It is just a one hour flight from East Midlands Airport to Dinard. With Ryanair only operating this service from April to October, and three days a week, it is fairly rare that we can take advantage of the flights as the times need us to use some of our valuable annual leave allowance. Our friends Simon and Linda accompanied us on this trip to Brittany, their second visit of the year to our little bit of France! By the time we had collected the hire car and driven the 90km from Dinard to Malestroit it was about 1830 although upon arrival at our house Heather realised she didn't have the key. Our French neighbours came to the rescue as they hold a spare key and fortunately they had arrived back from their own holiday a few days earlier otherwise we may have been bunking up with Simon and Linda. I guess this episode will be mentioned by them again in the future as well as to everyone else on the street. Friday morning saw us head across to Quiberon, although we also stopped at Auray to break up the drive for a coffee and a cake. The St Goustan port area of Auray is very pleasant and well worth a detour and one day we will time this to have a nice lunch here too. Arriving into Quiberon it was great that we were greeted by sunshine and that enabled us to explore this lovely coastal area over a few hours of pleasant walking around the headland which was followed by a refreshment (and toilet) stop at the Sofitel hotel complex with nice sea views. Once back in Malestroit we had a nice evening meal at the Mael Trech creperie including a nice flambéed crepe to round off the evening. Saturday morning saw the weather take a turn for the worse so a visit to the very interesting Breton Resistance Museum was a good way to spend a few hours. There was far too much information to take on board throughout the six rooms so on a future visit going in the reverse direction may be beneficial. The museum site also marks where a battle that took place between the French Resistance at St Marcel just 2.5km from German occupied Malestroit and you can actually see some real 'Allo 'Allo type scenarios in the displays and the stories that were being told. A personal favourite was the display about the parachuting homing pigeons - I kid you not! After a late lunch at a creperie in Serent there was time for a coffee in Ploermel before having a walk around part of the Lac du Duc and along part of the Voie Verte, an old railway line converted to a walking/cycling path. This was a our first visit to the lake (Lac du Duc) and it will be nice to walk all the way around the 14km perimeter on a future visit. Having locked the house and returned the spare key back to the neighbours we headed to St Malo on the Sunday morning. Again the sun was shining and the walled city of St Malo was a really delightful place to wander and also to enjoy lunch when dining outdoors. With views back to Dinard across the River Rance and expansive sandy beaches to enjoy St Malo is well worth a visit even if it is a little touristy. It was also nice to be less than half an hour from the airport although given Dinard Airport is very small it pays not to get there too far in advance of your flight. With the Ryanair flight back to the UK passing back over St Malo it was interesting to see that the beaches had completely disappeared that we had walked on just a few hours earlier as the tide had certainly turned. Less than sixty minutes later having passed over the Channel Islands, the Isle of Wight, Milton Keynes (it looks no better from the air) and Leicester we were in the ground at East Midlands Airport. It is just 55 days until we are back in Brittany as we will be in Malestroit just before the Christmas holiday period. Looking forward to it already!