Thanks David.

Earlyish start in walking shoes, wrapping up the tent and persuading the campsite to hold a lot of my gear whilst I walk around the Ile de Brehat. I turned right from the campsite down to the coastal path and was rewarded with some lovely views and no rain. Out to sea….

…..and in towards Paimpol.

A brisk walk and I was enjoying it. The route took me by footpaths to the centre of town and to the cafe where I had two coffees yesterday. And I had two today. Nothing like familiarity. So I said to the barman ‘ Hello gorgeous’. 

This is a proper, lock-gate controlled dock, and I should know. I worked in one for seven years. The tidal range here is massive, up to 13 metres, hence the vast expanse of land exposed at low tide.  The rock work needed to support the floating dock was apparent looking back towards Paimpol port.

I was heading due north to Arcouest, at the tip of the peninsula, where there is a small passenger ferry service to the Island. As I walked further, the sea to my right came into view, and as the tide was going out, more and more granite outcrops were exposed. There’s no sight like a field of wheat waving in the… waving in….. Manuel!

It didn’t take too long to cover the journey to Arcouest and the views were certainly worth it. Including these two of the island across the water. And in the second one you’ll see two ferries making off, which meant I had to wait an hour. Nice place to wait.

And then the ferry comes in and loads up. It’s still exciting even at 65. Errr 58?

No traffic on the island, apart from the odd tractor, so folk carry their worldly goods over on hand trolleys.

Rocks everywhere. I was stood next to a yachtsman going over and he says you need to know every single rock of this coast to navigate safely. With the tide well out the disembarkation point was nearly a kilometre from the high tide alternative.

What a lovely spot.

And how rich must the local landed gentry be. To be honest it was thronged with tourists. God knows what it must be like in August. So that detracts from the value. There are 400 inhabitants in winter, rising to 5,000 in August plus hundreds of day trippers. But it’s still beautiful.

I went into the small square on the east coast, described as the Bourg, the town, and then toured round to the campsite, which was all but empty. I camped on top of the hill and got an early night after a dinner I brought over from the mainland. Perrfick. Half bottle of wine. All things in moderation my dears.

It was a bit eerie in the night. Unusual noises and a voice calling my mum’s name. Ah well. There’s more than we know so turn over Smiffy and get some sleep.

Night night.

Thanks Lou.

My right heel was very painful. I sometimes find that a switch from boots to walking trainers helps, and I boosted it with some Compeed plasters. Today I decided to stay where I was and wander round Paimpol.  Not a bad town, with a nice harbour.
First was a trip to Carrefour to buy some dinner, even though the organisation airbrushed the UK out of their D-Day remembrance carrier bag. How stupid can people be. They sell decent food though. And they’ve got a clean, warm and fully equipped toilet. A pleasure to release my doo dah on Carrefour. 

A sobering memorial. Kerity is a Breton commune where I am camping. And where an astonishing number of locals lost their lives in the first and second world wars, Algeria and the Vietnam conflict. The list continues around the side and on the back of the main memorial plinth. Lest we forget the sacrifices that France has made. Young lads. Makes me very sad.    

Hold on, the sun’s out.



In town I got two coffees and wandered, taking photos.

After a couple of hours I decided that I needed more mussels and chips. A great spot for it.

And a great bowl of mussels, which were quickly despatched.

It’s perfect walking slowly and contentedly when you’ve got a bellyfull of mussels. I got back to a PMU just round the corner from the campsite and watched the USA women hammer Chile four nil. A really good quality of play, and I should know as I follow a team that’s in the best league in the world. The Effin Prem, as Egan calls it! The Blades are in the Prem. I just like writing it.

Back to the tent and head down.

Night night.



A long walk today, about 28 kms with me rucksack. I sent out an email a couple of weeks ago, before I started this walk, to friends who are not on Facebook. One of my dearest ex-colleagues and a good friend, Eric Thamin, emailed me back to say that he had a holiday home on the route in Britanny and he was going to be there today. He’s invited me for lunch and I’ll be passing his house at lunchtime. Instant Karma’s going to get you! Thanks John.

I wrapped up the tent early, had a couple of coffees in a village en route, and made for Plouha to buy Eric’s missus some flowers. Then half-jogged the last 4kms to his place on the coast. Hadn’t seen him for 4 years but he’s still supercool, and nearly as cool as his son Augustin who is my new mate.

Sadly Mrs Thamin was at home in Paris with their daughter but Eric said he would take the flowers home when they leave.

It was great to catch up with Eric and tour the house and grounds.  He’s doing well, left SIG a few years ago and is working as a consultant at the moment. Relaxed and decent. Good pal. The house is fabulous, built by his parents in 1972 on top of some of the highest cliffs in Britanny. 

The inside of the house is stunning.

The outside is amazing.

Eric cooked lunch and then we went down to the end of his road for some views.

And then just round the corner to the top of the highest cliff in Britanny. Crazy cookies!

And then sadly it was time to go. Eric dropped me off at Plouha, where I had been earlier, and I had to leave my mate Augustin as well. Great kid, full of energy. And then for a 14 kms yomp to the campsite near Paimpol.

I yomped it, I done it before the site closed and I bought some scran on the way. It rained. Oh boy did it rain. But only after I’d put the tent up. My luck holds.

Night night. 

Thanks David.

Here is my mate Tom and me. Hanging out, talking football, basketball and drinking down at the PMU with the boys. He’s a Blade so don’t mess with him. He’s French unall. Hard as nails. He supports Rouen at basketball. This season has been brilliant for Tom. The Blades got promoted to the Premiership and Rouen are in the playoff final next Wednesday against Orleans for a place in the Prem. I hope Rouen win or Tom will go on the rampage. He’s a handful when he’s not happy. Nutter he is. I’ll take him to see the Blades one day. When he’s less of a hooligan. Look at his haircut. Skinhead! 

I woke up late this morning. Pottered about and set off about 10.30. It all seemed a bit empty without Tone. Drifted up to a local town and had a couple of large coffees. Then drifted off towards the coast. Tide’s out.

The coast is different here, lots of islands and rocks, exposed at low tide and covered at high. Treacherous. 

There’s a house on the island out there. Must get battered in stormy weather. I’m wrong, apparently it’s a lighthouse type effort.

Walking through a coastal town I must admit I had a giggle. Posh place unall. 

There are some unusual buildings round these parts. This might look more at home in Red Square.

I’m not sure what Defense de Photographier means. I think it might mean that you’ve got to take a picture.

Just to be on the safe side I took two. They can’t argue with that. I’m in St Quay – Portrieux, which is a posh spot. I followed the path round the coast for some nice views.

I’m directionless today. Well, I’ll keep the sea to my right, but I’m not motivated. I’ll stay on a campsite here. I’ll get some food, check out the PMU and mosey up there. Looking for the supermarket I got a surprise.

The bloke lying down is looking for people pharting. The one next to him is photographing them, and the final one is testing the atmosphere for pharts. Quite a business here in France. 

Some really elegant houses here in St Quay. It’s pronounced Sant Kay and comes from St Ke (Keenan) who came over here from Ireland 1,500 years ago. Amazing innit. Paddies emigrating to France 1,350 years before my missus’s ancestors emigrated from Ireland to England. No wonder there’s less than seven million folk on the island of Ireland. They all bugger off somewhere else. 



Tom, by the way, is our best French friends’ grandson. And the son of a lovely couple, Julien, who works for Rouen RMB basketball team, and Cecile, our beautiful matey girl who we’ve known since she was born. Love you both. What a photo! Not one of mine. Wow. 

The shot from my tent. I’ll wake up early with a sense of purpose. 

Night night.



When we roused in the hotel we went down for breakfast and then went back to bed. It was hissing it down, with a silent pee. We didn’t need to check out until noon.

Tone was going home tomorrow and I needed to get her back to Dinard airport. The plan was –

• Walk up to a supermarket and buy lunch
• Eat lunch in a launderette whilst washing dirty clothes
• Walk on to St Brieuc station and hire a car for 24 hours 
• Drive 14 kms further on the walk and pitch tents 
• Drive Tone to Dinard and drop her off
• Drive back to St Brieuc and drop the car
• Walk from the car hire the 14 kms, without a rucksack, to keep the walk continuous

How brilliant is that plan? Tone suggested it. It went like clockwork.

This is our campsite, with Wilson and the tent bottom left sheltered under the tree.

This was our last night together on this holiday, and we don’t have another holiday in France together until three weeks on Monday. Outrageous! To celebrate our walk we booked a Crab Cabin for dinner. Great walk down the cliff path.

And the dinner was bloody fantastic. A set menu that would cost at least double elsewhere.

We cracked the crab and pulled out every milligram of meat. Get in!

A fitting finale.

The next day we drove along the route to a campsite where Georgie would be joining me. Tone is leaving the tent, sleeping bag, matress and other things for Georgie and to save carrying them for two days I dropped them off at the campsite reception. Planning that is. Tone’s idea. Then we drove over to Dinard, goodbye Tone my dear, and I dropped the car back as planned. The 14 kms walk took me less than two and a half hours. I bought dinner in the supermarket and made my way through the harbour.


And up to the campsite.

Cold ratatouille from a tin with French bread. Perfect.

Night night.

Thanks Richard.

Christ it was wet last night. It started a bit when we walked up to the site after dinner but then it was a 14 hour downfall. We fell asleep to the rain, and we woke up to the rain. The noise on the canvas was intense. We were camped two or three metres apart but we had to communicate by telephone, and we decided to stay in bed and sit it out. At 10.30am I rang Tone and said that we needed to be packing, which we did under cover. The rain eased and she shot off to the showers. At that point it was dry enough to take Wilson and the tent down, which I did, and carry both with my rucksack and Antonia’s to the shower block. There I dried the canvas out a bit under the hand dryer and we packed them up. What a good chap I am? Better be ‘yes’ or you’ve had it fathead! 

Taking off at 11.30 we had an early coffee, burger and merguez sausages with chips in an open stall before short cutting across country. The coastal path would be muddy, slippery, tiring and dangerous in these conditions. It was reasonably dry now generally in the open air with occasional light showers. 

The route took us down to a ford with an ancient rock slab across it.

We pushed on, beyond the available campsites, and were aiming for a cheap hotel or a campsite in St Brieuc, the end of mine and Antonia’s journey together. In view of the deluges that we had, luckily largely avoided, and which were forecast for the next 48 hours, we aimed for a hotel.

Our route took us across a gorge, fed by a dammed lake. There was a footbridge across the gorge and a road bridge over the dam.

Footbridge.

View downstream from the road bridge towards where I was standing in the previous photo.

The next three hours were yomping with our rucksacks to get to a pmu bar for coffee and beer for Tone and me respectively. Then a 1.5 kilometre detour to a supermarket for dinner, and a three and a half kms slog uphill to the Premiere Classe Hotel. Past the fields of barley (or summat else cereal).

We ate a great meal on a bed in the hotel, including the usual grated carrots and celeri, plus bread and seafood tapas. Kismet Hardy. And as it rained outside we slept inside. Cop that!

Night night. 


The weather forecast had deteriorated further and we were due to be hit in the morning, and throughout the day, by stormy downpours. Our night’s sleep hadn’t been great as the tents were pitched on a slope and we’d both slid down as the previous night’s showers hit the canvas with a loud impact. But after a late breakfast of sliced bread and apricot jam we hit the track. Mercifully the sun was shining.

We felt that we were well in the firing line as black clouds dropped rain either side of us all day, leaving us in a corridor of sun and light cloud. We expected to be soaked and ended up with red faces. Literally!

It was also a great day for views – again.

The first town we came to was Erquy, where we had coffee outside a cafe in the sun, then bought a baguette, pate and a jar of gherkins and ate them on the end of the prom. 

The clouds kept looking ominous, but we escaped! 

After Erquy we followed the coastal path down to Pléneuf Val André. In parts it was domesticated.

And in parts it was wild.

In the end, there are so many beautiful, empty and inviting beaches and bays that you become almost to accept it as the norm. 

Clean as well. No plastic on them. Eventually we arrived at Pléneuf and Tone warned me that the next road name would make me snigger like a schoolboy, happy to oblige. Pronounced ‘rude prat’. 

We got the tent and tarp up on another decent site and in a sheltered spot. 

This is what it’s like inside Wilson.

Yes, it’s open to wild animals, insects and spiders but generally I haven’t seen many. Although in a couple of places I’ve woken up during the night with my head covered in slugs when it’s been raining. Not nice. But that’s extreme and mostly just breathe deeply and enjoy nature around you.

We got showered and then walked down to the front looking for a shop to buy dinner. Not a one. Great beach though.

And we ended up having mussels and chips again, with Britanny cider. A great day.

Night night. 

The weather forecast was so grim that we decided to get as far ahead of our schedule as we could before the rain falls in. That meant moving fast and shortcutting in a sensible way. My priority is making sure I walk a continuous route from John O’Groats in northern Scotland to North Africa. The GR34 is a lovely route but I’ve got nearly 1,800 miles to do before I’ve finished and I want to complete it before I’m so old that I piss my pants every time I have to lift a rucksack. Oops. Too late! Dry pants please Maggie.

The weather was holding up and as we left the village a car came past and the woman passenger leant out of the window and wished us good luck. It was the woman who I’d phoned the previous day! 

We headed down to the coastal path, following the red and white striped waymarking signs.



The route dropped down to a long inlet, with an amazing, ancient ruined settlement, with a wall the shape of a ship.

And here’s the bow.

The coastal path scoots out on the other side of the long inlet and back, for three kilometres which we saved by climbing up a steep side and over the back to St Germain, where there was this great, chunky old church.

We crossed the bottom of the next bay on a main road and, as we were halfway across a car hooted us and a woman leant out of the passenger window smiling, shouting and waving. It was the woman who I’d phoned the previous day. I hooted with laughter and waved my walking poles until they disappeared round a corner. We carried straight on across the Fréhel (pronounced Frail) peninsula through the village of Fréhel. Antonia couldn’t resist a photo of a Fréhel old man. Ha bloody ha. 

Rocking on to Sable d’Or Les Pins (Golden Sands) we pitched our tent and tarp before walking into town. And hiring pedal go cart type efforts. Great fun! Even if old Tone had to steer with her unbroken hand. 

The views were great, as usual.

And then we had oysters for starters in a nice restaurant, and mussels in cream with really nice chips for main course. An angel was crying on my tongue. Fantastic. 

The rain had started whilst we were in the restaurant but we had beaten it to the campsite and to the pedal karts. Good timing.

Night night.

The storm had cleared in the morning but there were a few trees damaged and down which we would see along the way. To save time we got a cab back to the airport and set off to walk the same route we would have done the previous afternoon, had it not been for the storm, in addition to the walk scheduled for today. Even pulling some short cuts we were looking at 32 kms, a good 20 miles, with our rucksacks. But the weather was fine.

The going was hard as Antonia not only has a broken hand but she developed a problem with her heel during the day. For my part I hadn’t done any training and the rucksack was digging into my shoulders. But then we’re as hard as nails!

The first stage was to get to the coast and we did that effectively, once we’d established where we were!

Doesn’t our Antonia look lovely? Before we reached the coast the heavens opened up and it belted down, whilst me and Tone dived into a coffee shop and ate pain au chocolate and a coffee eclair. The rain cleared as we stepped out and made good time for our first view of the sea, in the distance.

The headland on the left hand side of the photo above is St Jacut de Mer, and forms a thin peninsula. We cut across the land to the other side of the bottom of the peninsula, with a great view of the sea.

We walked down to Le Guildo, with a stunning perspective on the bay, just as a woman drove her van up and tipped hundreds of live crabs into the sea from the wall in the picture below. Tone reckoned that she hadn’t sold them at the Saturday market and put them back to keep them alive and for her fisherman friends to catch later.

To explain where we were, in the photo below we had cut across from the airport south of Dinard to the sea just south of St Briac. We’d then cut over the bottom the St Jacut peninsula and started walking up the coast towards St Cast. Simples. The inset, darkened map of France shows, with a red dot, where this area is. 

I love walking on my own but I really love walking with my missus and my kids. Preferably individually so they don’t gang up on me. 

We were now on the GR34 coastal path which runs for 1,250 miles (1,800 kms) around Britanny,  which is that big lump sticking out to the left of the red dot. A lot of miles I know for a small area of land but it bends and weaves around bays and peninsulas. And it climbs up and down to tiny hidden creeks and coves. A tough but beautiful route to follow.

The weather forecast for the next few days was grim, with stormy showers expected, so we wanted to make good ground whilst the weather was fine. The route was great with lovely opportunities for shots.

And finally turning up at the start of the bay before St Cast.

Every turn around a cape of land revealed another beach after beach after beach. Empty at this time of year.

We found a bar in St Cast that cooked us Croque Monsieur and chips, a great bread and cheese concoction, then we headed for the local supermarket, stocked up and aimed for a campsite on the western coast behind St Cast. I rang to let them know we were coming. Halfway there a car pulled up and the woman passenger asked if I had phoned them half an hour ago. She was the woman I had spoken to and she told us the quickest way there. Tent pitched, showered, dinner of bread and Camembert cheese and an early night. A bit sore and weary but a great day. And a great view from our dining room, despite Tone pulling her tongue out at me!

Night night. 

That’s a world long jump record boys and girls! Friends say, “Dave, we know you’re walking from John O’Groats to Africa but why do you keep jumping from Spain to England to France, and filling in the gaps later?”

I of course reply, “Something here inside cannot be denied.” This is a photo of me saying that.

Any road up, I want to walk some of the north coast of Britanny now and for the next two weeks, and I’ve got company. Antonia, our middle daughter, is joining me for the first week and Georgie, our eldest, for the second. Three hundred kilometres of coastline walking and we’re back under canvas again. A tent for the girls and a brand new tarp for me. I’m calling it Wilson. Hooray! Wilson is back. 

I took a train to Antonia’s place in Cambridge and we got a flight yesterday from Stansted to Dinard. We were landing into Dinard when the plane suddenly powered fully up and climbed rapidly back into the sky. There was a massive tempest over the airport and within seconds the runway was flooded so we had to abort the landing. I of course took this in my stride as a seasoned flyer, and shat myself. We circled round and round for over half an hour and then finally landed smoothly onto a wet Britanny. 

We had planned to walk a fair trek that afternoon to a campsite on the coast but the wind was wild and the world was soaked, so we walked up towards Dinard on an old railway line.

Even with the ropey weather we passed some beautiful sights.

We got a cheap hotel room and went to a local supermarket for our dinner. Antonia got side tracked!

Nevertheless we had some decent scran and turned in for an earlyish night.

Night night.