Danny Yee >> Travelogues >> Brittany

Chateau Bonaban + St Malo

Camilla was feeling poorly, and after the slightly dingy accommodation in Rennes the previous night we wanted something nice, so we booked ourselves into a chateau. Leaving Mont Saint-Michel, we headed for the village of La Guesniere and the Chateau de Bonaban.

We didn't have time to stop in Dol-de-Bretagne, but we did stop at Mont Dol, a hill which offers great views over the flat surrounding plains.

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from Mont Dol
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from Mont Dol

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the manor at Chateau de Bonaban
At €85 for the night the Chateau de Bonaban was the most expensive place we stayed in in Brittany. We weren't in the main chateau building, but rather in one of the manor buildings on the side of the open space in front of the chateau. We were sold on it as soon as we walked in, to find the windows opened over the river and a grey- or green-headed woodpecker was just outside!

We didn't want to eat in the rather posh looking chateau, so we drove into La Guesniere to find somewhere to eat. After some confusion in the place that was open, we gave up and went into St Malo instead. This turned out to be a great move -- there were plenty of choices for food and much more was happening, with buskers and live street performances and a festive air despite a light drizzle. We had seafood hotpot and roast salmon in La Dent Creuse, wandered around some more, and then had drinks and a cake.

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a St Malo street corner
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St Malo street performance

22nd June

I got up early and wandered around the chateau grounds — the site had apparently been a Roman villa in the 4th century. La Guesniere was more attractive than it had been the previous night, and we bought croissants, bread, and tarts from a boulangerie and sat next to a playing field to eat them.

We would have liked to have gone back to St Malo, and to have visited Cancale, but we just didn't have that much time. We did however fit in a visit to the Rance Tidal Barrage, which was the first large scale tidal power system, built in the 1960s.

The official EDF site is poorly laid out, but has basic information about the Rance tidal power plant.

We had coffee in the cafe attached to the boathouse where the river cruises head upstream, then went that way ourselves by road, driving to Dinan.

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