Day 69: Mortain to Tessy Sur Vire

June 3, 2018

Even though 74 years have gone by, the events of WW II in Normandy seem to be very much remembered. Avranches, where the Americans broke through, and Mortain - where the hills made fighting more intense - remain famous. Flags line the main street of Mortain and in one storefront a memorial to the Americans. Happily, the flags now include the German flag. Also in the street, the little fire hydrant sized "Voie de la Liberte" memorials.

These are found throughout France along the routes of allied advance

We resumed the greenway at Mortain after making our way down from the ridge. The rail trail was relatively flat, as railbeds must be, though for long stretches we were slowly grinding up or flying down a moderate grade. The railway was developed in the 1880's by the engineer Fulgence Bienvenue, who is also responsible for much of the Paris underground. With all the hills in this region, Bienvenue avoided a lot of tunnels by using the newly invented (1867) dynamite. We are glad he blasted a way through for us! Looking out to the sides we were seeing the many ridges that would have made cycling a trial.

The views to the side of the trail were beautiful, but hilly. The land here is most suitable for pasture, therefore a lot of dairy farming is done. We also saw moderate fields of crops.

Taking a side road from the trail would normally mean a steep descent, like in this case.

We had passed up the hotel's breakfast so as to hit the trail rather than wait for their 8 o'clock start. Besides, we still had some food on hand, like spice cake and an apple, and the coffee and hot chocolate we can always make, using our own kettle.

The next town along was Sourdeval, and we stopped in to see what supplies we could pick up. Sourdeval had the necessary parts of a good town, specifically a central square with a church, grocery, bakery, and other commerce, plus the city hall. It also had the bonus of some extra nice houses that we noticed on the way in. Where Sourdeval fell down - in our cycle tourist eyes, was in having the centre of the square filled up with car parking. From the resident's point of view I'm sure this is great, allowing you drive up to the bakery, grab your croissants, and zoom off. But it sure kills any photo ops. In many larger towns this problem is addressed by having parking lots off to the side - with convenient directional signs that also quote the number of current vacancies in each lot - and then the centre is pedestrian only. This time though we were not complaining since we were just glad to have the grocery and bakery, both of which were miraculously open on this Sunday. The church, however, was lacking a miracle and was closed on Sunday.

It's hard to get a good looking shot of the downtown centre

We continued on the green way, and we happy to find one spot where the former station house had been redeveloped into a cyclists refuge. This had tables, toilets, a sink, and best of all just at this point - power outlets. We took the opportunity to feed ourselves and to top up our batteries.

The next excitement as we made our way north (always heading for the Normandy beaches) was the large town of Vire. Vire is named for the Vire river, which is the main one in this section. The trail is loosely taking advantage of the Vire valley. Maps of the trail show it stopping before Vire and picking up after, and that is basically accurate. But the signage continued through the town so we were able to stay on target with only the occasional checking of the GPS to handle the very common signage failures that crop up in towns.

Although the signs took us through Vire, they carefully avoided taking us by anything that was worth looking at. All we saw was generic modern city city buildings, and we can not say if Vire had anything else of note or not.

The action really started, in terms of our day, when the the Vire river, which had been snaking around in the vicinity, came over and crossed our path. Or rather, our path crossed it. The only thing, the Vire had at this point developed a deep chasm. This spawned the big thing in the area, a huge viaduct, developed by Gustave Eiffel (of tower fame) in 1891.

The viaduct had somehow escaped destruction during the war, and was used up to 1964. Now it is decommissioned, but has found a new life as a bungee jumping platform. In fact the area around the base of the viaduct hosts a sort of amusement park, with various forms of zip line jumping, and also a small roller coaster they are calling the luge.

Platforms developed for various daredevil activities on the old bridge piers

The thing that took a while to sink in for us was that with the viaduct gone, the requirement for cyclists was to decend into the chasm, cross the little bridge at the bottom, and climb back out. Even this would have been simple enough, but the whole area was riddled with roads and paths associated with the amusement operation. Signage did exist, but it was indecipherable.

We had a go at just following some of the signs, but soon turned back, saying "This can't be it!". Finally Dodie went to one of the food concessions, but the people there had no idea about bike routes. Dodie slightly lost it at this point, saying "I'm seventy years old, I've been sucked down into this hell hole, and your telling me you don't know the way out?!" They suggested that the luge man might know, and actually he did. All we had to do was to crank, crank. our way up the road used by the "little tourist train", while watching out that it did not run us down.

(P.S. for anyone wondering why I would use words like "crank, crank" for what might be viewed as a simple zip along with the e-bikes, it's just not like that with bikes of the type we have. With hills of whatever percent these things were, it's a question of the lowest gear and maximum assist, and then... "crank, crank" i.e. pushing as hard as you can. In fact on some hills coming up in the story, we simply had to get off and push, like in the old days.)

After we had climbed out of the Vire gorge I was assuming we could just glide on it to our day's stop at Tessey (sur Vire). But no, we immediately went down into another valley, and back up the other side. The descent here was such that even maximum and continual force on my hydraulic brake would not stop the bike, just slow it. And the ascent - as mentioned, in at least one or two cases we just had to walk it.

One or two cases? How much of this are we talking about? Well at first, thinking about writing the blog, I was counting - oh it was three more gorges - type of thing. But actually, I lost count. It was up and down and up and down...

Finally we reached Pont Farcy, where the route does actually take the tow path beside the river (mostly). Now it was clear we would be on the flat, and soon at our stopping place of Tessey. Dodie, always thinking, pointed out that since we were not sleeping in the river there would have to be one last climb, to the town. She was of course right, and to even do that climb we had to find a path upward.

Not only did we succeed in finding that path, but it came out at a grocery store that will be helpful tomorrow, and the grocery is right below our B&B - the La Monoterie. It's a great building, where our room has doors to the front and to the back garden, and where an adjacent room has a kitchen we can use.

One of these doors is ours, one is the kitchen

In the kitchen we found bottles of Normandy cider were for sale. We figured we had to give it a try, and hey, it was really good. Even us non drinkers found it flavorful and refreshing. This cider was home made by a couple down the road. They definitely know what they are doing.

Addendum: Cows

This is dairy country, and we have been seeing mostly black and white Holsteins. But today, two other types have popped up. One is a beautiful caramel coloured type, and the other is the Normande cow.

We don't know what the caramel ones are, but there is no mistaking the Normande ones. They are speckled and also all wear "spectacles".

We came to a group of Normandes right by the path, and I knew I would be able to get a great shot of them and their markings. I pulled out my camera and exclaimed "Wow, you guys really do wear spectacles!". With that, the whole group leapt up and trotted off. Gee, soorry! After that I could only shoot their backsides - except a couple did look back to see if I was still there.

Does anyone know about these caramel cows?

Normandes - having nothing to do with me.

Today's ride: 84 km (52 miles)
Total: 4,516 km (2,804 miles)

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