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We began the day at a very slow pace, with a selection of different breakfasts, at different times, and the now mandatory trip to the swimming pool. At least it was a nice warm morning, so we could make up for the water in the pool by getting out and lying on the side for a bit.
Once they’d had enough and everyone was actually out of bed, we got cleaned up and had some lunch at home too whilst deciding what to do for the afternoon.
Our choice was Dinan – a few miles away and one of those really well presented twee little towns that France seems to be full of.
This particular one is built on top of a hill looking down on a deep valley containing the River Rance, which is the one that flows out into the Channel at St Malo. The old town centre has been quite well preserved, although I suspect some of it is, errr, “modern” preservation. I have difficulty believing that the medieval town ever looked quite that nice.
Back at the plot though, there’s a couple of fantastic churches in the old town, one of which has a bell tower you can climb so you can be totally deafened by one of those European style carillons at the top. It went off while we were up there, and the sound is still bouncing around between my ears.
One unfortunate thing we noticed about this particular old town, though, was an absence of nice looking places to go to the toilet, especially for a small child. We got ice creams and walked around a bit, but once it came to toilet time we seemed to do far more walking than strictly necessary.
So we sat in a nice park at the top of a cliff overlooking the river whilst eating our ice creams, and then we decided to come home.
Granny and Kev popped out to buy food for dinner, and we chose to make use of the host’s barbeques, so we all sat outside eating various types of dead animal with salads and drinking far too much wine. The kids kept themselves suitably entertained by mucking about in the host’s camper van with their two kids Grace and Austin, who were going home again the following morning.
I think we all had a good day. Dinan is a lovely little town.