Not such a good day today. It started with rain in the night. As we were packing up the wet tent, a guy started cutting the hedges in our campsite while we were still there. This pissed me off. Why couldn’t he do the vacant camp sites first? I’m not sure why he was so stupid but Mike reckons it’s because it’s a small village and there is too much inbreeding here.

I politely asked him to chop hedges elsewhere as it was noisy (communicated by putting my fingers in my ears). He seemed happy with this.

We crossed the Seine on the ferry. This was a far nicer way to cross than cycling over that steep bridge.

Crossing the Seine by ferry.

We decided on a short ride today as it was threatening to rain, and we needed a hotel to recharge all our stuff. We navigated to a town that had a few hotels in it. It was a reasonably easy ride of about 26 kms to the town, but all the hotels were at the top of a very steep and nasty hill.

We persevered and pushed our bikes up 1.5 kms to the nearest one which was an Ibis. “Sorry we are full”. bugger. So we went around the corner to the next hotel. “Sorry we are full”. double bugger. We pushed our bikes up that ridiculously steep hill for nothing!

The next town was 20kms away so we navigated to that. The hotel was closed. bugger! The next town was only 7 kms away and it also had a tourist office. Feeling positive we cycled to the next town.

Thankfully the tourist office was still open. The girl in the tourist office phoned the hotel for us to make a booking. The hotel was full. So she phoned a few more hotels on our route. All of them also full. We have had this problem before in France when heading inland.

It was after 5pm at this stage and we were getting a bit pissed off. I saw a train station as we arrived into town. I asked the girl where the train goes. “Dieppe, it takes 20 minutes”. Decision made, we would catch the train to Dieppe. Back on the coast there were be hotels.

The trains here aren’t very cycle tourist friendly and we had to push our heavily loaded bikes up steps to get them on the train. Luckily the guards helped us with this. 20 minutes later we were in Dieppe and found ourselves a hotel on the waterfront. phew. what a day!

Our route cycled so far:

We were glad the rain stayed away overnight and were able to pack up a dry tent and leave Honfleur. We decided to stick with the advice of the random French guy from Bayeux and follow the Seine towards Paris.

Our garmin tried to send us on some crazy routes today. Here is Mike asking for directions.

mike asking for directions

We saw a snake slither across the road but I was a bit late getting my camera out and only caught him as he slid into a hole.

snake crawling into his hole

We followed the thatched cottage route, which involved a lot of steep hills and a lot of thatched houses.

It was a scenic ride. We needed to get to the other side of the Seine for accommodation and Mike wanted to send us over this very steep bridge. I wasn’t so keen, so we decided to cycle further to the ferry crossing.

Steep bridge I didn’t want to cycle over

It was threatening to rain all day so we tried to find a hotel but there was none to be found. Luckily at about 6pm we found a nice campsite on the side of the road and it only cost 9.50 euro to camp.

The town had a little supermarket, so for dinner we had baguette and camembert for starters, steak hache with poivre sauce and rice for main, and chocolat for desert and a bottle of vin rouge. The cost? just 6 euros for the two of us. Not bad for a camp meal 🙂

Our route so far:

It was a nice warm  evening when we went to bed, then is rained in the night and just didn’t stop. We didn’t want to pack up all our stuff in the rain so we decided to stay in our tent until it stopped. The rain didn’t stop until 6pm. So yes, we stayed in bed all day without eating!

Luckily we were still in honfleur so we ventured out for some dinner. We were really thankful the rain had finally stopped and we had a nice dinner overlooking the harbour.

We had a really good nights sleep at the quiet municipal campground. It was a hilly ride today but the sun was out and we werei happy. We followed the advice of the random French guy and stopped at honfleur. It’s scenic town with lots of restaurants. We lazed yaround in the sun for the afternoon and drank some leftover red wine.

We wandered in for dinner around 7.30pm. I had some sea snails for dinner. It was a bit creepy getting them out of the shell but they tasted ok.

A really nice day.

It was a lazy start to the day. We spent the morning in our hotel room trying to decide what to do. Should we catch the train to Paris? Should we continue cycling up the coast? Seriously we are the most indecsive people in the world.

As we left the hotel a French guy started chatting to us. He told us all these great places to go. And that was that. Our decision for the next few days decided by a random French guy. Please also note – the entire conversation was in French!

Before leaving bayeux we visited the bayeux tapestry. This is a record of the battle of Hastings all sewn onto a linen canvas. They gave you an audio thingy which explained the details of it. Here is the part where Edward growled at Harold saying “you went to Normandy and didn’t bring me back any camembert!?”

As we sat having lunch in bayeux the wind was strong and swirling around us. I was not looking forward to cycling in it. By the time we cycled out of bayeux we realised the wind was behind us and we were barreling along at 30 kms/hr on the flat with a top speed of 55 kms/hr. And to top it off it was sunny.

We stopped and visited some Canadian war graves at the side of the road.

It was an excellent days cycling. We stopped after about 62 kms. One busy campground was going to charge us 21 euros to camp so we rode around the corner to the municipal camp and it only cost 9 euros. Nice and quiet and very clean facilities.

Cooking dinner and drinking wine from a cup.

In the middle of the night the rain came down on our tent pretty hard. It was lucky we had waterproofed it the previous day.

We were staying in a campground in Grand Camp Maisy. We had a choice of three camping grounds to stay in, but we chose the most expensive one as it was close to town.

The camping grounds in France usually have shared showers and toilets, and this isn’t a problem as I am used to this and expect it. At this campground however, they had separated the toilet and showers, and it was clearly marked. Men on the left, women on the right. So why the heck do the men still use the ladies? I have no idea, but I find it really irritating.

Later on in the day we stopped at a tourist office and I used the loos there. Again – the ladies and gents toilets were separated. I used the toilets and as I was washing my hands, a man entered. I’d had enough so I told him “NO, this is the ladies, the gents is next door”. He stepped out, looked at the sign, looked confused, then entered again. I left, muttering under my breath. Once outside, I complained some more to Mike. He then pointed out that it was the mens loo’s that I was using. DOH!

It was a rainy day and was a good test for our wet weather gear. We have wet weather trousers and I bought a new Gore jacket which is guaranteed to be waterproof. It still seeped in through the seems though.

We stopped and sheltered in some German bunkers and Mike explained a bit of history about how the allied forces climbed the cliffs at this spot and attacked the Germans who had occupied France. Being here makes you realise how heroic the attack was. It must have been so scary for those soldiers scaling the cliffs knowing they were probably going to die.

These were the cliffs the soliders scaled to attack the Germans

view from inside the bunker closest to the cliff face

Inside one of the bunkers

Site of a gun emplacement

We headed for a hotel in Bayeux. There was a street party going on in Bayeux with bands playing all the way along the main street and also down the side streets. We’re not sure what they were celebrating, but can only think it was the summer solstace as it’s the 21st June. It was a really cool night and it didn’t get completely dark until well after 11pm.

Cathedral at night (I could only get the top of it with my phone camera)

Street Party

We thought cycling 95 kms yesterday was a good idea at the time. This morning everything hurt. We didn’t want to get out of bed but the sun was turning our tent into a little oven. We crawled out about 9am and were away from camp at 10.50am. Not bad for us.

We found some wonderful country lanes. We cycled past a bunch of frogs croaking the word “bike” in their little froggy accents. We weren’t sure why french frogs would say bike instead of velo but Mike reckons they were probably at school and practising their English. I agreed.

Another stunning day and warm too.  We stopped in carterten and grabbed a baguette and tuna for lunch. The aftenoon was a struggle. Everything hurt and I had no energy. We stopped after only 40 kms in grand camp maisy.

We went out for dinner and I had my much craved moules frites for starter. Then duck with mashed potato on top and creme brule for desert. Mike had pizza.

It rained in the night.

We were up at 4.30am, riding onto the ferry at 6.30am and departing poole at 6.50am. It was a beautiful morning and the crossing to cherbourg was really calm.

We cycled off the ferry at cherbourg, turned right, and cycles along the Normandy coast and d-day beaches. The weather couldn’t have been better.

We cycled a massive 95 kms on our first day. It sounds impressive but the roads were pretty flat. Still, not bad considering we did no training for this trip.

We are in a campground and hoping it won’t rain overnight. We had to resort to emergency rations for.dinner as there are no shops here.

Really shattered so going to bed now. Will post photos tomorrow.

We didn’t sleep through the alarm and made the ferry in heaps of time. Next stop…France!

Mike and I have been full of indecisiveness for the last two weeks due to the stupid weather (which basically hasn’t stopped raining).

First we were to cycle to Scotland and waited for the first fine day to leave. When no fine day came we decided to go to Malaysia and visit Susan, but flights too expensive. We then decided spend a month touring America on our way home. Then the sun came out for 5 minutes and we decided the bike ride was back on.

Then the rain came again and the temperature dropped to about 10 degrees. This spurred us a book a holiday in warm and sunny Turkey. I then heard horror stories about the flights – cramped conditions, 13 hour delays, 5 hours sitting on the runway while the pilot tries to fix a fault with the door, emergency evacuations at Gatwick via the slides, and this was all in the last two weeks! I promptly cancelled our online booking and thankfully we got all our money back.

Yesterday it stopped raining and we went for a cycle ride to Hengisbury Head which is a 24 km round trip along the coast. There was a nicely marked cycle route along the coast to Dover and there is a sunny day coming up on Tuesday (according the the weather map). So decision made – we will cycle along the coast to Dover, then either catch the train back to Bournemouth or catch the ferry to France and try and pick up the Rhine cycle route.

Really windy and the seas are rough