the Church is fine, but too much restored: the effigies in it were very interesting. One was to a female, Tiphaine de Guesclin, daughter of the famous Constable, who was so named after her mother. The effigy lay on the North Side of Presbytery, and was most remarkable…”

As I arrive I happily acknowledge that the abbey is splendid: it is all hefty, ancient stone, though somehow familiar, or at least not as self-consciously grand as many medieval religious centres. It stands next to the local Mairie, the town hall, and there are box hedges, flowers cascading over stone walls, even a small rose garden. I find my way down into a courtyard, lock up my bicycle and make my way into the cloister, where the sunny and soporific tempo of the tiny village turns to deep silence. Perfect for contemplation.

The Abbey St Magloire is certainly ancient: it was established next to a ford on a bend in the Rance River in the sixth century, apparently by six monks from Wales; they came as custodians of the relics of St Magloire. Their buildings were destroyed by the Normans a few centuries later, but the abbey was redeveloped in the Middle Ages by the Lords of Lehon. The buildings have elements of both romanesque and gothic. I enter through a pointed arch, into the cloister with its run of romanesque curves: the main door to the abbey church is framed in rounded arches.

Inside the church, the silence deepens a notch further, squeezed by the interior cool. The acoustics in the place are outrageous. The thump of a misplaced foot against a pew reverberates like the roll of a distant cannon – and results in a disapproving look from the one other visitor. I spot a bell which instructs: ‘Press for Music’. Hah, I could do it just to taunt them; but actually the silence is better. God forbid I should sneeze: the noise would ricochet off the high stained glass and splinter on every faceted stone surface, firing back and forth for 30 seconds (I should admit to an unfeasibly loud sneeze, as my family like to remind me:  I merely retort that the prodigious power of my lungs, which may be bequeathed to them in their genes, might be a good thing, but they have none of it).

Now, about Tiphaine…

“…She died in 1417 the widow of Jean V de Beaumanoir. She was dressed in a jupon, which buttoned down the front with 22 circular buttons; the button-holes were yet quite clear, slightly puckered around her waist, which was exceedingly small, and tightly drawn… The front of the jupon terminated in a tassel with a large bow.”

I walk to the rear of the nave in the hope of finding her: there are at least 10 effigies lining the walls... But all is not lost; there is more… I move from the gloom to a spot where light can penetrate enough for me to read:

“… She wore genouilleres, with square plates beneath them, jambs and sollerets, of three large and heavy laminated plates. She also had rowel spurs, and her feet rested on an eagle expansed bearing a shield (billets or) on the front, held in its beak. The eagle was very faithfully and clearly drawn, and the claws drawn very true to nature.”

You might want to remember that this is a young man writing, not yet 18… in a letter to his mother. It was typical of him, incredibly well informed and confident, on a subject he had been studying for years, but perhaps you can also see why she might have felt a little disappointed at the lack of personal detail.

As for me, with even all of this, I can’t seem to locate her. Quite a few of the effigies have names, but not Tiphaine. I find her husband…

“…assassinated in 1385. He is chiefly remarkable for two gigantic curls, each supported by a sturdy angel. He has a beard, and wears a jupon gorget pauldrons, brassarts, coutes, and a large sword. His feet of six lames were resting on a lion.”

It’s true, though it is a rather mournful looking lion.

And he’s not finished yet… other effigies were:

“Two almost identical figures of Lords of Lehon (14th cent.) were interesting as having slipped off their gauntles, & coifs de mailles, just as Septvans whom they greatly resemble. … They wore surcoats, and demi-jambs. Raoulin wears a Tabard, quarterly. Two ladies of about 1440 complete this wonderful series, and one of these effigies to a lady was the most perfect example of artistic merit that I have seen in effigies. … Her face was perfect, and her dress most beautifully arranged.”

Yet still no Tiphaine. Frustrating. I head outside to see if anyone might help me. I have made a few friends like this. The French do remember Lawrence of Arabia, partly as a perfidious Englishman destructive to their national interests and fancifully, in some cases, as a spy, but they admire him nonetheless for his feats of endurance (well, they saw the film too). Often local historians are happy to help. Not in the Mairie, however. As I stumble through unaccustomed French words – while many armorial terms derive from French and translate freely, other ideas such as effigy and ‘tomb decoration’ are more than I can manage at the moment. Eyes glaze over; they are functionaries to the core.

“Perhaps… it has been removed to a house in Dinan…”, said a man, turning away. “Go to the local library, Msieu…”

But I can’t just leave like that. I return to the abbey church for one last try – and walk right up to her. And all becomes clear… (I think): the buttons, the waist, her head on a cushion…

“…her hair, confined by a narrow fillet alone, flowed in two curls one outside each ear, while the rest was cut short and parted regularly down the centre.”

I stand for a while, marvelling at this stone memorial, which has lain here for 700 years, and more than a century since the young Lawrence himself marvelled at her. Sadly, though, it is no longer true that:

“Her face was perfect, without any mutilation, and exhibited the calm repose and angelic purity which the medieval sculptor knew so well to blend, with a certain martial simplicity and haughtiness…  …its combination of female dress and armour, is so far as I know unique.”

Instead she has been disfigured (assuming got the right effigy, that is). Some vandal has scratched her chin with a small beard. (See the photo at the top of this journal entry.)

Impish Holy Water

I mentioned that I have a great job to do while in Dinan. It is to find and re-create one of the young TE Lawrence’s most original photographs. Where normally he took shots of castles and other medieval buildings, particularly if no postcards were available to buy, this image is very different. Its subject is a very peculiar church font and it is not surprising that liked it enough to use one of his photographic plates to catch it (it’s worth remembering that he had to carry tripod, camera and plates with him on his bicycle). The font is supported by an agonised imp...

Locating and re-photographing the young Lawrence’s images has brought about a few comic, not to mention slightly uncomfortable, moments. I have found myself at full stretch on an absurdly springy bough, under threat of falling into the Seine River, all to get a similar shot of Richard the Lionheart’s Chateau Gaillard, and then there were my attempts to catch an image of Gisors Castle. (Read about a near run-in with a tiger…). So I have learned to be wary… but I set off happily enough, with vague advice: “Oh, yes, I know that. It’s in the Basilique St Sauveur…” Ominous pause. “…I think.”

And what could go wrong? It is seven o’clock on a lovely summer’s evening, I have a map and a charming medieval walled town to explore. I head through the hurly burly of alleys and covered walkways to a section of walls overlooking the river and the ‘port’ by which I arrived. I feel free. It takes a moment to work out why: I have lost the constant companion of the woman’s voice on the Headwater cycling app with her logistical instructions.

I approach St Sauveur from the city walls and the ‘Jardin Anglais’ (a lawn, pretty much), and my heart sinks. The whole edifice is neatly wrapped in scaffolding and plastic sheeting. I can’t even find an entrance, let alone a photogenic imp. My mind races. What now? I have come all this way. Will I have to come back tomorrow morning and try to blag my way in past the foreman, further delaying my already delayed trip to Lehon Abbey? Surely they can’t stop you going into churches in France? This could take days…

Oh well. St Sauveur wasn’t a sure thing and there is another major church in Dinan. Perhaps the imp is in the Eglise St Malo… I stride back through the network of alleys and tiny squares where the inhabitants are relaxing, enjoying the evening air. The sun has disappeared behind the buildings but the flagstones are still radiating warmth. I shall join them when I can.

The Eglise St Malo sits on a rising section of cobbles and has a set of heavy double doors. I enter into hushed cool, and darkness: I must pause to let my vision adapt. And from the recesses of the ceiling, lit by the high windows, my eyesight gradually penetrates the chancel, nave and the pews ahead of me.  

It is a gradual revelation, but from the gloom the font emerges, right in front of me, at the foot of a column: the fantastical stone demon, a fallen angel, I assume.

He is on his haunches, his shoulders and wings supporting a hexagonal bowl of holy water. Horns are matted into his hair and he is emaciated. His sunken eyes display defeat, although his expression also shows a shamed acceptance of the permanence of good and its triumph over evil – for this imp is a stone incarnation of evil suborned by good, a reflection of Christian order. He will be subjected forever to this mundane task, an agonising punishment for his impious, godless life: he shall offer spiritual sustenance to the faithful as they arrive in the house of God.

A Summer Evening in Dinan

In Dinan I have a lovely job to do. As well as a general visit to a very attractive medieval walled town, I must search out the location of one of the young Lawrence’s most distinctive photographs. It is of a font, and apparently it is one of Dinan’s churches. I start with the receptionist at my hotel, brandishing a copy of the image on my mobile phone. 

“Oh, yes, I know that”, she says, confidently. “It’s in the Basilique St Sauveur…” Her confidence tails off. “… I think.”

It turns out not to be there, of course, but no matter. With just two major churches in Dinan it shouldn’t be hard to find. At least she recognised it, which means it’s pretty likely to be somewhere in the town… See more about the young TE Lawrence’s photograph of the font in… well… a church in Dinan.

But for now, Dinan itself... I stumble out of the hotel into the main square, which feels odd. It is huge and oblong, mainly car park, though there are trees all around. I assume it is also the market place. But the buildings around me are so tall that it feels as though I have walked mistakenly into an amphitheatre: all around I am hemmed by flat-fronted, four and five-storey buildings, each with an exaggeratedly tall and steeply pitched roof. A hundred windows peer down at me with expectation – a lion might be released from another door… My apocalyptic dreaming is interrupted by a sight to behold, again. The hirondelles are on their evening flight, swirling in patterns of black specks, rising and falling, turning themselves inside out against the evening sky – like moebius strips in motion.

Beyond the main square the town becomes all enticement, breaking into the filaments of medieval alleys, narrow and curving, some on a gradient, everywhere arches and cobbles, casting me  immediately back in time. The streets are lined with half-timbered houses, some supported on pillars, opening into covered walkways. The town certainly honours its medieval past - in a nook lies a stone coffin topped with the effigy of a knight – as though, in a prank, some naughty school-children had hoisted half a ton of stone from its place in a church and left it at the streetside.

It all sings gloriously of that hinterland of historical and geographical displacement that is so ripe for romantic fantasy. I peek through some hefty wooden doors set in an ornamented stone gateway – topped with carvings of what look like fish, though it is named the Gate of the Pelicans. Inside is a compound where I could imagine a knight or nobleman sliding off his horse on return from a quest;– it’s all mismatched stone facades and magical pointy-topped towers, some originally dating from the Fifteenth Century, but heart-rendingly attractive. There’s nothing like a bit of carved stone to set the romantic imagination running.

Eventually I settle in a square of lovely buildings where the huge flagstones are tightly clustered with restaurant tables belonging to at least two bars. History seeps through the very walls of the place… I sit and write my notes, musing on the idea of ancient and modern, how easy it is – when surrounded by ancient stone beauty - to forget the human aspects of life long past: the blustering minor Lord and his scurrying, scheming prelate, bellowing market traders and mendicants, milkmaids… fishwives, and not to forget, of course, the village idiot. Who knows what horrors this square might have witnessed: someone might have been executed right in front of where I am sitting now.

More relevantly, what would the young Lawrence have thought a hundred years ago? Life was crueller even then. He was given to dreaming and romantic turns, but he would have been well aware of the pleasures and pains of medieval life.

My lugubrious thoughts are interrupted by a sweet trill of voices, twisting and floatingon the evening air, like the hirondelles. See, lighter sides to life do echo down from the across the ages. Choir practice is happening somewhere nearby, just as it has for centuries.

Time for the city walls: these are still complete, and the best bits hover above the River Rance, by which I arrived, giving a lovely view. The trusty stone walls, the battlements and crenellations, reignite my romantic confusion. Again, who knows what brutality took place here. I am standing next to a hole designed specifically for pouring burning oil onto men beneath. 

A young woman dressed in bright red satin wafts past; then two lads, self-conscious in their black and white finery; finally a small cohort of youth tramping along the walls. It must be prom night. They pause at a tower, space to pose for a photograph, and walk on to their evening.

They are the same age as the young Lawrence when he visited in 1906. In their youth they are both beautiful and ill-defined. The lines of life - and those of adventure - have yet to etch their faces. As I return to my hotel I pass the school where these students are headed. The author Chateaubriand was educated here. I wonder if any of this year’s cohort will turn out to be his equivalent, or a TE Lawrence for our age.

A (First) Side Trip to Lehon

…At a bend in the Rance River I see ancient stone buildings rising among the trees on the opposite bank. I reach them across another lovely stone bridge... arriving into a supernaturally pretty street, cobbled and lined with chests of pink geraniums and backed by venerable houses, their faded ruddy stone picked out by bright blue and red shutters.

The entrance to the priory appears on my right. In the courtyard a couple is sitting on a stone bench, relaxing in the evening sun, she in pink and he in blue. They must be seventy-five, and somehow they look, well… complete. Instantly my mind strides a stone corridor of religious conviction… Presumably they have been visiting the abbey. Perhaps their faith gives them such a bond.

Turns out the abbey is locked, so I’ll need to return tomorrow morning on my way out of town. But I have a piece of luck: I can visit the castle. That stays open until seven. Actually the couple aren’t sunning themselves; they’re fussing, organising and reorganising kit.

I point myself in the direction of the castle – which stands above me on a mound of out of control greenery. There’s a naughty boy’s short-cut, a break in the fence, that gives onto a path snaking up through the trees. Eventually a modernist balustrade and boardwalk leads me to the west tower and entrance.

Eeeek! My weird affection for random castles, which caught me by surprise a few days ago at Chambois, resurges. Old fortifications are no more than ordered piles of stone, I know this, but as I walk beneath the walls and pass through the gate of Lehon castle I feel an overwhelming and unaccountable and entirely illogical sense of connection, of ease with its solid, ancient presence, of longing and belonging. If I could, I would hug it.

I emerge onto a lawn. Well, it’s a stretch of grass, but to me it’s a stupendous sward. I look around in wonder: grassy ramparts and battlements punctuated by majestic stone towers, seven of them. Trees to line the lawn... I take my own moment in the sun, on the artillery rampart. And glory in its beauty, and its decidedly un-martial character. Opposite me a small group of school-children is lying around on the grass.

It’s confusing, this. Falling for a sandstone edifice?! I assumed that when I fell in love with the castle keep at Chambois, it was a result of the dehydration and exhaustion of cycling for scores of miles through the French countryside in the heat of summer with no company other than my own. But this time I am not the least drawn, and I am comparatively un-exerted.

Oh well, back to what we know. The young TE Lawrence mentions Lehon castle in passing in a letter of August 1906. He was far more interested in the abbey, but that’s for tomorrow.

“Lehon is very interesting; the ruins are of course very ruined, but the whole is instructive, as an example of a Norman Castle, without any later additions.”

The ruins seem to be in pretty good condition now, despite the overgrown flanks of the mound on which they sit. The towers have been repaired, and sign-boards stand dutifully to attention at tactical locations. I can read about the Artillery rampart from where I am sitting. They were reworked at the end of the Middle Ages, the battlements lowered so that cannon could be used. In fact there have been quite a few developments overall.

Lehon castle first appeared in the early 11th Century as protection for the town that had grown up around the abbey and to cover the ford over the River Rance, an important access point through Brittany. It was involved in a war between Henry I’s two sons and it was destroyed a century later in 1169 after a siege by Henry II Plantagenet. Then it was rebuilt by Roland, one of the Lords of Dinan, who made it the centre of administration for the region. In 1644 Louis XII gave it away to the abbey, whose prior promptly used its stones to rebuild the monastery. The castle was a little more cherished by the romantics apparently, inspiring artists and writers in the early 1800s. Certainly one unnamed Abbe effused about swords being turned to ploughshares –

“The old feudal giant is nothing more than a meagre skeleton and each winter carries off a fragment... Only the dew from heaven and the labourer’s sweat now water this earth which warfare once drenched in blood and tears…”

Gradually I regain some critical perspective. A theme is developing with these castles, I realise. Where they have not been turned into cultural institutions, they have become municipal parks, and the council is quite proud of its restoration. My ‘lawn’ is in fact mowed by the municipal tractor, I suspect. A man appears, walking his dog, and as I walk around the battlements, the small gathering of students stirs. I thought they might have been revising, but now their interchange sounds like the rehearsal for an end of term play.

I explore the towers, descending into the darkness of their lower sections, where there are just arrow slits, onto any walls I can find. I am not as adventurous as the young Ned Lawrence, it seems:

“We climbed all over the remains, and I got stuck on a tower, and had a 30 ft. climb down a wall. It was quite safe, and impressed Scroggs greatly – as did our “dejenuer” at the Grand Hotel de Europe in Dinan.”

There he is, teasing his mum again. And talking about Scroggs’ propensity for food, lots of it. On which, it’s probably time to fortify myself. I have no idea if the Grand Hotel de Europe still exists, but I shall find somewhere in Dinan I am sure.

By Road and River to Dinan

The second half of the run to Dinan turns out both easy - the towpath of the tidal Rance is obviously completely flat - and extremely pleasant. As it was in the young Lawrence’s day, when he and his friend rode to the town in 1906. He writes from Dinan:

“Rode with Scroggs to Lehon today, after coming here without incident except a puncture on quay which I mended while the ‘permit’ was obtained. The scenery of Rance from the lock to Dinan was magnificent; we rode of course along the towpath which had excellent surface, free from flints.”

This is small boating territory, so the crinkle of my tyres on the light gravel is complemented by the putter of the small motors. And it is very pretty: deciduous trees tower above, providing shade, at knee level the variegated greens of grasses and dock leaves flash by. Ducks tool up and down in their pairs or take flight with a flurry and skate coolly down on the other side of the river.

I find it a little confusing however. All through these journeys I have been trying to locate - and recreate - the photographs taken by the young Lawrence when he blew through the area the following year, 1907. (See more about the young TE Lawrence’s photography.) It has turned out something of a challenge, not to mention slightly comic. In this instance he took a shot of the east bank somewhere between the lock and Dinan, but could I find it? Not a chance. There is a distinctive section of rock in his image, which I find… except that from another angle it doesn’t look quite right. And anyway… farther down there’s another section of rock. Perhaps this is it? Or is it that one? Oh well. At least taking a shot of it doesn’t involve a risk of falling into the river, or being eaten by a tiger (yes, really. Well, nearly, in Gisors). So, inconclusive. But hey, there is a real treat to come in Dinan…

The quota of pleasure boats increases: I realise I am approaching the town. And if the towpath was a gentle delight, it is merely a warm up for the ‘port’ of Dinan, an unnaturally pretty stretch of river lined with traditional buildings: warehouses restored into restaurants and attics converted to ateliers. It centres on an ancient stone bridge, from where the old road leads up the town, hovering above us on a cliff-face (the whole scene is framed by the more modern bridge, a viaduct flying a hundred feet above).

Presumably this is the quay on which he mended his puncture, while permission was obtained to enter Dinan. In his 1907 pean to the town – “With Dinan and the Rance I am entirely in love.” … - he continues with a reference to his arrival, along the steep street leading up from the port:

“The Rue de Jersual, from the old bridge to the "place," is perfect…”

And it really is pretty. It has that unfeasible neatness and sense of care of a tourist town. Some buildings are stone, their brightly painted lintels and window-frames hanging with overflowing baskets and window-boxes, others are half-timber houses in Norman-style. Intriguingly they lean out from the street’s edge, each successive storey reaching further out over the cobbles, so that between the top storeys you could almost hand across a billet-doux. The street culminates at one of Dinan’s city gates.

The Headwater app suggests that I bypass the Rue Jerzual however, and take a less steep route into town. I head to my hotel, check in and drop off my bags. Well, bag, the easily detachable ‘shark-fin’ of my bike-packing gear, which contains the clothes I carry in order to look vaguely presentable at the hotel dinner table. The town is inviting, but that’s for later. Like the young Lawrence and Scroggs, I will head straight for Lehon, where they visited a castle and an abbey.

I descend Lawrence’s road (it’s now called the rue du Petit Fort, though it starts as the rue Jerzual), returning to the afore-mentioned quay. I take a moment to look around before continuing upstream, through a miniature light industrial area beneath the huge bridge and passing the local canoe club, where triangular people are hefting boats into the river. Thereafter it becomes serene. The grand sweeps of the lower stretches of the Dinan have developed into tighter bends and the greenery becomes even more extreme. The path is patched with warm and cool air: I pass through a miasma of wild garlic, humming with insects. Above, strange clumps – mistletoe, I wonder - are suspended in the poplars, like growths in a lung. A crow mobs a bird of prey.

Lawrence himself wrote on -

 “…the river is most lovely. Above the town it becomes very quiet and peaceful, like the Thames: lined with Aspens & Lombardy poplars. When you add waterlilies, willows, and an occasional high bank, crowned with a quaint farm-house or château, you have a fair idea of the characteristics of the stream.”

It is still warm as I arrive in Lehon. The abbey appears across the river and the castle above it. I reach them across another lovely stone bridge. The priory is shut so I shall have to come back tomorrow morning, but at least I can visit the castle.

Day 7 - Broaching Brittany

EXPLAINER - This Brittany Journal tells the story of a trip to follow the tracks of the young TE Lawrence, later of Arabia, who cycled through northern France in 1906 and 1907 in his summer holidays. It is a continuation of a journal and cycle trip made in 2019 (see previous entries about Normandy in France Cycle Journal 2019).

In 1906 the young Lawrence spent the best part of a month exploring the area with a friend – CFC Beeson, who was nicknamed ‘Scroggs’ - visiting the medieval castles and abbeys and other sites. This was a year before they left school and on 16th August the young Lawrence turned 17. The following year the young Lawrence arrived via Normandy and the Loire, on a trip that started in the company of his father (who left him after a week to join the rest of the family on holiday in the Channel Islands). On the 1907 trip the young Lawrence was carrying his father’s camera strapped to his bicycle in order to photograph many of the castles he had seen in 1906, particularly if he could find no good postcards.  See more about the Young TE Lawrence’s photography. 

On both occasions he based himself in Dinard, where the Lawrence family had lived 15 years before and still had some friends, including the Chaignons, with whom the young Lawrence stayed (they had hosted Lawrence’s older brother on a cycling trip in 1905). See more about the Lawrence family and their story.

In addition to following the young Lawrence’s tracks in the area (researched through the letters he wrote home to his parents), I was writing a travel article about a cycling holiday for the Telegraph newspaper, about travel company Headwater’s Backroads of Brittany tour. The route followed a very similar route to that ridden by the young Lawrence.

On their Brittany trip in 1906, the two young men set off to explore. First they headed south for Dinan, then west via Lamballe into the heartland of Brittany. As did I. Well, in fact I didn’t, because I set off from St Malo rather than Dinard, and I headed down the eastern side of the Rance estuary, which is probably the prettier route…

The Brittany Journal

St Malo is neatly hemmed by its ring-road and once I find my way beneath this I am instantly into countryside. I arrive in the Val Riant, which my rusty knowledge of French helps me to translate as Laughing Valley: perhaps there’s a chuckling brook around here somewhere. It is surprisingly rural and extremely pretty, so unpeopled that grass grows down the centre of the roads. And there’s something magical about seeing a chateau through a set of gates and a gun-barrel of trees... Who knows what secrets it holds?

Moments later, pinched by the estuary, I am pushed into a small town – really a suburb of the city, I suppose – but just as quickly I am back into countryside. I stop to watch a man turning hay on a tractor: a machine so ancient that it might almost date from the young Lawrence’s time.

With the Headwater holiday, comes an app on my mobile phone, so my progress is now accompanied by a cheery woman’s voice, giving me instructions. From my previous experience with gps (earlier in this trip it even managed an existential crisis…) I just know that I will disappoint her… But for now she guides me reliably to my first recommended stop, a riverfront village called St Suliac.

I may have been on the road only for an hour, but moving at tourist speed means I can happily justify a stop to look around the village, which has been described to me as one of the prettiest in the region. As I arrive I glide past stone cottages festooned with blooms and come to the promenade, at the end of which is a café in a little shed. Ideal. I make my way across and hover for a couple of minutes, but the lovely ladies are deep into an order for crepes and coffee and don’t even look up. The queue is moving so slowly that I decide I’ll be here all day...

To the Bistro, where my still stuttering, tortured, over-polite French is not up to the job. Might be possible, I enquire, on such a sunny day as this, if the patron pleases… to have a simple coffee…?

“Pas du tout, Msieu” (Certainly not!), he expostulates, laying bare my unacceptable, nay impudent, and most likely wilful misunderstanding of prandial decorum – Pah! Asking a bistro owner for coffee…  Whatever next ?! Waftily, he indicates the good ladies in their shed.

“The café, Msieu… is down there…”

So back I go and wait; they’re still sorting the same three crepes, and have gathered another couple of customers in the meantime. Oh, well. I have entered a vortex of holiday time: I can just hang around for a while and tell myself it’s my job, being a tourist, not a man on a hurry on a bicycle. When it arrives, the coffee isn’t even luke warm.

And St Suliac manages to confound me at every turn. Despite being a very pretty village, I can’t catch a single passable photograph of the place.  The angle and strength of the sun and the narrow streets of dark stone prevent it. Most of the facades are in shade and any east facing streets have cars parked, snug to the walls. I console myself by buying lunch, which I will eat on the other side of the estuary. I choose a ‘ceck’, a cake, de saumon, salmon. It’s a delicious-looking, loaf-shaped roll.

As I leave the town, the local artist waves from his deck chiar. He has been sitting in the sun outside his studio reading the paper, idly engaged by my confusion.

I have decided on lunch on the riverfront, at a place called Langrolay. The young Lawrence wrote of it in a letter in 1907:

“Toby and I went to Langrolay, a great beauty spot on the Rance, half-way to Dinan: the chestnut woods were exquisite. Toby is very fond of the place.”

It’s a bit out of my way (to the inevitable disappointment of the woman on my gps) but it’ll be interesting to see how it has developed since his day. Perhaps there’s a small resort there now.

I pass through a very dozy village and roll down to the waterfront to find… well, nothing, pretty at all. I dig out my ceck and choose a rock on which to sit. A few moments later a dog appears, a lean but slightly shabby looking animal with a visible strut: evidently I am straying on its territory. A car rolls down the hill; a couple - presumably looking for somewhere to canoodle away their lunch-break - but on seeing me they turn around immediately and head back uphill. Or was it that they spotted, before I did, the man who appears? He is acting strangely, and has a - it that a slightly feral air? - straw hair and weasely eyes. His dog runs back and forth, first to him and next to glare at me, while the man himself keeps appearing and retreating into the undergrowth, as though unable to decide whether to fetch something… his rifle, possibly? If my French didn’t impress a bistro owner, I don’t fancy my fluency in a confrontation… Time to leave. By the time he makes his way towards me, I am half way back up the hill. I finish off my ceck in the forecourt of the dozy village church.

A lunch deserves a coffee… So half an hour later I stop in a tabac, the only place that’s even vaguely open as I pass through a village at 2pm. I enter to a hush: three old lags are glued to the horse-racing. I can’t work out if the lack of energy is just early afternoon inertia - it’s so hot that the chairs and tables are almost wilting - or if they follow some gruff, unspoken code in which nobody even turns their head, tabac-publican included. Eventually I aquire a coffee and a glass of water and sit quietly in a corner. When the race finishes one of the men stands, pronounces in a perfect English accent, “Je swee derziem”, and leaves. Nobody else even shifts in their seat.

So it’s a bit of a relief to reach the lock, where the sailboats and lightweight human activity speak of summer jolliness. It’s green and attractive and cool in the shade of the riverbank trees. The young Lawrence was enchanted by the place. He wrote to his mother:

With Dinan and the Rance I am entirely in love. … With its bathing, (excellent they tell me), its boating (they have some of Salter's boats) and its beauty, I think it should suit the entire family. Suppose we transport ourselves thither some Autumn?

And here’s the guy turning hay on his ancient tractor -