St Malo – Le Harve (329 miles)
St Malo – Le Harve
A five day tour of Normandy (with a little bit of Brittany thrown in).
Daily highlights:
Day T-1 Oundle -Portsmouth: Arrived at Peterborough station to meet Robbie, uneventful trip across London from Kings Cross to Waterloo, off at Fratton and cycled to last leg to the ferry port. Total miles=21. First thing to do once we had settled into our reclining seats was find a shower. As luck would have it it was just next door. Managed to forget to take towel to shower though, so have to put clean clothes on a wet body. Luckily it was still very warm so I dried out pretty quickly.
Day 1 St Malo – Ville Vrard (46 miles): Off the ferry into fog but that soon cleared up and we had a nice sunny day, just like the rest of the week. I managed to break my seat pin bolt just after our visit to the Menhir at Dol. In the end had to stick a carry mat on top of the tent that was on my rear rack and rest the rear of the saddle on that. This gave almost exactly the right saddle height although it was a bit of a suspension effect.
We stopped in Combourg and had a drink while we waited for the bike shop to open after lunch. We’re in France, everywhere shuts for lunch! However, as we were to find out, this particular shop was actually shut for 2 weeks. Who shuts their shop for two weeks in a tourist town the summer? Obviously, the French! We tried a Super-U to no avail, and in the end rode the rest of the way to Ville Vrard where my father-in-law found a spare bolt from a packet he recently got to fix his strimmer. Morale of the story, I should have gone to a brico-marche.
Menhir at Dol de Bretagne
Day 2 Ville Vrard – Bagnoles-de-L’Orne (88 miles): This was always going to be the toughest day, long and hilly. I would have planned to stop at Lassay had there been a campsite listed there, so we did have to option of stopping earlier if we saw a camping site before the one we knew for sure existed at Bagnoles. We were so shattered by Lassay that we decided to ask the locals if there was a campsite nearby as we didn’t relish the extra 10 miles. The nearest campsite was only 5km down the road so off we went, only to find it had been closed for some years. We were both suffering from the heat and dehydration, I now had cramp in both legs and was reducing to walking up hills and coasting down them, still there was no choice but to plough on to Bagnoles and make the best of it. We rolled up at the campsite at 8.30pm, 13 hours after setting off. On the way we had collected another 3 stamps for our FFCT brevets.
Brunch stop in Fougeres
Testing my Titanium and rosewood lightweight chopsticks!
Day 3 Bagnoles-de-L’Orne – Pont Farcy (61 miles): Although not as far as yesterday, today had more climbing crammed into those 61 miles. Had we gone due north to the Normandy beaches we would have passed through the heart of Swiss Normandy, but for brevet purposes we needed to go to Mortain on our way to Conde-sur-Vire so we skirted around Suisse Normande this time.
Breakfast pastries at Bagnoles-de-L’Orne
There are 6 possible sites to get stamps from in each département. For the BCN, only one stamp is needed, for Le Brevet des Provinces Françaises (BPF) you need to get all 6.
First 5 département stamps achieved for Le Brevet de Cyclotourisme National (BCN), just another 90 to get!
Bagnoles-de-L’Orne
Lonlay L’Abbaye
Roadside decoration near Montain
Essential supplies
Camping at Pont Farcy
Day 4 Pont Farcy – Arromanches (54 miles): A fairly uneventful day, a flat first 12 miles, some cycle paths. then a 56 mile uphill, followed by an undulating ride to the coast.
Vire Valley Cycle Path (Voie Vert), we joined it at La-Chapelle-sur-Vire and rode up to Conde-sur-Vire.
Chateau de Balleroy, owned by Malcolm Forbes of Forbes Magazine fame. Has a balloon museum but we didn’t go in.
First sign of the D-Day landings.
This gun was not in the best condition.
Defensive gun battery at Longues-sur-Mer
Our one and only puncture.
Physics in action, beer bottles wrapped in wet tissue paper. In a breeze out of direct sun, as the water evaporates, the heat is drawn from the beer. Wonderful!
Day 5 Arromanches – Le Harve (78 miles): Original plan was to ride to Honfleur by way of Pegasus Bridge and Beuvron-en-Auge, however on leaving Touques Robbie’s front wheel got tangled in a level crossing and his seat tube cracked just above the bottom bracket. We made the campsite after 10 very careful miles only to find it full, so we thought we may as well push on to Le Harve, another 15 miles away over the Pont de Normandie.
Robbie’ cracked frame, he rode another 40km on that, keeping the speed down to about 10-12 kph!
Douvres-la-Délivrande
Just arrived at Pegasus Bridge.
Nah, sorry mate, your big end’s gone!
Pegasus Bridge
A Horsa glider at the Pegasus Bridge museum
Inside the all wooden Horsa glider.
A Bailey Bridge.
A Jeep with bicycle.
JEEP = Just Enough Essential Parts
Lunch, galettes at Beuvron-en-Auge.
Checking the map while sampling the local cidre
Pont de Normandie comes into sight.
Descending the Pont de Normandie
Last night’s camp at the ferry port, didn’t bother with a tent. Realised in the morning that there was toilet in the far corner of the yard, hmm no need to have waited until night fell, or got up early, for a leak after all!
Day T+1: On the fast ferry to Portsmouth, managed to get an earlier than booked train at Kings Cross by sweet-talking Paul the guard, and back home just in time for the finale of Le Tour on TV. Total miles today 19, total for whole trip – 367 miles.