Voie de Dinan

At a glance

• Start / finish: Dinan, Basilique Saint-Sauveur (Côtes-d'Armor) / Saint-Médard-sur-Ille (Ille-et-Vilaine), where it joins the Voie des Capitales
• Length: 52.3 km
• Duration: 3 stages, 3 days
• Elevation: ↗ 157 m / ↘ 182 m
• Highest point: 77 m right at the start in Dinan's old town; lowest point 6 m on the Rance – the steepest kilometre is the first, and it goes downhill
• Surface: almost entirely towpath along the Canal d'Ille-et-Rance, flat except for the lock staircase at Hédé
• Waymarking: yellow shell on a blue background; along the canal always on the towpath side, plus bronze studs in the paving in Dinan and Léhon
• Traces of St James: remains of the Prieuré Saint-Jacques in Dinan (founded in 1366 as a pilgrim hospital), the vanished St James chapel of Notre-Dame du Bois-Geffroy (1409) in Saint-Médard-sur-Ille
• Connection: at Saint-Médard-sur-Ille onto the Voie des Capitales (at its km 56.2), on via Rennes to Blain
• Best time: April to October; along the canal, trees give shade in places

Overview

Dinan is one of the eight "kilomètre zéro" of the Association bretonne des Amis de Saint-Jacques de Compostelle, and the Voie de Dinan is a short run-up: 52.3 kilometres, three days, and by the end it has already merged into the Voie des Capitales. You set off from the Basilique Saint-Sauveur, where the heart of Bertrand Du Guesclin lies, walk down the Rue du Jerzual to the port – a 75-metre drop, 35 percent in places – and meet the Rance at the bottom. From there, water leads you: first the river as far as Léhon and Évran, then the Canal d'Ille-et-Rance, which Napoleon commissioned and his successors completed in 1832.

To be honest, the terrain is hardly terrain at all. The highest point of the route comes with your first step; after that the towpath climbs so gently over two days that you only notice it at the locks – until Hédé-Bazouges, where eleven locks overcome 27 metres of height in just over two kilometres. What the Voie de Dinan has in the way of St James traces are mostly gaps with a date attached: a pilgrim hospital of which a holy-water stoup remains, and a St James chapel of which only the dedication formula survives. A feeder route, yes – but one with its own town, its own river and its own canal.

Other names

The association lists the route as the Voie de Dinan and describes it together with the Voie des Capitales in a single guide, the "Guide Capitales & Dinan" – free as a PDF. The Voie des Capitales, which it joins, was called the "Chemin du Mont-Saint-Michel" until April 2014.

Ideal for whom – and for whom not

Ideal if you're looking for a short, safe introduction: three days, hardly any climbing, no navigation – the canal is the way. Ideal too as a run-up to something longer, because at Saint-Médard-sur-Ille you're standing on a line that continues via Rennes, Blain and Clisson all the way to the Via Turonensis. And ideal if you like to begin behind 2,600 metres of town walls and pass a Romanesque abbey on your first day. To be honest, though, it's not for you if you need variety in the terrain: 40 kilometres of towpath are beautiful but uniform, and by the third day some find the canal meditative, others boring. Nor is there a Spanish-style chain of albergues – accommodation along the canal is scarce and needs to be booked ahead.

Route & landscape

The first kilometre is the most dramatic: from the Basilique Saint-Sauveur through the Rue de la Larderie, Haute Voie and Rue de la Poissonnerie into the Jerzual and down the Rue du Petit Fort to the Port de Dinan. Passing under the viaduct of 1852, you follow the Rance upstream to the lock at Léhon with its abbey church. From here the river is canalised, and as far as Évran you walk along the water, partly beneath beech trees.

From Évran the Canal d'Ille-et-Rance becomes your companion: via Trévérien, Saint-Domineuc and Le Village to Tinténiac, lock after lock. The third day brings the only climb: at Hédé-Bazouges the lock staircase – the "échelle de onze écluses" – rises 27 metres over 2.16 kilometres, after which, around kilometre 42, you reach the route's summit at just under 75 metres near the watershed between the Rance and the Ille. From there the canal descends gently past the Courgalais lock near Montreuil-sur-Ille to Saint-Médard-sur-Ille, where you meet the Voie des Capitales at the bridge. Hédé's old town sits on its rock 0.7 kilometres off the track, the centre of Montreuil-sur-Ille just under 0.9 – both are detours, not waypoints.

Stages, terrain & difficulty

The three stages follow the stage towns of the association's guide; the distances come from the Camino Ninja map, calibrated exactly to the 52.3 kilometres of our route, and the elevation figures from our waypoints. The guide arrives at almost the same values: 13.0 · 19.3 · 20.0 kilometres in its table, 52.1 kilometres in its text. Nothing here is difficult. If you want shorter days, split the second stage at Saint-Domineuc (km 22.3) and the third at the Courgalais lock near Montreuil-sur-Ille.

1. Dinan → Évran (12.9 km) — down the Jerzual to the port, up the Rance via Léhon; ↗ 62 m / ↘ 125 m.
2. Évran → Tinténiac (19.4 km) — towpath via Trévérien, Saint-Domineuc and Le Village; ↗ 35 m / ↘ 13 m.
3. Tinténiac → Saint-Médard-sur-Ille (20.0 km) — over the eleven locks of Hédé-Bazouges and the summit at km 42, joining the Voie des Capitales; ↗ 60 m / ↘ 44 m.

Two bronze studs, a holy-water stoup and a vanished chapel

The Camino in Dinan begins in the paving. The guide promises: "À Dinan, quelques clous de bronze vous guideront jusqu'au bord de la Rance." The studs recall a foundation: in 1366 Olivier and Estiennette Brécel donated the Clos Brécel for a hospital for pilgrims and poor travellers, and this became the Prieuré Saint-Jacques, taken over by the Trinitarian order – the order that ransomed captives. What remains, according to the guide, is a holy-water stoup and a chapel door. In Léhon, an hour later, the story gets bolder still: the abbey is said to have been founded after the monk Condan stole the relics of Saint Magloire by night from the Channel island of Sark – Nominoë, who died before 851, had promised land if the monks brought back a Breton saint. Today a garden of plants against pilgrims' ailments grows on the old cemetery. A monastery that begins with a relic theft, and a garden against blisters: Léhon takes pilgrimage seriously from both ends.

In between lies what you'll have under your feet for three days. The Canal d'Ille-et-Rance was built from 1804 and finished in autumn 1832, 84.8 kilometres long, with 48 locks; among the workers, for 110 days, were 292 Spanish prisoners of war. The last cargo passed in 1972 – since then the towpath has belonged to anglers, cyclists and you. And at the end, in Saint-Médard-sur-Ille, the second gap awaits: the chapel of Notre-Dame du Bois-Geffroy, built in 1409 "en l'honneur de Dieu, de la sainte Vierge et de saint Jacques apôtre", destroyed in the Revolution. What stands in Saint-Médard is a Croix montoise from 1580 – one of those crosses that lined the "Chemins de Paradis" to Mont-Saint-Michel. So you arrive at a cross that points north to the Archangel, and turn south, towards the Apostle.

Highlights along the way

• Basilique Saint-Sauveur, Dinan — Romanesque west front from the 12th century, stylistically related to churches in Poitou and Saintonge; in the south transept the heart of Bertrand Du Guesclin, who defended Dinan against the English in 1357.
• Ramparts and Rue du Jerzual — 2,600 metres of surviving wall walk, then the lane down to the port, a 75-metre drop, 35 percent in places.
• Prieuré Saint-Jacques — founded in 1366 as a hospital for pilgrims and poor travellers, later Trinitarian; a holy-water stoup and a chapel door survive.
• Abbaye Saint-Magloire, Léhon — abbey church from around 1190–1210, cloister, relic legend from the time of Nominoë, garden of pilgrim plants.
• Évran — on the old Roman road between Condate (Rennes) and Corseul.
• Échelle de onze écluses, Hédé-Bazouges — eleven locks over 2.16 kilometres, a 27-metre difference in height; at the La Madeleine lock the Maison du Canal d'Ille-et-Rance.
• Saint-Médard-sur-Ille — church from 1752, Croix montoise from 1580 in the Rue du Roquet, memory of the St James chapel of 1409.

How pilgrims reach this route

The Voie de Dinan has no feeder route – Dinan is itself a kilometre zero. Most people arrive by train or bus; if you're coming from England, you land by ferry in Saint-Malo and reach Dinan by regional bus. From the direction of Mont-Saint-Michel you don't come via Dinan but directly along the Voie des Capitales – the Voie de Dinan is its western side branch. If you'd rather start further west on the north coast, the Voie de l'Abbaye de Beauport from Paimpol offers a route of its own through the interior.

Walking on?

Yes, and without a gap. At Saint-Médard-sur-Ille you continue on the Voie des Capitales, at its kilometre 56.2: south 26.8 kilometres to Rennes, 141.4 kilometres in all via Langon to Blain. There it joins the Voie de la Pointe Saint-Mathieu, which takes you a further 99.7 kilometres via Nantes to Clisson; from Dinan that makes 293.4 kilometres. After that the Chemin Vendéen takes over as far as Saint-Jean-d'Angély and thus to the Via Turonensis, which leads via Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port onto the Camino Francés. At Beslé the Voie des Capitales (Redon) also branches off, a Camino Ninja variant to Redon. And if you want to visit the Archangel first: from Saint-Médard it's 56.2 kilometres north on the Voie des Capitales to Mont-Saint-Michel, where the Voie des Plantagenêts begins.

Preparation & practicalities

The Association bretonne's "Capitales & Dinan" guide is available free as a PDF and is updated every year; the association also publishes accommodation lists for each section online. For accommodation along the route, the guide lists chambres d'hôtes near Saint-Judoce and at the Parfraire lock, a campsite by the canal in Tinténiac, and the gîte d'étape in the lock-keeper's house at Courgalais near Montreuil-sur-Ille, which since July 2023 has had twelve beds in four rooms. Then there are the accueils jacquaires, private hosts offering a "libre participation aux frais" – with the association's rule: book at least 48 hours ahead and bring your credencial. The association gives the pilgrim passport (credencial) to members free of charge at the permanences of its delegations; it only sends it by post to members living outside historic Brittany. The easiest way to plan stages and accommodation is directly in the Camino Ninja app. You can shop in Dinan, Évran and Tinténiac; there's a café-épicerie in Trévérien, and toilets at the boat stops in Saint-Domineuc and Le Village.

What the route costs you

The guide is free, as is the credencial for members, and the accueils jacquaires have no set rate, just a voluntary contribution to costs. The guide doesn't print fixed prices for the gîte, the campsite or the chambres d'hôtes along the canal; ask when you book (as of October 2026).

Getting there

To the start in Dinan: the station is on the Lison–Lamballe line, with TER BreizhGo trains to Dol-de-Bretagne and to Saint-Brieuc; change there for trains towards Rennes and Paris. BreizhGo buses also link Dinan with Saint-Malo and Rennes.

From the finish in Saint-Médard-sur-Ille: the village has an unstaffed halt on the Rennes–Saint-Malo line, served by TER trains to Rennes; so does Montreuil-sur-Ille. If you're walking on, you don't need a train – Rennes is 26.8 kilometres south on the Voie des Capitales.

• Rail in France: sncf-connect.com — TER Dinan–Dol-de-Bretagne, Dinan–Saint-Brieuc, Rennes–Saint-Médard-sur-Ille
• Buses in Brittany: breizhgo.bzh — regional buses Dinan–Saint-Malo and Rennes–Dinan–Dinard