We spent a lovely two nights in Fougeres and felt really rested. As we cycled out of town, I stopped to give way to a car on the roundabout. The car behind me screeched his brakes and almost ran into me. Then he tooted telling me to go. I yelled at him and said ‘c’est la voiture’ and pointed at the car. Okay, I actually yelled ‘there’s a car’ but he wouldn’t have listened either way as he sped off past me when the car had gone. Very rude.
The morning was a drag. The road was busy and we had a head wind. It was one of those days where you put your head down and just want to get there.
We were heading towards rain clouds. A bunch of cows were sitting in a paddock indicating a 100 percent chance of rain.
Our jaws dropped as we arrived in the town of Vitre. A chateau loomed on our left and we cycled down the hill through medieval streets, stopping to take many photos.
We fuelled up on a pain au raisin and ham baguette before heading to our campground. On the way we finally found a shop that sold a blanket. Now I can finally use our picnic blanket for what it was designed for!
We set up camp and set up our awning with enough space to sit under if it rained. Thankfully we did as it started raining as we were cooking dinner. Tonight we had bacon and rice followed by blueberries and chocolate for dessert. A big day tomorrow, probably about 55 kms.
The lady had the campground made a big fuss of Mike being a kiwi and took a photo of him with his Nz passport and put it on their instagram page.
The previous evening we crawled into our tent at 10pm and not long after, the rain we’d been expecting for days finally came, loud and heavy. I ignored the thought of packing up a wet tent and willed myself to sleep.
We awoke at 6am to glorious sunshine and headed to the monestery for a quick photo and drone shot, then packed up our wet tent and we were on our way.
The roads today were long and boring and my knee is still playing up. After 43 kms we made it to a scenic town of Fourgeres and booked into a hotel for two nights. We checked into our room at 3pm, and we both immediately passed out exhausted, and didn’t wake up until 6pm.
It is a public holiday in France today and all the restaurants and shops were shut. Thankfully we found a kebab place open. Mike had kebab, chips and salad, and I had the same but with felafel.
The next morning we had to move rooms in the hotel as our room was booked for that evening. It’s amazing how much we can spread out in one afternoon! We spend the morning packing up and moving, then did a tour around the town.
Fougeres is very old, with signs of habitation dating back to 5000 BC. It sits at the crossroads of two roman roads. The town initially had a wooden fortification which was replaced in the 11th century with a stone one and was enlarged and enhanced in the 14th century to try to stop the many attempts to override the town.
There is also a chateau here which we viewed from a distance.
After the tour, a handsome Frenchman took me into a little room and closed the curtain while I took my pants down. Okay, it’s not as dodgy as it sounds. The pharmacist was getting me to try on a knee brace for size. So I bought the knee brace and some anti-inflammatory gel and hope this will help.
We spent the rest of the day resting, hoping to get back on the bikes tomorrow.
We both had a great nights sleep and started out with a quick espresso before continuing down the Atlantic coast. It was a great start to the day, cycling along country lanes and through many picturesque villages.
We decided to do our own thing today, ignoring both the Garmin and Mrs Google, and ended up at a charming seaside town that actually had a shop that was open. We stocked up on a few essentials like sunscreen, lip balm, snickers bars. I am still so hungry no matter how much I seem to eat. After stocking up, we cycled along the waterfront for a while. The day was calm, no wind, not too hot, just perfect.
We made our way to a large town called Granville. We had decided to stop the night in a hotel to look around the town as rain was forecast. We didn’t like the look of any of the hotels and the thought of carrying all of our panniers to our rooms sounded like too much effort. The thought of having a day off to look around the town seemed like a good idea, but the reality is, we don’t really like large towns. So we had a quick bite to eat and rode out of there.
We found a nice place to camp by the beach. Rain and thunderstorms had been forecast and we needed to do some work on editing videos and getting stuff charged up, so we opted for what they call a mobil home at the campground. It’s a self contained cabin with two bedrooms, a shower, toilet and full kitchen. We would have liked to have stayed for two nights, but it is booked out for the long weekend here. We’ll probably be stuck finding somewhere tomorrow night.
It wasn’t until we stopped that we realised how tired we were. But after a little rest, we headed to L’epicerie (grocer) and got some stuff to cook ourselves a decent dinner. We had Steak hache with a poivre sauce, rice, and a large salad. For desert we had yoghurt and chopped some strawberries up into it. It was delicious. Then we polished off a bar of chocolate. For some reason, I’m still hungry!
I also managed to get most of our first day’s video edited. The rain has now stopped, but will probably settle in when it’s time to leave in the morning. At least we won’t have to pack up a wet tent.
Anyway, it’s not 10pm and still very daylight out there. Might go and watch the sunset.
The day after arriving in Bournemouth we headed to Poole to get our bikes from our storage unit to check if they needed any work done before our cycle tour. We decided to walk to stretch out our legs after having been sat on a plane for 24 hours the previous day. The walk is only 7.5 kms so it made sense.
After a quick tour around Poole Quay, we ventured to our garage, wondering what condition our bikes would be in. Mike inserted the key, and it didn’t open. Then we remembered they’d changed the locks on us a while back and we dug out the correct key.
The garage door opened with a theatrical groan, cobwebs dangling like candy floss, eight legged creatures lurking within. My fear of spiders meant there was no way I was going in there. I watched safely from a distance as Mike entered. He grabbed a broom, and brushed the cobwebs away.
I didn’t see any critters scattering, so I deemed it to safe to enter and followed him in. Our bikes were suspended from the ceiling and apart from flat tires, they seemed to be in good order.
Mike lifted them down and pumped up the tyres. I took mine for a ride to see if it still worked. The gear changes were smooth and the brakes worked. Maybe we don’t need to do anything to them.
We rifled through our stuff and found our panniers, and a few other surprises. We loaded them onto our bikes and cycled back to Bournemouth without any issues.
I’m getting a bit of an Amazon addiction. I ordered one thing and it signed me up for one month free Prime membership. I immediately cancelled the membership but the free month remained. So now, whenever I order anything, it arrives the same day. How remarkable is that? It’s actually just as well as the shops in England have very little stock in them. But it’s not an easy job to buy cycle shorts without trying them on first. I’ll have to make do with what I’ve ordered and hope I don’t get a sore bum.
Now to try and fit all of our stuff into our panniers.
On Saturday morning we woke up early and headed to the Frankton Pharmacy for our pre-departure covid tests. We’d been isolating for two weeks prior to this, so were confident we’d be fine. There was still that sliver of anticipation though, especially since I’d gotten a cold during our isolation.
The pre-departure test is a RAT test and it costs $49 each. They took us into a back room and watched while we performed the test on ourselves. Then we had to wait 15 minutes for a negative result, then another 15 minutes for the paper work. Thankfully all was good, and headed back home to get ready for departure.
Sister Jenny picked us up at 12.30, and we were at the airport by 2pm, six hours before our flight was due to depart. But, we’d rather be sitting around at the airport than at home twiddling our thumbs in a constant state of apprehension.
We arrived at the check-in counter and there were no other customers there, just us and one lady waiting to check us in. We’d been unable to check-in online due to the complex list of things we had to do before flying.
The lady said there was a problem with my British passport, there was no ESTA on it. An ESTA is an online visa for the USA. Mike definitely did this about a month ago, so we were worried why it wasn’t showing up. We showed her my NZ passport, and this did have an ESTA on it, although we thought the two passports were linked. No problem though, I’d just have to fly into the US with my kiwi passport and into the UK on my British one. We’ll see if it causes problems later on. I hope not.
We arrived at the lounge and settled into our seats with a view of the planes and the runway. It’s my first time flying without drinking alcohol so I was apprehensive as to how I would go. I went to the drinks bar in the lounge and there were loads of alcoholic beverages. Beer, wine, champagne, spirits, a few soft drinks. But I just wanted water. I hunted high and low, but no bottled water. Then I saw a queue of people and wondered what was so exciting to be queuing up for.
I followed the long line to the source of their interest and can you guess what it was? Coffee? No, the coffee counter was in a different place. Cocktails? No, those were served at the coffee place. You’ll probably never guess so I’m just going to tell you. They were lining up for the… wait for it … haha, I can feel your anticipation… It was…. You are not going to believe this… the water fountain! Unbelievable, hundreds of bottles of alcohol and one poxy water fountain to fill up from!
Anyway, I grabbed some egg sandwiches and a glass of water, grateful I wasn’t paying for the lounge experience (we got a free lounge pass due to having silver status).
While we waited for our flight, we watched a series we’ve been following on Prime, took a time lapse of the planes landing and taking off, had some venison stew and a yummy coffee. But nobody really wants to hear about that stuff.
We headed off to the gate, way to early, but the lounge had emptied out so we thought we better. As well as that, we’re travelling with carry-on luggage only, so the plane would have no problem leaving without us. I doubt they’d even bother to call our names. Anyway, we arrived at the gate and there were hundreds of people all crammed into one spot, waiting to board. Feeling claustropobic, I headed straight past them and waited at an adjacent gate that was empty. We were both a bit apprehensive about flying post pandemic.
Eventually we got on board, and all was good. We managed to get some sleep, and I had no urge to drink, so that was good. We landed at LA airport, and the immigration queue was the best I’d seen it in ages. We only had two hours to catch our connecting flight, and in the past we’ve spent two hours just getting through immigration. But Air New Zealand surely wouldn’t schedule a flight with an impossible connection time.
The man on immigration looked serious and without humour. I asked him to check my British passport for an esta, but he took my NZ passport and allowed me entry on that one. I said I needed to fly to the UK on my British passport and with a stern look on his face he said that I should get rid of one of my passports. He must’ve seen the look of horror on my face and he smiled and told me he was just joking. And with that, he went from scary man in immigration, to kind funny man you might like to take home to your mother.
We cleared immigration and floundered about trying to find out where to go. We were so glad we’d travelled with carry-on baggage only, otherwise we’d have had to go to baggage claim to collect our bags, then check them through again.
There was a reasonable queue through security before we got a chance to pile all our stuff onto the conveyer belt. All was good until Mike couldn’t find his bum bag. My immediate thought was someone had taken it by mistake. It took a while to track down a security staff member. I remembered bum-bags are called fanny packs in the US but I couldn’t bring myself to use that word, knowing it has a different meaning in NZ. He looked at me blankly when I said bum-bag, so I said it, the F word and he knew exactly what I was talking about.
He went off to look for our fanny pack and after a while he brought us two fanny packs, neither of which belonged to us. After a bit of waiting around, Mike finally got it back. All good.
LA airport was buzzing. Shops were open, people eating in restaurants, nobody wearing masks. It was a stark contrast to Auckland airport where all the shops were closed and the only people we saw were crowded at their gates.
Our next task was to find our gate number. Most airports have screens dotted around the place with the departure times and gates, but could we find them? No. And we looked everywhere! We flagged down an official who pointed up. We both looked in the direction he was pointing and there it was, a giant screen about 50 feet wide. Who would’ve thought to look up there!
We found our gate and sat in a quiet spot away from all the people. I checked our boarding passes to see if we had a window seat. Upon closer inspection, we had no seat numbers, just the letters GTE. I assumed this meant our seat would be allocated at the gate, but they hadn’t mentioned this at Auckland airport where our boarding passes were issued.
I went up to the gate and waited in line. While I was waiting, a sign glared at me. It basically said that they overbook flights and were saying you would get compensation if you gave up your seat. This was an ominous sign.
I handed over my boarding passes to the lady at the gate. She said, “You got through early, most people from your flight get held up through immigration and don’t make this flight.”
I was thanking the fact we had carry on luggage for our speedy check through process while she checked her computer. Then she said, “Premium economy is full. They overbook the flights as normally your flight doesn’t make it through.” Thanks Air New Zealand for telling us this.
“Ok, so what happens now.”
“I’ll check and see if anyone is volunteering their seats.”
I tapped my fingers on the counter as she made a phone call. She hung up. “No one is answering, I’ll try again in a minute.”
She continued to tap on her screen. “I can see there are some seats which have not yet been allocated. I’ll just see if it’s anyone from your flight. At this stage it’s a matter of first-in-first-served.”
Again, I thanked our foresight of bringing carry-on only. She picked up the phone again and this time someone answered and I listened to the one-sided conversation. I hadn’t realised I was holding my breath when she hung up and took two boarding passes off the printer. Are those for us? I asked myself.
They were. As she handed us the boarding passes, she said we got the last two seats. Phew.
The Virgin atlantic flight was ok, but nowhere near as good as AirNZ. Thankfully it was a shorter flight, but neither of us managed to sleep very well.
We landed at Heathrow airport at 9:40am half an hour early, had a speedy trip through the smart gates at Heathrow, and made our way through the underground maze to the central bus station. Our bus was booked for 12:45pm, but we were at the bus stop by 10.30am and were thankfully able to get the 11am bus. It took 3 hours to get to Bournemouth, but was a stress free way to travel and we’ll probably do this again in future.
Then it was just a 20 minute walk to Nick and Ems place. They were all our at Brownsea island for the day, so we let ourselves in, had a shower, then promptly fell asleep exhausted.
