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.