Market Day and Fighting the Hills and the Rain: Vire to Sourdeval
After we left our hotel this morning we had a pleasant surprise. It was market day in Vire. The street down from our hotel had a wonderful market with stalls selling veggies, bread, cheese, flowers and grilled meats. It was great fun exploring all of the stalls and talking with the sellers about their wares. We bought some wonderful goat cheese. The fellow explained to Mary Ellen about every ingredient in the cheese. Mary Ellen bought a round of goat cheese for 2.70 euros. We also stopped at the grilled meat stall. We ordered sausage in a baguette. It was delicious.
After our market experience we headed for the Tourist office to seek out help about finding the way back to the trail. Vire is located at the top of a very steep hill that we had to ride up last night. There was not room for any errors in searching for the trail. The woman at the tourist office was very helpful. When we came out an elderly gentleman and his friend were admiring our bike.We had a wonderful visit with these gentleman. The friend spoke excellent English as he had worked in England for a number of years. They told us that during the war, the city had been leveled by bombing and 800 local people had been killed in the bombardment. The city of Vire honours the memory of the American soldiers who had liberated their ciy.
As we rode further into the old town, we discoverd that the market was much more extensive than we had earlier thought. The market filled 3 complete streets. One street sold mostly clothing items. Imagine Gucci purses for 10 euros. We noticed people dressed in wild cloting covered in buttons or long strips of cloth. It turned out that they were Dutch and British dancers who were dancing at markets all over France.
We had wanted to get an early start on our ride, however, the market set us behind quite a bit. It was such a wonderful experience that it was well worth it. As we were heading out of the town we thought that we would stop at a Tabac shop for an espresso coffee before we hit the trail. After we ordered out coffees, it started to rain torrentially. We had no choice but to stay where we were until the weather improved, a couple of hours. We watched France beat Korea in handball at the Olympics. A tabac shop is a combination tobacco shop, restaurant, and bar.
After the rain slowed down, we headed down the steep hill and started looking for the trail. The velo map was very confusing and sent us on a wild goose chase. A clerk at the Mairie tried to help Mary Ellen, but she didn’t ride a bike spoke only French and hadn’t heard of the routes mentionned . She wouldn’t give up and phoned a friend who did speak Englishl As it turned out, there was a giant local aerial map behind her which solved the problem....or so we thought. After a few more hills we turned around. A local cyclist came to our rescue and took us to the trail. As we thought, the map showed the wrong roads to connect to the trail - FYI, the route should be D52.
Once again the route is quite beautiful - it follows a railbed through very hilly country. The only difficulty was that fresh sand had just been added to the trail - making it hard to navigate a fully loaded bike - and the weather - very unstable: we would briefly get sun ad then take shelter under the trees while it rained heavily. This continued throughout the afternoon. We happily stopped in Sourdeval and found a comfortable hotel, Le Temps de Vivre - only 43 euros and a chance to dry out our belongings.
Our hotel in Vire - the Logis chain in Europe offers good value in most cities in the 1 or 2 star category.
Artichokes - the only frustration in cycling is that we can enjoy looking at these things but we have to resist buying and sampling what we cannot carry.
The market was a hub for the local community. Locals catching up on the news. Vire is not a tourist mecca, so we were an exception. Great people watching!
Barry BartlettTo Mike AylingHi Mike,
That's for sure. For us the positives far outweigh the negative as we feel lucky to have so many interactions with locals. Once we get past the queries of "did you make it yourself" and "is it comfortable", we enjoy that this curiosity gets us past the normal barriers of language differences and shyness.
Plus, aren't we lucky that as couples, we enjoy riding together and sharing the adventure?
Barry Reply to this comment 6 years ago
Thankfully the man on the right spoke English as the man next to me continued speaking very quickly in French and I couldn't understand him. What a character - even with the language barrier I was able to understand his sense of humour. We discovered later that the woman in the background is his wife and she had been taking pictures the whole time.
This woman spoke no English but was determined to help Mary Ellen find the cycle path. She worked in the Mairie - the city hall. Note the map behind her - after much time on the internet and phoning friends, we discovered the answer behind her desk!
