Travel Routes in Brittany
Distances of themselves are not great in Brittany. From St. Malo to Nantes is but 180 kilometres; from Laval to Brest but 337 kilometres; and from Nantes to Brest is but 324 kilometres.
In these days of motor-cars and even bicycles, these distances are not great, and so long as they are not taken at a rush,—which forbids enjoyment,—they form no drawback to the pleasures of travel by road in Brittany. One has only to add two or three hundred kilometres more, in order to reach the starting-points of Nantes, Laval, or St. Malo from Paris. Then the tour may seem a lengthy one; but even this is nothing to find fault with; the intermediate country is in itself delightful, whether one journeys down through the Orleanais, Touraine, and Anjou, or westward through the heart of Normandy.
The railways in Brittany, except on some of the cross-country routes, are developed to a high stage of efficiency. The great express lines of the Western Railroad to St. Malo and to Brest run due west from Paris, straight almost as the crow flies. Again, one may make his entry via Nantes and the Loire valley through Touraine and Anjou by the Orleans line, and have the satisfaction of setting out from Paris by the world’s finest and most modern railway station, that wonderfully convenient and artistic structure on the Quay of Orsay.
Rennes is the great railway centre of Brittany, and accordingly all roads lead to Rennes. Here one may make up his itinerary at a price which will include nearly every place west of that point for a matter of frcs. 65 for first-class, and frcs. 50, second-class, and if he tell the clerk of the booking-office at his point of departure for Rennes that he intends doing this (and agrees with the formalities) he will get a discount of forty per cent, on the price of first or second class tickets up to that point. A plan of this itinerary and further particulars are given in the appendix.
Third-class railway travel in Brittany ought to form one of the long-remembered experiences of one’s visit to that province.