Normandy: Escaping Grey Skies, Cold Wind And Rain Of Northern France.

March 4, 2015

I had been here before. I passed through Cherbourg twice last year, but had never stayed in the town. I knew there is an Auberges de Jeunesse so decide to wait a day. Even if the weather is cold and grey, I can get the journal up to date.

It is a gloomy grey Saturday afternoon with a sharp breeze whipping in off the English Channel, or Le Manche as it's called here. And having ridden the familiar port road from the ferry terminal, over old railway lines and pass grimy derelict shipbuilding offices with company name "Mecanica de Normandie" across the upper floor, then over a bridge by a marina to the quayside street with hotels and cafes on the inside, I follow the sign for the hostel. The door is locked when I arrive and a sign says open at 18.00. It is now quarter to five, so I take "The Old Patagonian Express" from my pannier and sit on a bench in the courtyard to read. I am on chapter two and the author Paul Theroux is on a train from Boston in February, escaping the record cold Winter of 1978. Ironically after half an hour reading his description of how cold it is, I'm feeling the cold too and wish it is near time someone come along and open up so I can get in and warm.

The receptionist, an elegant middle-age woman come along at quarter to six. She has some chores to do before she can check me in but lets me into reception. I see on a notice board "No Wi-Fi" which scuppers journaling, thought perhaps I can go to a café and use the Wi-Fi there, so go ahead and check in for two nights.

Two hours later I get a soaking going out in the rain to buy the makings of dinner at a Carrefour Express. Sunday morning is bright blue and sunny. Groups of local club cyclists whish by as I walk to a café with my netbook in a front-pannier slung shoulder-bag fashion. The café patron speaks some English and I have to get him to type in the password, it being French I don't understand when he says it. He sets the coffee I ordered on the table and I set to writing a page. At the next table three old men converse loud and gutturally. They serve themselves from a yellow Gordon's Gin jug, pouring measures in glasses of what looks like whiskey. A young man sat on a stool by the bar orders another glass of Kronenbourg. I look at my notes and write away. I empty the coffee and the patron come and lifts the cup and nods, intimating will I have a refill. I nod affirmative and he goes and return with a second coffee. When this is finished, he come back and nods will I have a third. Two coffees is enough so I nod no. I become no longer a milk cow, so shortly he return and says "I finish. I close now." I am disappointed, having a bit more to do, also annoyed as I don't belief him: the other customers are still sitting on and it is only twelve o'clock and assume closing time is one on Sundays. Then when I get my money out to pay, he announces "six urhos!" I put down three two euro coins on the counter and leave feeling he saw me coming.

I feel defeated. France isn't the most Wi-Fi friendly country. Last year the hostel in Rennes had one hour free use per day, not much when a week's worth of journaling awaits. The bright morning has turned dull and all other cafes are soon shut for Sunday afternoon and just about everywhere else is shut. There is one small grocery shop open and I call in and buy some sausages to augment dinner. Soon after entering the hostel I look out and see it raining again. I spend the remainder of the day pouring over Michelin France, planning a route to the sun, and reading more of The Old Patagonian Express.

Monday: I'm on the road shortly after nine. Glad to leave town I take D650 toward Barneville Carteret, up the known steep hill away from the coast. Cresting this it's a steady kilometre or more back downhill. Then at a roundabout I go left on D900 and climb again. The blue sky sunny morning I first looked out at earlier has grown dull as dark clouds accumulate and congeal and momentarily a morass of cold rain pelts me. I curse at the prospect of riding in rain all day, but once the road is well soaked and puddled, it quits. No more than an April shower. The cloud shortly breaks up again and it would turn out a fair day with sunny spells. Spring, it is perfectly spring-like. There are primroses under the roadside hedgerow and autumn sown cereal in the fields are growing vivid green and fluttering in the breeze. And French roads are effortlessly smooth. This D900 is near arrow straight, going straight up each successive undulation, but although each climb is comparatively long, it is followed by an equally long descent, so there's much climbing but also much free-wheeling downhill.

Lunch necessitate shelter from the brisk breeze. When it's time to stop I come to a cutting on the right just after passing under a motorway bridge; at the end of which, I wheel the bike up the bank and over a wide level slice of grass above the road with a bank up to a hedge on the inside. Here I lay the bike down and sit eating a sandwich baguette with salami while listening to the constant cars whizzing past on the motorway and looking at the slower cars pass on the road below, also across at the stand of birch on the opposite cutting. Simple pleasure of eating outside and watching the world pass by.

The D900, an inland route is a much shorter route than D650 following near the coast, which I cycled previously, as I make good progress, having cycled off the Cherbourg peninsular by dusk, when I take D524 in Villadieu Les Poeles toward Vire. It is dark enough for me to use the lights, but as it is clear and a full moon is rising, it is perfectly light to continue. Though I'm happy to come to a grove of broadleaf trees in a wheatfield connected to the road by a tractor track.

I used a long exposure to show the turbine blades turning.

A full moon rises as I camp in a grove of deciduous trees.

Tuesday: While out answering natures call first thing, I see a rainbow all orange and reds of the rising sun behind me. Then the rain reaches my grove of trees and I retreat to the tent listening to it drum on the flysheet, foreboding for having to soon be moving and taking down the tent in the rain. I breakfast and do what I have to do inside, by then it has quit and I'm on the road at nine bowled along by a tailwind as I cycle east inland.

At twenty kilometres I ride into Vire and call at a boulangere. I've already committed myself to each morning while in France doing this. It is a little extra expense, but it would be a shame to ride two weeks across France and only eat at Lidl or SuperU. I buy two pain au raisen and take them with me into a café on the corner on the opposite site of the Grand Place. I order a café crème and the people in there don't mind me eating the pain au raisen with my coffee. When I get up to leave the bill is two sixty, a little cheaper than Cherbourg.

I take the road to Flers. The sky big drifts of cotton wool moving on the wind east. By Flers I follow signs for D908 to Alencom, but at a roundabout on the town's outer ring, D908 further has a blue-car sign, meaning motorway, no cycling. It's a two-lane each way with concrete barrier in the middle, but with a vehicle wide shoulder, save to cycle on but forbidden. A lot safer than the alternative I divert to, the D925 south back into a crosswind and an approaching downpour. A single carriage-way with no shoulder and a steady flow of artic-trucks. The oncoming trucks hitting me with a halting draft. Then diagonal shafts of rain batter down from the right. There's no shelter until I reach a motorway bridge which I stop under. Consulting the map, I see a white road, D18 branch off on the left and when the rain is over I find it at the next roundabout.

The second breakfast commencing ten-thirtyish, meant hunger doesn't return to well into the afternoon as I pass through a small village, wherein I spot an old wooden windmill structure without sails in the churchyard and think under the overhanging eave will be a shelter to lunch. I wheel the bike in through the gate pass grave stones and a Great War memorial and lean the bike against the stone base of the structure and, looking inside, see two big church bells which I scrutinise a moment glancing back at the church, there's no bell-tower; so this is what it is, before sitting down alongside the bike to lunch on baguette and brie. A little later there's an almighty deafening gong causing me to jump up in fright and shock. Like a shotgun going off at close range. Instantly I realise the bell has in one solid gong rung the half hour and checking my watch, it is two-thirty. I eat more quickly then and don't delay as I don't want to be still here at three o'clock.

I continue on the small meandering D18 and reach Alencon at dusk, a large town with many satellite villages where I've to check the map a lot to find the way out to D311, going south east and passing through an area of green indicating forest that I can camp in. The D311 has a good shoulder to ride upon, necessary now as it is after dark, thought clear and moonlit. I keep on going until I reach suitable access into forest which shortly close in either side of the road.

Another moonlit night and long exposure in my woodland campsite. The tripod is useful.

Wednesday: Shortly after dawn I hear what I take to be the patter of rain on the flysheet. When it ceases and I look out, I see rain moving east and cloud blocks out the rising sun. Great to have a wet tent to pack, and there are shards of ice on the rim of the fly, so it must've remained clear and frosty until that passing shower.

I am on the road at eight-thirty, though it only seems seven-thirty as the sun has just risen and is now above the cloud bank. The D311 rolls up and down with woodland to the side interspersed with large plots of farmland. Sparse little rows of vivid green wheat with brown tilled soil showing between and barley, a fuller slightly different shade of green. And also fields of a small brassica, cabbage-like oilseed. I reach the next town, Manner around ten and call in the boulangere followed by sitting outside on a café terrace where the sunshine is warming, but only just as I wear a thermal vest and two fleeces underneath my raincoat. And before I get up to go further a big cloud moves in over the market house at the bottom of the Grand Place making it feel cold again. I buy provisions in the Carrefour Express on the corner. The staff on the check out are a very jolly lot. The woman once finished with the customer in front of me, breaks off to greet a girlfriend that has entered holding a three-year-old toddler boy in her arm and kisses the boy on both cheeks and he smiles. When I've paid, I don't have a bag so take up the items and clutch them precariously to my chest, causing her to laugh wobbly, like saying be careful not to let anything slip and fall.

I make a call at a Boulanger a morning routine.

Ancient movie camera, or projector? I'm surmising this is the first place anywhere a moving picture was shot.

The sun is out again on the road onward. At some point I pass a signboard at the side "Department Cher et Loire" and reaching Le Ferte Bernard, it is quite a big town with an aesthetically pleasing centre on a river with embankment landscaping where I wheel the bike down and sit on a bench to lunch. Today tuna in Baguette, a little bland as I've nothing else to liven it up.

I take a busy road with a wide shoulder south toward Verdome. The afternoon continuing a mix of warming sunshine and cold overcast where the sweat under my warm clothes feels like ice. Though approaching dusk the cloud has all cleared away leaving pleasant weather as I ride out the day with the thought of more of the same clear sky as I get further inland away from the plague of English Channel cloud and rain.

It is a moonlit evening and I camp in woodland accessible from the road down a long farm track.

Normandy's green undulations, church spires and grey skies.

Today's ride: 348 km (216 miles)
Total: 681 km (423 miles)

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