Our two days in Dinan were both beautiful and a little scary. Our hostel was a 2km walk from the town centre and only 1km from the Dinan Port along a road in the forest surrounds. We spent most of our first day at the port, which is only small as it is only on a river. But what it lacks in size, it more than makes up for with beauty and charm. After a very cool lunch that consisted of buckwheat crepe filled with eggs, bacon and cheese, we booked our place on a ferry boat ride down the river. We had been eyeing off one of these crepes since we saw them in St Malo's Intra Muros!

The ferry ride was lovely. The town centre is on top of the valley, while the port and river are nestled at the bottom. We were afforded lovely views of the valley, an old Abbey, the very cute town Lehon, and the oldest castle/chateaux in Brittany. A highlight was going through a lock in the canal. It is a system where you approach a gate across the canal and a gate closes behind you. The water level then either rises or falls depending on the level in front of you through little slits in the gate called sluices. In a sense it acts like an elevator in the canal and helps to stop problems with tidal changes, but was originally put in place with the added purpose of military defences. It only takes one hour on the bus to get to Rennes (capital of Brittany) but along the river with all the locks to go through it takes three days! We'd seen them in Wiltshire near Avebury and it was good to experience it for ourselves.

We then trekked up a narrow cobbled street to make our way up to the old town. We only got to look around for a little bit but to be in a town that has retained almost all of it's medieval buildings and feel through war and modernisation across time is extraordinary.

We finished with a lovely dinner back at the port overlooking the river.

Unfortunately we had to leave our hostel after being abused and threatened by the hostel owner simply for enquiring if he could ask a big group of middle aged Czechs to quieten down their singing and instruments at 2am. He offered to give our money back that night and then in the morning lost the plot with us when we asked him to uphold his offer. Thankfully we'd called a taxi that arrived five minutes later and we left with our money feeling quite shaken. Thankfully we found a nice hotel in the town centre and we spent the day wandering the old buildings some more and going to the market that was on. Again, it's so amazing to find a town where you can walk street after street past medieval buildings so untouched and well preserved.