We stayed dry today, despite overcast conditions the whole morning (in fact it was perfect cool riding weather). We only did a half day ride, stopping at Redon at 12.30 after 45km. We took country roads for most of the ride, which were very quiet being a Sunday.

The countryside is mostly flat, with corn and cows. Just after Blain we rode through the Forét du Gàvr, which was mostly pine trees and ferns (there are supposedly chestnuts and mushrooms and an old tower there, none of which we could see). Our route then took us through the small towns of Plessé, Fégréac and Bellion. Each town has a church – the steeples seem to be higher here then in the rest of France. We are also seeing more stone buildings.

We returned to the canal for the last 10km of the ride. The path along it had dried out enough to ride along.

Redon was founded in 832 by a monk who founded an abbey here. We visited the abbey church (11-13th century) which was very beautiful, especially the bright colours of the contemporary stained glass. The Gothic bell tower is separate to the rest of the church because the nave was damaged by fire in 1780 and then rebuilt shorter than the original.

Redon is remarkable as it is at the junction of the Oust and Vilaine rivers, as well as the Canal de Nantes à Brest. The canal crosses the river in the town. There are lots of yachts and canal boats moored here. The narrow old buildings overlooking the canal and cobble stone streets coming off it make this a very attractive town to explore.

The tourist office had just closed (until 3pm) when we arrived at 12.30pm, so we found our own hotel – just on the outskirts of town near the canal. In the evening we rode around town again looking at the canals and river junction before getting some treats from the bakery, which we ate on a bench by the canal.

Finally we had a beer and coffee at a local pub. We sat outside and were amazed at the number of people coming in and out (to get cigarettes we think as everything else is closed on a Sunday). We were amused by people stopping their cars in the narrow one way street to dash in for cigarettes, eventually holding up 4 or 5 other cars behind them, before they come back to move their car. This happened again and again while we were sitting there!