Send a Geek to China: Starting to Explore GR 34

France has many "Grande Routes" (or GR's) which are through-walking trails, similar to the Camino in Spain. (Walking town-to-town, vs just day-walking.) We were planning to do a section of GR 34 (https://www.gr-infos.com/en/gr34.htm), which goes along the Brittany coast for about 2000 km, starting at (or ending at, depending on your direction) Mont St Michel. Once we got here we changed out mind and decided to explore a bunch of day hikes, rather than doing a section of through-walking.

This is what (part of) GR 34 looks like.

I've marked the sections we've explored so far - we're starting out pretty close to St Malo but are going to explore some of the sections further west later on. (Monday we're going to visit Mont St Michel.)

Thursday:

Our first hike, the Pointe du Grouin, which is close by Cancale, the oyster capitol of France. Here are some photos from the hike.

There is an old German bunker on the point (the Brittany coast is littered with old German bunkers). Here is some graffiti left for the Germans by the French resistance.

We ended up in Cancale, with a view over acres and acres of oyster farms.

And of course feasted on local seafood for lunch.

We also bought two dozen oysters from the local fishermen and had them for dinner.

Friday:

We did a long walk from St Malo, over the bridge, to Dinard. This is a view of the Port of St Malo, with the old city in the background.

We saw a bunch of these metal "things" (appeared to be riddled with bullet holes) - we are not sure what they were.

The ruins of an old church.

Crossing the bridge to Dinard, the seagulls simply didn't give a care. (The bridge isn't actually a "bridge" but a tidal power generator, the first in the world, completed in 1966.)

GR 34 isn't as well marked as the Camino in Spain, but we came across a few signs.

We stopped for a delicious lunch at a cafe along the beach.

The beaches here are immense, especially when the tide is out. The houses (actually "chateaus") along the coast on the Dinard side are very large and luxurious.

Saturday:

Another hike out to a couple of points.

You can see another German bunker in this photo, colourfully graffitied by the locals.

I managed to tour the inside of this bunker, it was swarming with wasps so I took a quick shot and hightailed it out of there.

("video not available" - google doesn't seem to like this video, but I've also posted it on Facebook.)

We stopped at Leclerc on the way home (one of the larger grocery chains in France) to pick up some supplies. Sonya got distracted by the wine tasting station (basically a bunch of open bottles of wine and you could just help yourself.)

Today (Sunday) morning we're taking it easy - laundry day! Maybe a short hike this afternoon, and tomorrow a visit to Mont St Michel!

Addendum - Sunday:

We ended up doing a fairly long hike on Sunday afternoon, and have now covered pretty much the entire GR 34 between Dinard and Cancale. We started at Le Rocher (a fancy restaurant) for lunch (not where we had originally planned to go but apparently you really need to make a reservation for Sunday lunch) - anyways an awesome meal!