Ride Day 10: To Bayeaux

I have to say that Honfleur looked a lot better this morning. I got up early and walked to a local boulangerie to get some breakfast. The sun was barely up. It was cold and the town was virtually empty and all of its charm was richly displayed. Not bad; much better than yesterday. And I found not one, not two, but three boulangerie within a few blocks of where we were staying. Croissant, croissant chocolade, and baguette for lunch. Yum. By the time I got back Lorie was up and getting ready to ride. I slowed her down a bit with the goodies I'd found.

When we were loading the panniers onto the bike a big truck backed up and two burly guys started to unload dozens of 50 kg bags of flour, hauling two at a time over their shoulders to the boulangerie. OK, that's a lot of flour. I wonder how many bags of flour they go through in a day. Imagine all that gluten?

That's a lot of flour; translates to that's a lot of bread!

We rode to Bayeux today, a village centrally located near the Normandy coast. We'll stay here a couple of days so that we can ride a loop around the beaches; Omaha, Utah, 

I am thinking of coming up with a theme for each day's blog. Today's theme is this: WIND! Yeah, in all CAPS and with an exclamation point. Here in Normandy and Bretagne the wind has been blowing like crazy all day and night. For the last 8 days. Today it was blowing a steady 50 kph and with gusts up to 80 kph (that's 30 mph gusting almost 50). Absolutely crazy, at least when you're on a bike. It is pretty warm but the wind chills us to the bone.

Up until today the wind has been (mostly) at our back. Today it was about 50/50 back/quartering front. Wind effects bikes much more than cars. Who knew? When a gust of 40+ mph hits you from near the front, the bike gets a bit tough to handle. Especially with as much windage as we have (panniers, trunks, sleeping bags, etc.). It was dicey a couple of times today. But we made it through without any major problems. And when the wind is blowing that hard on your back, heck, we don't even need to pedal!

Riding along the Norman coast

Downwind here. Nice!

About 1/2 of the day was spent riding right along the shoreline. The air was warm, the wind was cold. Hence the cold weather gear.

We stopped for coffee in Deauville but chose badly a place by the Gare. The coffee was pretty bad. So we grabbed some cheese from a little shop and combined it with this morning's baguette and had a nice lunch in front of a 10th century chapel, well protected from the relentless wind.

Lunch.

Old (really old) church.

We had a nice downwind stretch of bike path along a river after that, and it was a good way to get riding again after a nice lunch break.

I'm not sure what river this is, but it serves some pretty major industry. The bike path was nice.

We finally made it to Bayeux and we were really tired. We need a rest day and tomorrow is it. We actually decided to book tickets on a shuttle bus to take us to Utah and Omaha beaches tomorrow rather than ride. The bike ride would have been directly into the wind and we're just not up for it.

We dragged ourselves into town for a bite, then decided to buy a bottle of Calvados to try it out. Calvados is a drink that is distilled cider and it is unique to this part of Normandy and Bretagne. It is strong, but it is pretty good. I had a bit as I am writing this blog and I'm about to fall asleep. So that'll be the end of it tonight. 

Calvados. Bon soir.

Ride Day 9: Across Normandy to Honfleur

I am aware that there are some rumors floating around the ether that I ditched Lorie somewhere in Belgium or northern France. Maybe exchanged her for some Franco-Belique stoker. The paucity of photos on this blog are perhaps the source of the rumors. But I want to set the record straight: FAKE NEWS! All of it. And I have the photos today to prove it. 😀 

Lorie, alive and oh-so-well in Normandy. Arm? Doing OK.

Waiting for the ferry to cross the mighty Seine.

Pay little attention to the route below. After a nice evening in the tiny and lovely village of Saint-Valey-en-Caux we pushed off this morning for a ride to Honfleur, a prototypical beautiful French village. So they told us. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

The morning dawned nicely but with a brisk wind. Maybe 50 kph, gusting 70. That's pretty brisk, but fortunately it was at our backs. Kind of. 

 

Our hotel in Saint-Valery-en-Caux was adequate enough, but the best part was the seagull family on the next roof over. These two little seagull chicks were as cute as could be, and they clearly were ready to fly the coop, so to speak. Mom and Dad were less than encouraging on that point.

 

Onto today's ride. As usual, we got super lost at one point and ended up riding through a little farm village that was having some kind of huge farm tractor parade. It was super fun and everybody was living it up. We couldn't figure out what was going on, but it looked like they were going to put the parish priest on some big tractor platform and he would bless the crops. That's our interpretation. Whatever was really going on, they were having a ball!

 

Tractors, big and small

Big...

 

Did I mention that this was a holiday weekend? And that today is a holiday (pentacost, whit Lundi...go figure). (And I will editorially add that none of the tractor drivers were spending their day at the church with the blessing-priest...)

We had a glorious ride in fantastic sunshine with a cookin' tailwind. Nice. We stopped for coffee in some little village that had one open bar / cafe. Good enough for us. And then we let the wind push us down the road. 

 

 

 I had long ago decided that I did not want to ride across the Normandy Bridge across the Seine river.

 

There is no freakin' way that I would ride over that bridge. Do you agree, Theo? Better to divert 30 km over an 18% grade, I think...

 

They say that bikes can ride over it, but it would be, to coin a term, In-Seine. So I routed us around the bridge with a ferry It was super nice. But that put us on a dirt road for about 10 km. Lorie said no way, worried that I'd dump the bike and mess up her arm. Again. So I re-routed on the fly. That worked fine but we had a lump to ride over and it was 15 - 18% gradient for nearly a mile. OMG. We had to walk the final 300 m. That's the first time that has happened to us. The walk of shame. 

But we made it into Honfleur by mid-afternoon and it was absolutely jamb packed with visitors. We couldn't even push the bike through town. Earlier in the day we had met a couple of bike tourists from Paris that said that Honflueur would be overflowing with people since (a) it is a holiday weekend, and (b) it is the closest coastal community to Paris. They were right. Geez. It was amazing. We eventually worked our way through the crowd and offloaded our panniers at the hotel. 

 

 

The inner harbour, Honfleur on a holiday weekend.

Then we wandered around town. The harbour was a no-go because it was too crowded. So we hit the back streets and found a museum to visit. The promised Monet paintings were absent, on loan, but there were some very nice Boudin paintings. Well worth it. After that, we walked back through the harbour area but again were just overwhelmed by the crowds. We found a bar in a side street that had Leffe blonde beer and that was good enough.

 

Better than a crowded sidewalk.

 

Here's a suggestion: if you want to visit Honfleur, just watch some YouTube videos and do some internet snooping instead. It is a lot better than visiting this busy place in person. No doubt, it is a beautiful old village across the Seine from Le Havre, but it long ago lost its charm to the draw of the tourist payoff. Sad, in my opinion. Here are some good photos of a city that is / was, very beautiful:

We are in good spirits, despite my grumbling. Tomorrow we have another long day along the Norman coast to Bayeaux. There, we'll spend a couple of days and visit the D-Day beaches. Something I have always wanted to do.

Ride Day 8: Along the Coast, our First Camping Day (NOT)

We ride from Saint-Valery-sur-Somme to the similarly-named Saint-Valery-en-Caux. But as noted, we changed our mind and decided that it was too early to camp. So we re-routed and booked a cheap hotel in the touristy but interesting town of Saint-Valery-en-Caux.

More headlands to ride over today and we actually climbed about 700 m with all of the re-routing that we did. The wind was our constant companion and it was smoking today. About 50 percent of the time behind us, the rest at our side. With all of our stuff that made it kind of uncomfortable because it pushes us around. And today's ride was on some pretty busy roads with nary a bike lane and fast traffic. Not a happy combination but we came through ok. Here's the route before the re-routing.

A water tower, we think.

Beautiful, quiet country roads in the morning.

My GPS route told me to turn onto this road but Lorie wasn't going for it. We re-routed...

Which was a good decision because it led to an open cafe. Coffee and croissants. Yeah!

Good stuff.

We were in pretty deep by the time we rode into Dieppe, and the west coast of France. We were surprised at how big the city is but it has a beautiful harbor that made a great place for a lunch stop.

Dieppe, France

I get excited when it is time for lunch.

We see a lot of these perfectly tilled rows of some vegetable. How do they plow them so perfectly?

Saint-Valery-en-Caux

 

After a long day of challenging riding we made it to Saint-Valery-en-Caux. This picturesque little village was occupied by Nazi troops for 4 years during WWII and it was nearly completely destroyed. But it has been rebuilt and it is a place where a lot of families vacation now. It is very pretty. 

When we booked a room in Saint-Valery-en-Caux we used Booking.com. It is super convenient, but the French hotels penalize you by saying that you can't check in until 1700 (normal check in is 1500). So we had 2 hours to kill before we could shower. Yikes. What to do? Well, get food and wine, of course. Lorie had prawns. I had a Cesar salad. We both had a nice rose.

Super fresh prawns.

Doug and Cesar.

Vin de Rose.

Saint-Valery-en-Caux has a beautiful harbour with a unique lock system that allows them to work with the high tidal flow. I cannot show that in photos, but trust me on this, it is really cool. Here's the harbour.

Saint-Valery-en-Caux harbour.

No route map today since it was all kind of done on the fly and I'm not entirely sure where we went.

Have a great day and evening. Until tomorrow, in Honfleur. Adieu.

Ride Day 7: Boulogne-sur-Mer to Saint-Valery-sur-Somme

No internet or cell service yesterday so we enjoyed our quiet time and ignored the blog. Maybe that’s a good thing? Who knows? In any case, here's some thoughts about yesterday.

 

We bid adieu to Boulogne-sur-Mer yesterday morning with a bit of regret, but we rode into a beautiful day of sunshine and tailwinds. Even though we spent only a few hours exploring the city, Boulogne s/ Mer kind of captured our imagination. It is a little rough around the edges but it has a lot going for it. Visit sometime if you are in the area.

 

Like yesterday, today’s route also involved some climbing, but all of it was in the first 40 km. It wasn’t too bad and both of us feel like we’re getting used to the daily rides. The tailwind wasn’t as strong as yesterday, but no complaints about that hand of somebody pushing us along. We rode on a lot of just plain roads today; some had bike lanes but some didn’t. But we didn’t have any problems at all. We also keep in mind our cardinal philosophy: tonnage rules. Right or wrong, cars are always given leeway.

 

Along the way we passed another Commonwealth cemetery called the Etaples. This one laid to rest many thousands of soldiers from WWI and many thousands more from the next world war. The row upon row of headstones can’t help but make one ponder.

 

 

By the time we reached our coffee stop at a small village on an estuary, called Etaples, we were ready for some sustenance. Etaples is a fishing village and the fish monger stands were open and doing a brisk business mid-morning. Not only did we find a café with good coffee (so many people say the coffee in France sucks, but I disagree. It is pretty good. OK, it isn’t Italy, but in my opinion it is just fine), but the angel at the café saw Lorie’s and came out with a big bag of ice. That was so very thoughtful. We couldn’t thank her enough.

 

 

Lost again...

Some random church

Esturary in Etaples

 

It was getting downright warm after a chilly start to the day and by the time we stopped for a quick lunch we were ready to shed our warm clothes. The rest of the ride was great – it was even getting hot. That isn’t a complaint; it felt awesome. I can complain about the heat later and cannot get away with it now!

 

Our destination was just south of the tiny, touristy village named Saint-Valery-sur-Somme. The roads leading to the village had a great bike path and we made it to town in no time at all. We had several hours ahead of our rather late check-in time for the night so we decided to have a late lunch/early dinner of moules et frites (mussels and fries). This is a classic meal in France and it was delicious. Neither of us could finish all of the moules – our count was about 10 dozen of the shellfish. Our waiter, a rather surly France-Russian guy named Maxim, was a bit put off by the fact that we couldn’t finish all we were served. We smiled and told him not to worry, they were awesome (and that was the truth). We had a nice glass of wine with lunch/dinner but paid too much for that bit of it. I should have told Maxim to grab us another glass of wine but give us the good stuff that costs so little. But that would have far exceeded my rudimentary French so I thought better of it.

 

The estuary at Saint-Valery /s Somme

 

Moules et frites

 

 

Saint-Valery-sur-Somme

encore...

 

After that we had about 5 miles left to our rented guest house. It was a bit of a climb and along the way a kid on a mountain bike rode a wheelie all the way up the hill next to us. I told him that I can do that and he said show me. I declined...didn't want to show him up because it might damage his young ego. We got to our destination just in time to check in, but the owner was surprised, said that they had no record of a reservation for the evening. Oh, Oh. I fished out my phone and found all the relevant records and gave them to our host. They said that they problem must have been on their end, and we got tucked into a great little house that is about as spotless as Jane’s place! It’ll be very comfortable for the evening and after a shower we opened a bottle of the good wine that we’d bought in Saint-Valery /s and enjoyed a lovely evening.

 

Tomorrow we are off for Saint-Valey-en-Caux, about 60 miles south of here. We were scheduled to camp, but Lorie’s arm isn’t ready for that. So we will find a hotel somewhere and that’ll do.

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Ride Day 6: Dunkirk to Boulogne-sur-Mer

Another beautiful, if chilly, day riding alongside canals on tiny roads. Can't get much better than that.

 The primary cycling differences between France and its neighbors to the north, Belgium and Netherlands, are that the infrastructure for cycling in France is light years behind. There are relatively few dedicated bike lanes, separate from roads. Instead, the roads are relatively quiet and the drivers are super courteous. As with the northern countries, bikes are part of the road action and are deferred to.

 From Hauts de France, we are working our along the coast toward Normandy and then Bretagne. Today's ride takes us to Boulogne-sur-Mer, a beautiful village that lies just a few dozen kilometers from Britain to the northwest, but miles away in terms of culture.

Our mid-morning coffee stop was at a small village along a canal. We had a nice stop as the temperature climbed and we could ditch our warm clothes and switch to less-than-thermal wear. But the wind was blowing in a big way -- gusting to 65 kph. Happily, it was at our back. That made us feel almost like we could ride. Nice. But as we approach the Norman coast we began to hit some hills. Nothing terribly serious, but a few thousand feet of climbing with some sections of 10 to 11 percent. That reminds us immediately that we are heavy and slow and just getting our legs used to riding.

We made it in mid-afternoon to the coastal town of Boulogne-sur-Mer.  This is a town with a ton of history and reminds us immediately of San Francisco since it is built on a bunch of steep hills. We got settled into our place and wandered down to the harbour. This is typically a busy place since multiple ferries arrive her from Dover every day.

The fish monger stalls were already long-closed for the day so we walked uphill to the Basilica that is in the old walled city.

On the way to the oude cite

The Basilica from outside the walled part of the town

The ancient gate

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was a long steep walk up the hill. Maybe a beer first...

Basilica

View from the walls around the Basilica, looking out toward the sea.

We were both pretty tired from a long day on the bike, so we headed back to our apartment for the night. We stopped by the super to grab some food to make for dinner, and it'll be an early night for us tonight. Tomorrow more southing!

Our apartment is in this fun building.

As ever, our route: