Rohan Castle

Today we left our rather fancy - but bike friendly - B&B and threaded our way through the mediaeval streets of Pontivy to rejoin the canal. We had a short stage today, having a long lunch at Rohan before arriving early in the afternoon at Josselin, home of another big Rohan family castle. As the Gite d'etape wasn't open we had to push out bikes about in the town, so we took advantage of the delay to nip up to the supermarket to buy more provisions.

Behind the church there is the Town Hall and when we went past they were setting something up. The church tower is free to visit and from the top you can get a stunning view of the town, that picture and others will soon be found on my Picasaweb pages.

While waiting for my better half to go up the church tower an old British lady walked past, and without any understanding, was most annoyed that the Town Hall had the French, German, Italian and some other flag on it and was disgusted that it didn't have British flag on it. Sadly she failed to identify the Breton Flag which is everywhere in Brittany and on just about everything in a tourist shop, mixed up the Hungarian flag with the Italian one and didn't notice that the town is twined with one in Germany and Hungary and that today was the anniversary of the twinning (it was even in shop windows) and that there was a reception in the square that evening...

Eventually the gite opened and we were able to unload and lock our bikes up inside, then return to the town without our bikes.

The town is dominated by Rohan Castle which is built on an outcrop with the river/canal at the foot and is the subject of today's blip. The bulk of the town is a picture-post-card of half-timbered houses of all shapes and sizes!

After walking round for a while we decided to gate crash the reception at the town hall and listen to the local Breton Pipe band and see if we could get some free nibbles... They were rightly very happy and celebrating a transcontinental bike ride various people had undertaken. It was a strange mix of town hall staff/civil servants and hard-core bikers... Tonight will be humble fare in the gite - assuming the cooker works (it didn't look impressive when we arrived...)

(back blip - so yes the cooker did indeed work)