shewhomust | The cherry on the top; the sting in the tail

The cherry on the top is the treat you save until last, which on this occasion was Dinan, where we spent the last two nights of our holiday. I remembered passing through the town once, long ago, a snapshot of steep cobbled streets and some sort of waiters' race in progress (the internet confirms that this is a thing, but doesn't associate it with Dinan); and we habitually stop at a couple of favourite shops on the ring road (says my memory, without explaining what it means by &quit;habitually"). Surely it was time we got to know the old towm?

We spent a couple of very happy days doing just that:

Only, the photographic evidence tells me, we have been here before. How could I have forgotten this? Well, I appear to have been quite hazy about it, even at the time. Nonetheless, the upper town, the lower town, the ramparts, that's not so far from our itinerary on this visit. We were not, this time, distracted by Roman remains, and I don't think I walked as far - I certainly drew the line at somw of the steeper downhills. But here we are again:

The next morning we found time for a detailed tour of the basilica, which has some glorious stained glass. After lunch down at the port, we bought quite a lot of wine and some random groceries, and then it was back to Saint Malo for the overnight ferry.

Despite forecasts of gusty winds, the crossing was fine, too. But the sting in the tail was the drive back from the south coast. This is never fun, and I had been all for breaking the journey, as we had on the way down. But

durham_rambler was impatient to get home to his own bed and his own e-mails, and said "Let's see how it goes...". By the time it had gone not very well at all, he was set for pressing on. So we had a repeat of the car refusing to communicate with the fast chargepoint, and having to wait for the nice AA man to come and prod it with a screwdriver (it is booked into the garage on Monday); this gave us enough charge to get home as long as we didn't exceed 50 mpn. Luckily, we were able to boost the charge at the service station where we stopped to eat, so the final hundred miles went a bit faster. Not so luckily, there had been an incident on the motorway near Birminghamm causung an hour's delay. We were home not long after ten.

Still, it was worth it.