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Sometimes when dealing with a company for the first time things go wrong and from then on the relationship is strained and you get annoyed at everything they do. Brittany Ferries, in my book, come into this category. I mentioned the daft pricing that means as two elderly foot passengers we pay the same as two people with a car (annoyance 1) but it gets worse. On arrival at the terminal our luggage was scanned and we had to walk through the personal scanner which my metal hips set off so I was frisked. But for passengers who board the ship in their cars, neither they or the car is scanned, the car boot could be full of guns, knives and explosives and no one would know. Perhaps they assume terrorists can’t drive. This was annoyance number two.

We were then crammed onto a bus to drive the 200 yards to the ship, annoyance number 3.
I was very keen to get a table in the restaurant and asked when we made a booking if we could reserve one, no was the answer, just go straight to the restaurant when you board and make a reservation. So we dragged our cases round to the restaurant where the Maitre ď said “we don’t take reservations as we will be very busy” surely that is why you would make a reservation! We hot footed it off to find our cabin, dump our stuff and back to the restaurant by which time the queue was a long one, we did get a table but many people had to wait for a second sitting after 9pm which is way past our bed time. So that was annoyance number 4. My view of Brittany Ferries is that they have decided to compete with Ryanair in the aggravation stakes although our return trip cost £500 rather that the £100 Ryanair would have charged and we would not have had to drive 150 miles each way to catch the ferry.

Having said all that the meal in the restaurant was good (but expensive of course) and the cabin was comfortable but it will be a long time before I trust Brittany Ferries again.

So now we are in St Malo Old Town in a very nice apartment right in the centre. The town has at least 20 shops selling biscuits and plenty of restaurants selling crȇpes as well as real food and hundreds of handbag and fancy clothes shops but it took us all afternoon to find a supermarket selling milk (for our tea). The good people of St Malo are obviously embarrassed by such a mundane business so it is underground and accessed by a small, non descript doorway.

Most of the town was flattened during 1944 so most of the buildings are 1950 reproductions, the picture above shows one of the many pleasant squares and the one opposite is of the Post Office and Telephone Exchange, fairly typical of all the restored buildings.