Cycle Touring in France: Dinan

Several of the cycling blogs we have read mentioned Dinan as being one of the best places they had visited in Brittany so we booked two nights and spent a full day walking through the medieval town and down into the port via a steep cobbled street. We ended up doing this trek three times during the day, so our day off was yet another rest day that was anything but!

This town still has most of the original keep and walls intact so we payed to enter the museum part and viewed the inside rooms including the crypt where several carved tombstones were displayed. The artificial lighting has encouraged green algae to grow which had given the carvings a strange look. The views from the ramparts are excellent and the whole countryside can be seen for miles around. In the afternoon we visited the house of a famous local artist called Yvonne Jean-Haffen where they hold exhibitions of her work from time to time by gathering together works that she sold to others during her lifetime. It was a lovely place on the banks of the river with its own gardens and her studio on the top floor had views down the valley. I had not come across her works before but she painted from before the war until fairly recently and there were a wide variety of her works on view. Her house is also near a bar-cafe on the riverside so this visit was followed by ice cream as it was a hot day.

Various views of Dinan:

Cobbled street leading to the port