Alet
After breakfast we packed up and headed towards St. Malo.
Just as we got near the city, it started to rain, so we continued on past the harbor area, looking for a place to pull over for a while. I could tell the rain would quit soon, so we just needed a cafe, or perhaps a parking spot so we could read.
I ended up in the little village of Alet, in the town center parking. Gail napped while I read, and 45 minutes later the sun was out and we were ready to go.
The “problem” is that out one window we could see the ruins of the medieval cathedral, and out the other window a tall, skinny, castle like thing called the Tour Solidor. So we got out to take a look, and the next thing you know we were walking around the entire Alet Peninsula on the Corniche d’Alet.
It was a neat walk.
Across the water we could see Dinard, then St. Malo.
There were German machine gun bunkers along the way, still capped with steel, though some of them were a little trashed. Most of them had been shot up, and it made you wonder what it looked like when a live round hit the bunker. There are these major impact gouges where shells hit, and the occasional hole when one managed to penetrate the armor plate.
And the steel was an inch or two thick.
It was obvious that the Germans had control of this harbor at one time. That must have been quite a fight to knock them out of there.
We circled the entire peninsula, then realized that between the rain and the walk, it was past time to eat.
So that is how we saw, but did not visit, St. Malo.
Léhon
After lunch, we simply walked down out of Dinan to the port, across the bridge, and headed to the right, down-river.
The small town of Léhon is just under two kilometers away.
It had turned into a sunny, hot day, and it felt good to walk alongside the Rance River.
A tour boat, heading to the port at St. Malo passed us. Later we came upon the lock that allows for passage on the river, and watched as the up-stream boat went through.
The lock keeper actually lives right there, in a nice, stone house on the river. As I watched her work, I was thinking that seems like a great, low stress job, in a beautiful area.
To whom do you apply?
The first thing we saw was L’Abbaye de Léhon, right at the edge of the town. We crossed over the bridge and walked around the Abbey. Eventually we found an open door, and went in to see the church windows.
We saw one cafe and one pharmacy in Léhon, and as we walked I looked up the hill to my left and saw the remains of a tower. It was one of the eight turrets left from the old mini-castle, or Le Château, on top of the hill.
Well, I always like a good view, so I scrambled right up the slope to find a well maintained little city park of sorts. It was a bog grass filled meadow, surrounded by flowers, inside the wall remains.
After walking through the rest of the charming village, we walked back to Dinan on the opposite shore. When we got to the port, we drank an entire liter of Perrier Water.
So, we never made it to fight the tourist crowds inside the walls of Saint-Malo. But that is OK. We had a great day in two places, even though we saw no other tourists the entire time.