Canals and Cars

Wednesday 25^th May

We had planned to have a shorter day today but that’s not how it turned out. We first headed to the medieval village of Malestroit which is on the canal that runs from Nantes to Brest. We visited the tourism office and picked up a map for a walking tour of the village. This village had beautiful medieval buildings and was a walk with lots to see along the way. We watched a couple of boats on the canal – the centre of the village is only 100m or so from the canal and the boats tie up and the people walk into the town for lunch.

The village of Malestroit

Love the angles on this building.

The main square of Malestroit

Stone carvings above a renaissance doorway. 

Changes a boring planter box into something interesting to look at.

A canal boat at Malestroit - this is the main canal from Nantes to Brest that we saw 2 days ago in Josselin. 

From Malestroit we moved on to Redon which is the centre for hiring the canal boats – maybe one day we will try this though we have already visited a few of the villages along the route. We arrived in Redon at 12 which is school knock-off time and lunch time for businesses and the traffic was awful. Just one lane of traffic (with lots of school buses) trying to work its way through the city centre. We found a park right near the main city street (still not 100% sure on some of the parking signs but we didn’t get booked) and had lunch. Apart from walking the main street and a drive along the canal we didn’t do anything else in Redon as we would be wasting valuable time that could be spent at the car museum.

More of the canal - now we are in the town of Redon where a lot of the canal boat cruises start.

The town of Redon - Hotel Ville.

Canal at Redon.

The car museum is at a village called Loheac and Rob says it is probably the best one he has seen apart from the Le Mans museum which focuses only on the Le Mans race. There are over 400 restored cars at the museum and thousands of model cars as well. Apparently over 90% of the cars are owned by one person - lamborghinis, ferraris, maseratis ; yes more than one of each. It seemed like as you finished visiting one area you turned a corner and there was another room of cars. There was one room that had about 12 formula 1 cars. Rob was in heaven. I did one loop of the whole museum and then left Rob to wander and do another loop. We have lots of photos but I’ll spare you and only post a few here. There is also a circuit here - Rob says it is small and narrow. There were a few people there with their cars having a run. There is some sort of race meeting there in a week or so.

We are now at the car museum at Loheac. The guard dog is looking after things.

Rob says it is probably one of the best car museums he has been to apart from the Le Mans museum which focuses only on Le Mans. This one seems to have everything.

A hall of formula 1 cars.

Familiar looking car from many of the old WWII movies. 

Rob liked the Group B rally cars - and could have sat for hours and watched the video they had running.

We have lots more car photos - but I've only included a taste.

Our last stop for the day was to the forest of Broceliande-Paimpont. This is where the legend of King Arthur is said to have happened. It was late when we arrived and the tourist office was closed so we weren’t able to find out what to do here. We may go back but will see what the next couple of days bring.

 

A lovely looking house near the forest.

Dinner in – just sausages and leftovers.