September 20, 2021
Binic to Tréguier
It's our two-week France-iversary! And what a day to celebrate it. Great weather, beautiful scenery, and some crazy hills to conquer. Either today was an outlier, or the afternoon coffee proved to be a performance-enhancing drug, or we are actually gaining climbing strength. We had to walk our bikes for the first time up a 10% grade hill, but we got to white-knuckle our way down a 15% double-black-diamond slope:
We actually got on the road before 9am, and we made it to our destination at 5:30. A longish day, but I think we could've put another hour in. That's how amped up we were.
It's amazing to think that two weeks ago, we had just landed in Paris, completely disshelved and discombobulated, with an injured bike and no sense of when to sleep or eat. We'll have two "stages" of our tour complete in 15 days, which ain't too bad. The weather has been better than expected, the campsites have all been either cheap or good or both, the food delicious, and the people just spectacular. Our encounters with the locals have generally been brief, but everyone is so incredibly helpful and kind. For example, we skipped our mid-morning break in favor of an earlyish lunch. I was scouting locations, but we were surrounded by private property. I finally found a little bench by the road, and we had decided it was "good enough". About two minutes later, a lady comes out of her house and says something to the effect of, "Just so you know, there's a lovely beach a few hundred meters ahead". We thanked her profusely and enjoyed one of the most lunch-friendly spots we've found to date.
You may have noticed that we're not taking food pictures any more. I suppose the novelty of amazing bread, cheese, and pastries has worn off on us. As a matter of fact, today we had muesli for breakfast instead of croissants. What's happening to us? We continue to find new things to try, although as you can tell, they aren't gourmet meals by any stretch of the imagination. We like to eat fairly simply, especially when touring. We're mostly after calories. Today we found them in the form of a crepe and a galette from a Monday market that took over the EV4 route in Saint-Quay-Portrieux.
Our camp stove is not happy about all the unleaded fuel we're feeding it. A thick crust of soot has built up on the burner. Today it went into this mood where the flame stayed orange and licked the sides of the pot. I just researched whether Coleman fuel can be found in small amounts in France, and someone suggested getting Essence A from a hardware store. I might try that, as long as it doesn't singe my eyebrows off.
Here are a couple of the views we enjoyed today:
Those clouds look a little menacing, but they've behaved themselves so far.
We took a couple of small shortcuts today, following the Tour de Manche rather than EV4. The first was awful, rock-strewn doubletrack, and the second was fine, but we bypassed a bit of magnificent coastline in the process. I'm starting to put a little more faith in the folks who scouted EV4.
On our last push to this evening's campground, we entered the town of Treguier, and our jaws dropped. We had no idea of its beauty and rich history. We still don't really know, because we had no time to soak it all in. I feel like we could have spent our entire two months just tooling around Brittany and giving the many tourist spots the attention they deserve. Two more days on the coast, then we get to discover a little bit of what the interior of the region has to offer.
Today's ride: 68 km (42 miles)
Total: 819 km (509 miles)
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Did you try "sans-plomb 98 ? " but less ans less available in gas stations.
3 years ago
You get gasoline (essence) in a gas station. A quincaillerie or hardware store has hardware, but not usually paint, cleaning supplies, or other non-hardware items. A grand surface (big box store) like Castorama or Leroy Merlin , to name but two, might have a suitable fuel, but I doubt it. Try à Décathlon sporting goods store, they have camping stoves and fuel, maybe even something like Coleman.
Cheers,
Keith
3 years ago
3 years ago
3 years ago