Voie des Capitales

At a glance

• Start / finish: Le Mont-Saint-Michel (Manche) / Blain (Loire-Atlantique)
• Length: 197.6 km
• Duration: 9 stages following the guide of the Association bretonne, 9–10 days
• Elevation: ↗ 1,020 m / ↘ 1,007 m – practically flat
• Highest point: 105 m at km 50.0 between Andouillé-Neuville and Saint-Médard-sur-Ille; lowest point 1 m in the bay of Mont-Saint-Michel
• Landscape: Couesnon, bocage, Canal d'Ille-et-Rance, Vilaine towpath, forest of Le Gâvre
• Waymarking: yellow shell on a blue background towards Santiago; in the opposite direction cyan with the silhouette of the Mont; on GR sections the shell in addition to red-and-white
• Traces of St James: 14th-century statue of St James in Pontorson, ruins of the Chapelle Saint-Jacques et Saint-Jean near Pont-Réan, Faubourg Saint-Jacques in Messac, St James relief in Guémené-Penfao
• Accommodation: gîtes communaux, pilgrim hosts on a “participation aux frais” basis, chambres d'hôtes; book at least 48 hours ahead, credencial required
• Connecting routes: at Saint-Médard-sur-Ille the Voie de Dinan; near Beslé the Voie des Capitales (Redon); at Blain the Voie de la Pointe Saint-Mathieu to Clisson
• Best time: April to June, September to early October; the Mont is packed in July and August

Overview

The route is named after two capitals, and on our map it reaches only one of them. The associations explain the name by saying the route passes through “2 capitales administratives régionales” without leaving historic Brittany: Rennes, capital of the Brittany region, and Nantes, capital of the Pays de la Loire and once the residence of the Dukes of Brittany. Rennes lies at kilometre 83. Nantes lies beyond Blain, where after 197.6 kilometres the Voie des Capitales joins the Voie de la Pointe Saint-Mathieu. So you reach the second capital on the neighbouring route. In between lies a landscape of water: the Couesnon below the Mont, the Canal d'Ille-et-Rance, three stages of towpath along the Vilaine to the Roman chapel of Langon, and finally the forest of Le Gâvre and Blain with its castle.

To be honest, this is a route that became famous in the wrong direction. Until April 2014 it was called “Chemin du Mont-Saint-Michel”, and that is still the name of the opposite direction today: anyone walking north from Clisson is a Miquelot, follows the cyan silhouette of the Mont and needs the Carnet du Miquelot. The medieval sources speak almost exclusively of this northbound direction, of people heading to the Archangel rather than to the Apostle. You walk their route backwards, with the shell as your sign. That's no false labelling – both pilgrimages shared the same roads – but you should know it before you go looking for traces of St James.

Other names

In French the route is called Voie des Capitales. The old name “Chemin du Mont-Saint-Michel” (initially also “Chemins du Mont-Saint-Michel”) was used until April 2014; since then the guide of the Association bretonne has spoken of the “nouvelle appellation de ce chemin”. The Association des Chemins du Mont-Saint-Michel lists the same line as the Chemin de l'Atlantique, one of three routes between the Mont and Santiago, alongside the Voie des Plantagenêts and the Grand Chemin montois. There is a separate guide for the opposite direction under the old name.

On Camino Ninja the Voie des Capitales runs from the Mont to Blain, where it meets the Voie de la Pointe Saint-Mathieu; the association counts it onwards via Nantes to Clisson. The Voie des Capitales (Redon) is a Camino Ninja name; in the guide it is simply called “la variante”.

Who it's ideal for – and who it isn't

Ideal if you're looking for your first French Camino and don't want to start it in the mountains: 1,020 metres of ascent over almost 200 kilometres, highest point 105 metres, and from Saint-Médard to Langon, more than 90 kilometres, you walk almost entirely along canal and river. Ideal if you have ten days: a World Heritage Site at the start, a capital in the middle, a junction of routes at the end. Ideal too if you want to be alone: day-trippers crowd the Mont, but by the Couesnon it is already quiet.

To be honest, though, it's not for you if you expect albergues like in Spain. Between Antrain and Blain you'll mostly sleep with private hosts who take in pilgrims for a “participation aux frais”, and they only accept guests who have booked and carry a credencial: the association asks for a reservation at least 48 hours in advance. In Pont-Réan the accommodation list has no pilgrim lodging. The route is also not for you if long flat kilometres wear you down: a towpath stays a towpath, and stage 8 is 30.1 kilometres.

Route & landscape

Our waypoints begin on the approach to the Mont, just under a kilometre before the abbey mount and one metre above sea level. You share the first good kilometre and a half with the Voie des Plantagenêts; then it turns east towards Saint-James and you head south along the Couesnon, the river border between Normandy and Brittany. Via Beauvoir and Pontorson you follow a former railway line that is now a greenway, and along the Loisance to Antrain. Then the bocage of the Marches de Bretagne begins: Romazy with its priory, Sens-de-Bretagne, which according to the guide was founded “au croisement de deux importantes voies romaines”, Andouillé-Neuville and the highest point of the route, 105 metres at kilometre 50.0. At Saint-Médard-sur-Ille you reach the Canal d'Ille-et-Rance and follow its towpath via Betton to Rennes.

After Rennes you switch to the Vilaine and stay with it as far as Langon. This is the quietest part of the route: locks, mills, Pont-Réan with its humpback bridge of 1767, Bourg-des-Comptes, Saint-Malo-de-Phily, the port of Guipry, then Langon with the Chapelle Sainte-Agathe. A good three kilometres further on, at Pâtis Vert, you cross the Vilaine and pass from Ille-et-Vilaine into Loire-Atlantique; this is where the variant to Redon branches off. The main route leads through the marshes of Beslé and along an old railway line to Guémené-Penfao, then across the Don into the rocks of Gascaigne, to Marsac-sur-Don and through the forest of Le Gâvre to Blain. Surface: towpath, greenway, farm track and minor road; after rain the bocage gets muddy.

Stages, terrain & difficulty

We follow the stage division of the Association bretonne's guide: nine days from the Mont to Blain. The kilometres come from the Camino Ninja map; each figure is the difference between two points of our waypoint chain, and the total gives exactly the 197.6 kilometres of our route data. The guide arrives at 197.7 kilometres; the stage to Rennes differs most clearly (27.2 instead of 26.2 km for us), because the guide ends at the youth hostel by the canal and our town point lies a good kilometre off the track. No stage is technically difficult; you collect the most ascent, a good 200 metres each, on stages 2 and 8.

1. Le Mont-Saint-Michel → Antrain (20.9 km) — south along the Couesnon, via Pontorson and a greenway on an old railway line.
2. Antrain → Sens-de-Bretagne (18.4 km) — into the bocage via Tremblay and Romazy; the day with the most ascent.
3. Sens-de-Bretagne → Saint-Médard-sur-Ille (16.5 km) — via Andouillé-Neuville and the highest point (105 m) down to the canal.
4. Saint-Médard-sur-Ille → Rennes (27.2 km) — towpath of the Canal d'Ille-et-Rance via Saint-Germain-sur-Ille, Betton and Saint-Grégoire.
5. Rennes → Pont-Réan (18.3 km) — to the Vilaine, the mill of Apigné, the lock of Cicé.
6. Pont-Réan → Saint-Malo-de-Phily (21.3 km) — towpath via Le Boël, Bourg-des-Comptes and Pléchâtel.
7. Saint-Malo-de-Phily → Langon (26.0 km) — Guipry, the viaduct of Les Corbinières, Port-de-Roche.
8. Langon → Marsac-sur-Don (30.1 km) — longest day: Pâtis Vert, Beslé, Guémené-Penfao, rocks of Gascaigne.
9. Marsac-sur-Don → Blain (18.9 km) — through the forest of Le Gâvre to the castle of Blain.

If you want shorter days, split stage 8 at Beslé or Guémené-Penfao, where there is pilgrim accommodation, and make it ten days. Rennes is the natural rest day.

The shell points south, the history points north

In the Middle Ages Mont-Saint-Michel was a destination, not a starting point. The Association bretonne's guide names as the first pilgrim known by name a Frankish monk called Bernard, who was there around 867/868. A register of the Paris hospital of St James records 16,690 pilgrims heading to the Mont in roughly one year in 1369 – in a house named after Santiago, of all places. In 1456 and 1457 young people from Switzerland and southern Germany set off on their own to the Mont. The Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz calls them the “enfants de Saint-Michel”; in May 1457 alone, seven such processions passed through Solothurn and Biel. According to the guide their roads ran via Pontorson, Antrain and Rennes – over your first four stages, that is – and northwards, to the Archangel.

Traces of St James are correspondingly thin, and the guide itself is honest enough to say so. Antrain has a “Champ-Jacquet”, but the guide considers a link to the pilgrimage “assez peu vraisemblable”. Rennes also has a Champ-Jacquet with tall 17th-century half-timbered houses, but the city's history derives the name from the Porte Jacquet in the old town wall, not from the pilgrims to Santiago. And the guide treats the steel bridge of Port-de-Roche near Langon as an Eiffel structure. The Inventaire général dates it to 1868, names the workshops H. Joret & Cie in Montataire and writes of the Eiffel attribution that it “n'est pas vérifiée”. What is documented, on the other hand, is the 14th-century statue of St James in Pontorson, the chapel of Notre-Dame du Bois-Geffroy near Saint-Médard, partly dedicated to the Apostle and destroyed in the Revolution, the ruins of the Chapelle Saint-Jacques et Saint-Jean near Pont-Réan, the Faubourg Saint-Jacques in Messac and the St James relief in Guémené-Penfao. Little, but genuine – and the sources themselves have taken back three lovely names.

More often than shells, you'll find signs of the Mont along the way: the “croix montoises”, wayside crosses for the Miquelots, for example near Saint-Médard, or the 17th-century cross of La Hunaudière near Rimou, carved with the shells of St James. Here both pilgrimages share one sign, and today's waymarking is built on exactly that: on the same post the yellow shell points south and the cyan silhouette of the Mont points north. Southwards you walk with the credencial, northwards with the Carnet du Miquelot – and both open the same doors.

Highlights along the way

• Le Mont-Saint-Michel — the starting point, a World Heritage Site and one of the great pilgrimage destinations of the Middle Ages. Maison du Pèlerin with ten beds, by reservation only.
• Pontorson — church of Notre-Dame with a 14th-century statue of St James; nothing remains of the 13th-century pilgrim Hôtel-Dieu.
• Canal d'Ille-et-Rance — built from 1804 to 1832, around 84 kilometres long with 48 locks; you walk its towpath from Saint-Médard to Rennes.
• Rennes — capital of Brittany, half-timbering at the Champ-Jacquet, youth hostel by the canal.
• Pont de Pont-Réan — humpback bridge with seven arches, according to the heritage register “édifié en 1767”, on medieval foundations on an old Roman road; a Monument historique since 1942.
• Vilaine valley — towpath to Langon, the viaduct of Les Corbinières (1861), the bridge of Port-de-Roche (1868) with the monograms of Napoleon III and Eugénie.
• Chapelle Sainte-Agathe, Langon — 4th-century Gallo-Roman building with a fresco of the “Vénus sortant des eaux”; on the first list of Monuments historiques in 1840 and, according to the guide, a place of pilgrimage for nursing mothers in the Middle Ages.
• Guémené-Penfao — church of Saint-Michel with eight pillars full of reliefs of saints, among them St James with shells and pilgrim's staff.
• Forest of Le Gâvre — 4,457 hectares of state forest, the largest forest in Loire-Atlantique; the village was founded in 1225 by Pierre Mauclerc.
• Château de Blain — begun around 1108, passed to the Clisson family in 1225 and to the Rohan in 1407, razed on Richelieu's orders in 1628; a Monument historique since 1977, on the Canal de Nantes à Brest.

How pilgrims reach this route

Most people travel to the Mont and set off from there. No Breton feeder route comes from the north, because this is where Brittany begins. Anyone arriving on foot from Normandy uses the routes of the Association des Chemins du Mont-Saint-Michel, which don't yet have their own pages with us. The Voie des Plantagenêts also starts at the Mont: on the first morning you choose between Brittany and Anjou. Two routes join the Voie des Capitales along the way:

• Voie de Dinan — 52.3 km from Dinan via Évran and Tinténiac; it joins at kilometre 56.2 in Saint-Médard-sur-Ille
• Voie des Capitales (Redon) — 19.9 km from Pâtis Vert near Beslé (km 152.4) to Redon, where it meets the Voie de la Pointe Saint-Mathieu; the detour via the abbey town is around 28 kilometres longer to Blain than the direct route

If you start further west in Brittany, for example at the Pointe Saint-Mathieu or on the Voie de l'Abbaye de Beauport, you don't need the Voie des Capitales: those routes run via Redon directly to Blain and Clisson.

Continuing on?

The Voie des Capitales doesn't end at Blain; it merges into another route. At kilometre 429.5 of the Voie de la Pointe Saint-Mathieu you continue on its line: along the Canal de Nantes à Brest to Nort-sur-Erdre, down the Erdre to Nantes, the second capital in your route's name, and through the Muscadet vineyards to Clisson – another 99.7 kilometres according to our route data. That the castle of the Clisson family stands in Blain and the route then leads to Clisson is a coincidence, but a nice one.

From Clisson the Chemin Vendéen takes over with 235.1 kilometres to Saint-Jean-d'Angély, where you meet the Via Turonensis; across the Pyrenees you then continue on the Camino Francés. Counting honestly: from the Mont to Saint-Jean-d'Angély it's a good 530 kilometres, and Santiago is then still well over a thousand kilometres away. That's why the Voie des Capitales works well as a ten-day journey in its own right.

Preparation & practicalities

Best time: April to June and September to early October. In high summer the Mont is crowded and expensive. Waymarking: on sections without a GR the Association bretonne marks the route with its yellow-and-blue signs, on GR sections the shell is stuck next to the red-and-white, and in Loire-Atlantique directional shells show the way. The guide “Voie des Capitales & Dinan” is available as a free PDF on compostelle-bretagne.fr, along with accommodation lists for “Capitales (Nord)” and “Capitales (Sud)”. The easiest way to put together your stages and accommodation is in the Camino Ninja app.

Pilgrim passport: without a credencial you won't get a bed with the private hosts, because they require “accueil avec participation aux frais et présentation de la Credencial”. The Association bretonne issues it free of charge to members, during the office hours of its local branches; by post only to members living outside historic Brittany. Sort it out in good time. If you're walking in the opposite direction to the Mont, you need the Carnet du Miquelot. Supplies: according to the guide, Bourg-des-Comptes has restaurants and a supermarket, and Rennes of course does; in the small stage villages it's better to shop the day before.

What the route will cost you

Payment is in euros. Documented prices from the association's accommodation lists (as of October 2026): in Pontorson a dormitory bed at L'Étape du Mont costs up to €25, breakfast €5.50. Near Sens-de-Bretagne a pilgrim host offers dinner, bed and breakfast for €30, in Guipry-Messac there is a pilgrim rate of €35 per person including dinner and breakfast, and a chambre d'hôtes in Antrain costs €75–90 (as of October 2026). Most private hosts don't name a price but ask for a “participation aux frais”: give what the bed, the food and the hospitality are worth to you.

Realistic daily budget: €35–50 if you sleep with pilgrim hosts and in gîtes and make your own lunch, €70–100 with chambres d'hôtes and restaurants. For nine to ten days that's roughly €350–1,000, excluding travel to and from the route.

Getting there

To the start (Mont-Saint-Michel): a Keolis bus runs daily from Rennes station to the Mont. The nearest station is Pontorson, about nine kilometres away, from where buses also run to the Mont. You can reach Rennes by TGV from Paris.

From the finish (Blain): Blain no longer has a passenger station; train services there ended in 1939. Aléop bus lines 311 and 371 run to Nantes, and from there you have TGV connections to Paris and regional trains in all directions.

• French railways: sncf-connect.com — TGV Paris–Rennes, TER to Pontorson and from Nantes
• Mont-Saint-Michel: ot-montsaintmichel.com — buses from Rennes and Pontorson, shuttle, access
• Buses in Loire-Atlantique: aleop.paysdelaloire.fr — lines 311 and 371 Blain–Nantes
• Association and guide: compostelle-bretagne.fr — guide “Voie des Capitales & Dinan” as a PDF, accommodation lists Capitales Nord and Sud, credencial