“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.