Brittany Canal Day 10

We make our usual late morning start, but today in bright sunshine. The wind is still chilly, so not quite warm enough to sit out on deck as we continue from St-Martin-sur-Oust toward Redon. We pass through the first lock before lunch, take a break at a jetty at le Pont d'Oust. There's a restaurant there, but not open on a Wednesday, so we make lunch on board before continuing down the canal, through another lock and back into the Oust river. 

The canal, evenly-spaced trees planted along it

We continue via river and canal all the way back to Redon, where we go through the last lock of this holiday. We don't have to hand the boat back for another day, so we decide to explore the waterway south of Redon. Just past the Les Canalous marina the canal enters the Vilaine river, which is much wider than the Oust. It's full of people sculling, singles, pairs and quads. We manage to avoid swamping any of them - one quad cheekily rows past us only about an oar's length away. They progress considerably faster than we do!

Onward with the Vilaine river continuing to widen, with lots of bird life - cormorants, swans, herons, flocks of egrets and some kind of raptor rising on a thermal. We planned to go as far as Rieux, but Google tells us the restaurants there are closed until tomorrow, so we think we'll push on a bit further to Pont de Cran. This decision is confirmed when we reach Rieux, because there are boats everywhere and nowhere for us to moor. Now we are seeing lots of yachts amongst the moored boats.

When we reach Pont du Cran we understand why - this is a big bridge with a section that opens at half a dozen scheduled times each day, allowing boats with masts to pass through. From here on the river runs down to its estuary at Azal. We pass easily under the bridge and find a place to tie up in a small marina where most of the boats are yachts. After a bit of a pause, we walk ashore to investigate the restaurant that's open, according to Google. It's only about 150 metres from the marina and we're looking forward to dining there, but when we get there a handwritten note on a slip of paper says "Fermé ce soir". Damn! We retreat to the boat and read until it's time to make our own dinner. At least we've now consumed almost everything that was in our fridge. We hope we'll be able to find a spot to moor in Rieux tomorrow so we can lunch there - if not we'll return to Redon.