Tourist guide

• AURAY
  The port of Saint-Goustan was at the heart of the town’s expansion, between the 15^th and the 17^th century. Its authenticity and its charm are preserved intact.
• PONTIVY (km 74)
  The historic town centre has an urban architecture that is twofold in character: the medieval town with its narrow streets contrasts sharply with the wide straight avenues of the new town regimented under Napoléon Bonaparte.
• CHÂTELAUDREN (km 139)
  The village is classified a “small town of character”, thanks to its urban heritage: a feudal castle and the remarkable Notre-Dame du Tertre chapel, a stage on the attractive “circuit of chapels” through the towns of the region.
• SAINT-BRIEUC
  The ruins of the Cesson Tower rise up above the town. The 14^th century edifi ce overlooks the vast bay.

Download the tourist guide of the stage(6 pages, .pdf)

Download the complete tourist guide(113 pages, .pdf, 55 Mo)

Born in 1945 in Saint-Brieuc, Christian Prigent is a poet, novelist and literary critic. Founder of the TXT review and renowned as being impossibly demanding and “loud”, this cycling enthusiast won the Louis Guilloux prize in 2007 awarded by the Côtes d’Armor County Council.

“I passed all my life as a youngster in St Brieuc and I’ve just moved back to live here now I’m retired. It’s my childhood town: my father was mayor here, and some writers that are dear to me lived here (Villiers, Jarry, Corbière, Louis Guilloux). The town was the backdrop to some epic political incidents (the “Twelve” affair during the war in IndoChina, the first left wing town council, the big “Joint Français” strike…); it’s the town of some of my cycling heroes (André Ruffet, the unfortunate Tom Simpson, Bernard Hinault of course), where I saw the finish of the Tour de France and the Tour de l’Ouest many times over in the former Beaufeuillage velodrome!

The Tour is a childhood passion for me, still very much alive. The races of the 1950s, with Bobet, Gaul and Bahamontes, marked me, almost certainly because it was before we had television and we had to really use our imagination to invent a race that we scarcely ever saw. I particularly remember Ferdi Kubler winning in the sprint in St Brieuc in 54 and Louison Bobet in the yellow jersey in the bunch of riders, behind him; Charly Gaul wearing the winning jersey for Luxembourg, chatting away at the start, on the Champ de Mars in St Brieuc, in 1958; or Raymond Poulidor at the head of the pack of riders in the Yffiniac climb, shouting to part the crowd, and Greg Lemond wearing the rainbow jersey in the ascension of the Aravis. Then there was the Festina affair, which almost broke the Tour for me. I was obliged to vent my rage in a page in Libération…”