We had a smooth train trip from Pontorson to Nantes via Rennes today. Bikes are allowed on the regional trains without being packed up (on the bullet trains, bikes need to be packed up). You just have to be careful to get on the right car... the right car has a bike icon on the door, which indicates there's a space on that car for bikes. The trains run faithfully on time and you don't have long to get on - the train pulls in, you leap on, and away you go. So, it can be a little stressful to watch for the train (which isn't always anywhere near as long as the platform), then figure out which end of the train has the bike icon, then get to that door, and pile on.
On the first leg of the journey, we kept the bikes on the floor and Brent held them in place. On the second leg, there was no room for them on the floor and we had to hang them up. It was kind of an ordeal to get them vertical and get the tires looped through the hooks. We thought it would be worse getting them down, but it was actually easier.
Another interesting aspect was dealing with the elevators to get them up and down from the various platforms at the stations. At Rennes, there were "walkways" from one train platform to another, which looked like they'd be real easy to just walk the bikes over the tracks from one platform to another, but of course, the public wasn't allowed to use the walkways (with trains coming in from different directions). So, we had to go up to the main level, then back down to another platform. They only give you 20 minutes notice as to what platform your train will be on, so we had to make sure we were ready to get the bikes up to main then back down to the next platform. We had considered just staying on our arrival platform (1&2) in hopes that we wouldn't have to move platforms (there were three other platforms), but with only 20 minutes, and busy elevators to share, we decided to take the bikes up to main right away. Dewey fit into an elevator sort of turned in on himself, but sitting on the ground. Brent had to raise The Tank up onto his rear wheel to get him to fit into the elevator. We did end up having to switch platforms anyway, so it was a good decision. When we got to Nantes, the elevator wasn't an option. Brent pushed The Tank up the ramp. I wanted to take the lift, but the door wouldn't close properly so I ended up having to push up the ramp as well.
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