RAIL TRAILS AND TOW PATHS

The weather has been good and we have been enjoying our bike riding. One day we went along the old railroad bed, which has been turned into a nice bike and walking trail. The route went from St Germain en Colges to Louvigne du Desert. Along the route are many train stations (which have been turned into homes now) and even though they all look just the same, Don takes a picture of every one.

The rail trail is very good riding, wide and good surface, shady in the sunny afternoon, with nice green scenery and not very busy. From time to time we meet a family riding along, and since the wild blackberries are getting ripe now, sometimes we meet people with buckets of blackberries they picked. I want to do that!

Along the route Don spotted another unknown chateau. He has started a hobby of going to the many chateaux in the area that are privately owned and not open to the public. It is sort of a challenge to him to see if he can get in or at least breach the privacy screen of iron gates and gardens and get a photo. We have stopped at several during this trip, just to find we couldn’t get in, but Don took a photo anyway. So, when he saw this new chateau he took a photo across the fields, and decided to return another day to try to visit.

The next day we drove over to St. Sulpice and took the very nice bike path along the river Rance to Rennes. Since it was Sunday there were many people on the trail, either biking or walking, and also lots of boats in the canal, going through the locks. We saw two little sisters with their pink parasols, taking a walk along the riverside with their daddy. The younger sister, about 4, tried and tried to get her parasol up and finally just said, phooey, and busied herself with picking wildflowers and looking at lizards, and talking to herself all the while, because big sister was ignoring her. The trail is good riding and even though people were out, it wasn’t crowded .


Along the way we watched as the lock-keeper would run out to open the lock and fill it up with water to move a boat upstream. There must be some signal system between locks, or maybe the boat owners telephone to notify the operator, because they seem to run out and get prepared before the boat appears.

We rode the trail all the way into the medieval center of Rennes, where we rode around and admired the 14^th century half-timbered buildings, the huge Palais du Parliament and the beautiful theater. Throughout the city are bike rental stations, as we have seen in many of the cities of Europe. Here the rental was reasonable, about 5 euro a day, and we saw several tourists cycling around the town on these bikes.We thought about stopping for lunch at one of the cafes, but ended up riding back out the canal and enjoying our picnic as we sat in the nice park near a lock and watched the activities along the river.