Our Blog - Dinard, France

The most elegant resort town on this stretch of the Brittany coast, Dinard enjoys a picture-book perch on the Rance Estuary opposite Saint-Malo. Toward the end of the 19th century, when sea air became a fashionable "cure," the English aristocracy arrived en-masse. As a result, what started out as a small fishing port soon became a seaside mecca with lavish Belle Époque villas (more than 400 still dot the town and shoreline), grand hotels, and a bustling casino. Although a number of modern establishments punctuate the landscape, Dinard still retains something of an Edwardian tone.

There aren't that many historically-significant sights here, but we spent about 5 hours here just walking around the various walkways that hug the rocky coastline. We started in Dinard and headed one direction on the Promenade de la Malouine, a coastal path that goes from the west side of Plage de l'Écluse, ringing the Pointe de la Malouine and the Pointe des Étêtés before arriving at the Plage de St-Énogat. Then we walked back from there to Plage de l'Écluse.

We had a really nice day here, made even better with all of the information that we got from a French friend of ours, who spent a lot of time here in her youth. Her family had a family home and they would go to Dinard quite often. She drew up little maps for us to go through the various paths, where the market was, as well as a créperie for lunch and a bakery for the kouign-amann.

I joked with our friend that "we just went by your old family home", although we were joking because this is just massive! She laughed although then added that while that wasn't the family house, she knew someone who actually *did* live there! All of the little doors right on the beach are individual showers. Long ago, they used to have these little shower booths on wheels that they would wheel in (according to the pictures that they had on the information panels).

I've tried to put the pictures in groups (instead of strictly chronological), so this section will have all of the lavish mansions and villas that we saw on the walks.

And just a view of the pathway. For parts of it, like this one, it is a pretty sturdy and flat concrete pathway on the rocks. Then one part of it is more "wild", a dirt path going up and down and around.

So this one I took just to try to show how far up these houses are above the walkway, which is a little bit above the rocks at the water. You can see stone walls and normally, there will be a little set of stairs that allowed the homeowners direct access down to the water.

And then the coastline. A couple of pictures show some of the various forts that were built on little islands in the bay to protect the city.

We made it to the Plage de Saint-Énogat and headed back through the town to the downtown area of Dinard. We passed the little church, Église de Saint Enogat, which we decided to go into. While the bell tower is from the original church (built in 1761), the rest of the church that exists today was completed in 1874 after having to be rebuilt after the previous church collapsed during a violent storm. The interior is very white, literally! The only decorative elements are carved statues (in white), several lovely altars (in white), and bas-reliefs of the stations of the cross (station 5, Simon of Cyrene is made to bear the cross, is the one I took a picture of)

Low tide! you can see all of the boats that are basically sitting on the sand. This is from the marina area of Dinard, looking across the bay to Saint Malo.

A couple with Tom down on the rocks with Saint-Malo in the background. You can also get an idea of the color of the water, which was really lovely. This is low tide, so probably at high tide, these rocks are under water.

And wrapping back around to the Plage de l'Écluse from the other side. It is really amazing how much sand is visible during low tide compared to just a couple hours earlier when we got there.