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2017 E5 walk, day 17: Beau Rivage to Mûr-de-Bretagne

Section 4, Day 17
Beau Rivage
3°2′57.9″W
48°12′38.8″N
Mûr-de-Bretagne
3°0′2.5″W
48°12′14.7″N
low 36 °F
high 59 °F
40,784 steps
15.5 miles

Though the step count doesn’t show it1, this was a relatively short day of travel.

The first bit of the trail took me through a cute little valley. Then it was on to some more of the rugged terrain around the Lac de Guerlédan. I did get to see several more of the amazing slate mines.

A gaping pit, perhaps 25′ across, lies open to the sky, encircled by a short wall of stacked slate. Brush and a tree cling to the edge inside the wall; the pit is of unknown depth. Beyond, other walls (and presumably pits) are visible among the trees.
These pits are just out in the open here; I could have gone down into them if I’d bothered to hop over the walls (made of slate, of course).

The trail then descended to loop around the northern arm of the lake, which took me through some pleasant wetlands.

One end of a large lake stretches away to the east. Rushes grow in the near shallows, and a pair of geese are swimming nearby. The far shore, around to the left and across the lake, is green (perhaps grass) down to the water’s edge, with occasional trees and buildings.
A pair of geese paddled near the shore.

The GR 341’s route was a little ambiguous here2; one branch of it continued south and west around the shore of the lake, but my branch wound to the east, so I followed that towards the town of Mûr-de-Bretagne, and then back west to the shore of the lake to my campsite, Camping Le Point de Vue de Guerlédan. (This was next door to what seemed to be an athletic school of some sort.)

I ate dinner back in Mûr-de-Bretagne (about a half hour each way, which accounted for a significant amount of the day’s walking), at a gyro place called Guerlédan Kebab.

Herbs and flowers grow in a flowerbed through a fabric weed barrier. Poorly-hidden among them is a petite cat, staring at the camera.
On the way back to the campsite after dinner, I saw this petite cat, who would rather I hadn’t.
Map of the day’s route.

  1. The step count shows total steps taken in the day, on- or off-trail. Some days, I barely veered from the trail at all; others, like this, I walked much further. ↩︎

  2. Signage on the GR 341 wasn’t bad, but it was sometimes less rigorous than on the GR 37, and certainly less than the GR 34 along the coast. ↩︎