St Malo, the River Rance and stunning Dinan

By Fi

St Malo

We loved being in the relative comfort of the inner basin at St Malo. We could walk easily the couple of minutes in through the ramparts and into the old town, with its plethora of fish shops, boulangeries, boutiques and restaurants.

We enjoyed some food and cider, and a few walks. We noticed that at low tide, it was possible to walk out to the small island called “Grand Be”, and then on to “Fort du Petit Be” so on our last full day at St Malo, we donned our dinner wear, and went for a pre-dinner walk along the sand. The day before, we had been here at high looking at the currents, and now to our surprise, at low tide, a pool had appeared, as well as the walking track out to the island. Pretty amazing place.

After our meal we headed back to Away, and did some prep for the next day. We had decided to brave the inland waterway of the River Rance. It took a lot of planning, as again, we needed to time the tides accurately to make sure we wouldn’t go aground. The extra complicating factor here was, we have to go through 3 separate locks (see last blog post for what a lock is) and we also have to contend with 2 different sets of tides, oh and 3 bridges that we calculated we *should* fit under.

To explain, we need to get out of the basin where we were docked, which was the 09:24 lock opening, which would give us enough tidal height to get to the next lock around the corner.

The next lock is called “The Barrage” which is attached to a tidal power station. The power station uses the force of the tides to run turbines. So they have dammed the river, and added a lock on the west side for boats. We were too late for the 10:00 lock, and so waited for the 11:00.

Because the power station tries to maximise the flow of water, they actually have changed the tidal range and times within the river. So the river tides are now different to the sea tides, and it is definitely possible for us to ground ourselves in the river. So we need to also align those times, with the leaving time from the inner basin at St Malo.

So going through the Barrage lock we need to ensure enough tide and time to get to the final lock (called Chatelier lock), after which we are then in the river proper, and there is no more tide. The piece of river between the Barrage, and the Chatelier lock gets very shallow and dries out. If we hit the bottom, we need to hope we got the tides right and it is a rising tide, if not, we would have to wait for a few hours for the tide to drop out, we’d sit on the ground, then we’d float again once the water rose. We weren’t 100% confident in the information we had, but we gave it a go. This is also the section where the 3 bridges are, and so the tide couldn’t be too high, or we’d hit the bridges with our mast.

We did it but still not quite sure exactly how…. Here are some of the photos. The least depth we saw on this trip up the river was 1.4m. We draw 1.2m with the centreboard up so it was pretty close.

Adrian puts it nice and simply, if the tide it too high, we hit on the top, too low and we hit on the bottom.

Dinan

Our final destination was Dinan, a beautiful medieval town on the river, with a thriving tourist industry. It honestly looks like the inspiration for Beauty and the Beast, it is just so stunning, so get ready for all the piccies. Once we were tied up, we went for a walk through the port area, and also had a nice meal. The old town is about a 10 minute walk up a hill, and so we were saving that for the following day and more energy.

Again I have to mention, the number of people stopping by and taking photos of Away and asking us about the boat and Australia was amazing. We were busy chatting a lot of the time! Someone asked me if I spoke English, and I misheard and replied “Je suis australienne” to which they responded in French that they did not speak Australian and laughed – oh well my French is getting better and better everyday.

After a good walk and decent sleep we tackled the hill up to the old town and were rewarded with the old town of Dinan being one of the cutest places I have ever seen. We walked up to the ramparts, and the tower overlooking the port and had a view out north towards the sea and St Malo.

After our walk we also decided that the Garcia motto “nowhere you can’t go” seemed to have been fully tested here, given we couldn’t go further up the river – so we got in our dingy for a river trip. I honestly thought I was in a Renoir painting it is so beautiful. We even got to take our little dingy through the next river lock. The lockmaster was a lovely man who was only too happy to oblige emptying and refilling the lock for us.

At about 6PM we turned around, and headed back through the lock again, and home to Away. We had planned for a quiet day the following day as it was going to be a little dreary. We needed to plan our next steps again, because we have some commitments.

We need to get Away back to Cherbourg as Garcia have recommended they give the Away a once over and check everything now we’ve been out for a while. They also have a few items to complete for us.

To complicate this, our visas for Europe are also running out fast. We have until the 25th of September to get out of Europe. Oh, and we also have a dog…

We basically need to get to the UK. BUT, you cannot take a dog to the UK by private boat, which means we need to take him over on a ferry. BUT you can’t take a dog on a ferry unless its in a car, so we need to also hire a car. BUT you can’t take just any car, it has to be an Audi, VW or BMW if you go with one hire company, another hire company just says no and another said yes (thank goodness). BUT then we have to leave the dog in the UK somewhere in boarding.

Jersey would be easy as there is a quick ferry from St Malo (just up the river) BUT Jersey has no available boarding kennels.

Plus we need PCR tests, and Bernie needs extra medication before he can travel to be given by a vet.

Possibly this is the most complicated issue we have had to solve in our adventures thus far.

We think we have solved it by planning to take Away to Cherbourg earlier than we planned, hiring a car from Cherbourg, driving the car to Caen, getting on a ferry to Portsmouth – and after that we have a little airbnb in the countryside so we can breathe for a second, plus add more time on our European visa in the process.

And we should have more luck with dog boarding in the UK.

So with all of that planned and most of it booked (it took an entire day) we were ready to enact said plan. First stop, back to St Malo, then on to Cherbourg!