We visited both of these French towns on day excursions on the scooter, returning each night to the Balcon de la Baie, using these trips to ascertain the sort of distance we could cover comfortably. Nevertheless both diary entries highlight Numb Bum as an issue (mine that is).
Cancale is a port town located on the western edge of the bay of Mont St. Michel. We skirted about half of the bay to reach it on a nice coastal road with a few hamlets scattered along it. As we neared Cancale we spotted sign for the port and followed it to an industrial area. Oops.
As it turned out it was very interesting as we found where they construct the unusual wheeled flat bottomed boats which are used to farm the mussel and oyster beds which stretch into the bay and provide the local industry.
In Cancale itself, we saw another of these on the beach and, as the tide was out, could appreciate the great expanse of these shellfish beds. Then we stopped for coffee, at lunchtime again.
Cancale mussel boat
Oyster and mussel beds
The following day we went to Fougères to visit largest medieval fortress in Europe. The chateau is amazing well preserved given its age, with many towers still standing, several of which you go through on the audioguided tour.
This time the audioguide narrator was, somewhat bizarrely, American. He was much more animated than his English compatriot at Mont St. Michel, with a disconcerting tendency to punctuate the more gruesome details with a forced, hearty laugh. There was much rape, pillage, bloodshed and plunder in the chateau’s history, ha ha ha! Strangely he did not use his laugh to punctuate the legend of one of the towers about a maiden cursed to spend half her life as a serpent which she had to keep secret from all, even her husband. Of course his curiosity gets the better of him and he sees her in serpent form and in doing so sentences her to the rest of her life in that form. Apparently she wasn’t too pleased about that…
Part of the ramparts with Fougeres town on the hill behind
One of the fortress entrances