September 14, 2024
To Fécamp
The devolution of a plan
Our plan for biking from here to Caen has gone through a series of revisions over the last two weeks in response to our heath issues. Here is a summary of the plan at each revision:
- In the original plan we intended to bike the entire way, generally following the coastline until crossing the mouth of the Seine at Honfleur and then turning inland to Caen at the end.
- When it became apparent this wasn’t viable we limited it down to biking the first three stages only, stopping at Dieppe, St. Valery-en-Caux and Fécamp before catching a train the rest of the way to Caen. With the reduced number of cycling days we planned two and three day layovers to give Rachael a chance to recover before the next fairly short ride.
- Finally, after I also got sick and we returned to Le Tréport in the face of gale force winds to cloister ourselves at a hotel for another three days, we reduced our sights to just two moving days: taking the train to Fécamp where we had a spendy, noncancellable apartment booked, and to the most important point: Caen, where we’re scheduled to meet up with our friend Susan Carpenter for a week-long ride south to Saumur.
On top of the unpleasantness and stress of dealing with our illnesses, these revisions have been a painful ratcheting down of our aspirations. I was interested in seeing Honfleur ever since we started planning our first tour of Europe over thirty years ago, but more recently I’ve also wanted to see Étretat and its amazing giant jug-handled chalk arch.
We’ll theoretically still have a chance to see Étretat during our three night stay in Fécamp, though it’s doubtful either of us will be disposed to bike along the coast for ten miles to see it. Honfleur is definitely out though, which saddens me. The photo of its colorful riverfront facade was in our first French travel guide - a Boedecker, I think - and it piqued my imagination enough that I always meant to see it someday. Rats.
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And of course there’s the question of what will be possible when we meet up with Susan in three days.
Today’s journey
Before moving on to today’s train ride, a brief recap of how we’re doing for the last three days. Rachael is still coughing with steady but slow improvements, but I’m a wreck. It’s a lucky thing that she’s doing as well as she is, well enough to make runs to the store and pharmacy, because for the first two days I did little more than sleep. It wasn’t until yesterday that I finally started feeling more engaged with the world, enough that I finally found the will to take a photo of the wonderful view from our room that we’ve been watching for the last three days.
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One other bit of news - on her run to the pharmacy Rachael picked up Covid tests and masks, and we were relieved that we both turned up negative. So that’s a faint ray of light at least.
Now, about the train rides. They look really stupid: today we have four different trains to catch, and when we leave for Caen we have three more. The stupid part is that the last two for today are ones we’ll backtrack to Rouen on when we leave for Caen on Tuesday. It would be easier for us to ride all the way to Caen today if we were willing to throw away almost €400 in lost lodging costs.
Unfortunate but not particularly dumb is that today is Saturday, and fewer trains are in the schedule. In fact there’s exactly one that works for us, and the first train departs at 6:45. We pack the night before, set the alarm for 5:30 and are on the road by 6:10 - plenty of time for the half mile ride to the station across the bay we can see from our hotel window. It’s dark, but we’ve got lights, and it’s cold and damp (about 45) and not raining but we’re layered up with everything we’ve got and make it to the station by 6:30 and in reasonable shape.
The station is completely dark, all its doors locked. We see what we assume is our train through the station windows, but can’t see how to get back there. We test both sides of the hotel, one blocked by a closed metal gate and the other by a hotel. There’s a worker in the hotel so I get his attention by banging on the window and he tells me the station won’t open until seven or after. Too late.
We’re starting to feel panicky (and cold and exposed) when fortunately Rachael sees a woman crossing the parking lot beyond the other end of the station. She’s gone by the time we get there, but it prompts us to test this heavy metal gate. It swings a bit, we’re in, and we’re on board with five minutes to spare!
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We get off our train at Abencourt, a nowhere spot at a junction between our line and the one from Dieppe to Rouen to Paris. It’s not quite nowhere, because there’s at least a tiny station and elevators to cross the tracks. There’s no heat in the station though so it’s a very cold hour and a half huddling there trying to conserve heat with only one other person in the station: a rough looking young man sitting in the corner, shaking badly and staring at his phone.
Suddenly there’s another guy, a stressed man in a hurry wheeling a Trek who heads straight to the ticket dispenser and frantically starts punching in instructions. While he waits for printing he stands there shaking violently trying to keep warm as we hear and then see his train pull up to the station. His ticket comes out just in time and he flashes us a smile as he rushes out the door and boards the train. Lucky this time.
Finally it’s time for us to make our way to our boarding track, Track 1. Up the elevator from this track (#2) and down the next of the three elevators over to Track 1. I can hardly believe the tracks are crazily numbered like this: starting from the station they’re ordered 2, 1, 3, and 4. I’ve never seen this one. I’ve checked and triple checked both the track positions and the one our train will arrive on to make sure I’ve made no mistake - and at the last minute while I’m up on the overpass with the bike I lose my confidence and hurry down the stairs to check the departure board again. How horrible would that be to be standing out there and see our train approach on an adjacent track, too late to reach it?
But we’ve nailed it. So competent, is Team Anderson!
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This one, a higher clas and faster train, takes us to our next transfer station at Rouen in forty minutes. It’s a pretty full train but fortunately there are no other bikes on it. After only two intervening stops we pull in to Rouen and as we prepare for disembarking three young women with backpacks who have been sitting nearby and hearing us occasionally cough pass by, and one offers us meds of some kind with a friendly smile.
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On a different take of my “scent” issues, I learned that I am one of less than 50 people who get the home delivery of the San Francisco Chronicle to NOT include the scented inserts in the Sunday Edition.
2 months ago
Rouen has a large, modern station with many facilities. I’m charmed when we enter to see an a capella group of seniors warming up under the choir director leading them. For the whole time we’re at the station their sounds will fill the air off in the distance from where we end up waiting.
So that disposes me kindly to this station, as does finding a Marie Blanche with a nice selection of pastries and even quiche. I leave my order with Rachael and then go outside to take a table close to where we’ve left the the bikes. While I sit there I’m watching this diminutive woman in a security uniform stand next to my bike in an animated conversation with some guy and then smile and walk off. She never looks in my direction though, even though I’m just a few feet from her.
Almost as soon as she leaves, there’s an intercom announcement in English - the owners of two bicycles need to come and collect them immediately! Yipes, that must be us and she’s been checking out our bikes. I stand next to them and wait, looking for her to reappear, but in the meantime she’s gone into the Marie Blanche asking about bicycles. Rachael’s just paying for and collecting our order when she hears this so she rushes out the door and in her rush forgets one of our coffees. When she goes back it’s disappeared. So that’s irksome.
The diminutive security agent returns, sees me by the bikes, and we have a little chat. We have no common language so she brings out her phone and types out a message that she translates for me. The problem is they thought they were abandoned property and a security concern, and I need to keep them in my sight. So maybe this episode began while I was in the shop for a minute, and maybe she’d been talking to the man who reported them?
One thing that disposes us less to the Rouen station though is that it’s unheated and open to the world outside. The world outside is still cold so it’s cold in here too, and we’re here for two hours. It’s a long time to sit in the cold, especially if you’re sick and have already spent a lot of time like this today.
Two hours pass by and we’re boarding the next train without incident, and a half hour later we come to our final transfer station, the memorably named Breaute-Beuzeville. it’s another nowhere spot, but at least this time there’s only a 17 minute transfer time which is really just about perfect. We’re soon on board the final train of the day and we pull into Fécamp about twenty minutes later.
The last bit is easy. Our apartment is only a half mile from the station and an easy navigation task - just straight down the street to its end, turn left, and there we are! So simple we don’t even need a GPS route. We’ll just use the phone.
A mile later, we’re lost. The instructions on the phone don’t make sense to us, and to make a long story short our half mile turns into more like four and a half. How often do we need to keep getting hit over the head with this lesson? It doesn’t matter how simple a route is - load it to your Garmin. Got it? Good. It’s damn well about time, idiot.
The apartment though when we get to it is perfect - easy to enter, easy to find room for the bikes, spacious, comfortable. It’ll be a fine place to hang out for three days. There’s only one problem though - me. The day has all been too much for me - these last four miles wandering around aimlessly really capped it off - and I feel destroyed. I stay conscious just long enough to talk through a shopping list for Rachael, and then immediately disappear under the covers.
Today's ride: 5 miles (8 km)
Total: 3,792 miles (6,103 km)
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It's happy you have a nice place to hole up.
BTW, a friend calls you the Rick Stevens of the bicycle world. It's sad to miss a couple of places on your bucket list, but think of all of the places you have seen, and inspired others (us!) to visit.
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Thanks for your concerns. We are doing better, and both interested in going out for lunch and a walk tomorrow. Small steps.
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