June 7, 2018
Day 73: Cabourg to Le Havre
Some people we meet on tour are just so so, and some are standout human beings. The standout ones normally do not seem to say or do anything all that special, but you come to know that it has been a privilege to have met them. Alain from the Hotel du Parc was one of these people. Learning that we were heading for Vimy, he brought us a novel about Vimy. Seeing that we are cyclists, he recited details of many of the cyclists who have stayed at the hotel. Then he brought us copies of his favourite cycling magazine. In one issue, he pointed out the story of Gino Bartoli. Gino Bartoli had won several tours of Italy and France in the 30's and 40's. Unknown to anyone until after his death, he also was ferrying documentation for threatened Jews, hidden in his bike. Because of this story, I asked Alain if he knew of Leonard Cohen, and his song "The Partisan". Alain had studied in Montreal, and had met Leonard. Alain still had his Montreal Canadiens mug, and was interested when we introduced him to the famous Canadian story "Le Chandail", which is about the Canadiens.
All that sure differs from one's interactions at a standard hotel. We will remember Alain for a long time, and we also found that our Cycleblaze friend Trisha Graham stayed at the hotel twice and also still remembers Alain and his wife.
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Our brakes had been showing considerable signs of weakness, with the levers travelling almost to the bar despite our having moved the adjusters as far as they would go. The pads still had seemingly lots of rubber, so we assumed the hydraulics needed to be bled. That needs a bike shop, and we had spotted one in Le Havre. So all we had to do was to get there, and hopefully early enough to have the brakes looked at.
There were two issues about this. We are following the Channel coast, the part called here the Cote Fleurie. The towns are lined up along the coast: Cabourg, Houlgate, Villers, Blonville, Benerville, Deauville, Trouville. But at Trouville our route, supposedly the EV4, seems to take fright and leaves the coast in a hurry. It retreats all the way south to Pont l'Eveque before sheepishly crawly its way back to Honfleur, on the Bay of the Seine. From Honfleur, however, it jumps over the huge Normandy bridge to the Le Havre side with nary a whimper.
That detour to Pont l'Eveque would take us too long. We felt we had to stick to the direct coastal route. That might involve D513, which if it is like its cousin D514 that we wrangled with in the past two days, would be trouble. Next, the Normandy Bridge - could we really cross it?
Had we rechecked Trisha's blog, we would have seen that she crossed it, but had to do it walking, for an hour.
We fired up geovelo.fr for advice. Geovelo plotted us a route along the coast, that seemed to largely avoid the 513. Then it took the Normandy Bridge and continued on in to le Havre. We stuck that in the GPS. But we also checked in the first Tourist Information along the way. No, no, they said, too dangerous. You have to go by Pont l'Eveque. We took that under advisement and beat it up the coast!
The first step was to go again through Cabourg. This amazed us even more than it had yesterday. We had really never seen such an amazing and extensive collection of beautiful, one of a kind, buildings made from combinations of brick, stone, stucco, half timbers, and slate.
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The downtown streets were similarly attractive. What a place:
On the outskirts of Caboug we came upon a building that used to be a foundry. Look at the lovely design! Admittedly this was probably only the main office. The second photo shows the same building in the old days.
We thought we had seen it all in terms of groups of gorgeous buildings, but that was until we cycled into the next town, Houlgate. Just look at this place!
In terms of beautiful buildings, the numbers just kept growing. But great stuff also cropped up in some other directions. We came into Villers and stopped opposite a "Tabac" to buy postcards. Beside where I was waiting with the bikes, I spied a market type stall selling the famous Calvados cider, and also Pont l'Eveque cheese. My one regret about bypassing Pont l'Eveque was the possibility of missing the AOC cheese. But here it was.
The cheese they had was made in Boissey, which is about 40 km southwest of Pont l'Eveque, and we are about 20 km north. That all sounds close enough to me. The cheese, as often happens with the real stuff, was quite stinky, and interestingly about as yellow as butter. That's unusual for a soft Camembert-like cheese, which is normally quite white.
Dodie returned with some post cards, but before we could take off a man walking by said hello to us. We learned that he had been to Quebec and had even seen blue whales in the Gulf of St Lawrence. He lived above the Tabac and so clearly got to walk this beautiful street daily. Imagine, all the Pont l'Eveque you could ever want!
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6 years ago
Just down the street from the Tabac was the next big thing - the beach. This is kms of beautiful beach, and it of course is that makes this particular coast such a big deal. Along the beach, yes, more great houses:
The beach and beautiful building thing reached a real climax at Deauville-Trouville. Although it is still off season, you could easily sense that this is a real, famous, historic beach thing. There were giant hotels, a film festival, and at least one artist painting the colourful beach umbrellas. Then across the Touques River, a row of waterside beautiful buildings, in Trouville.
Up until now we had been pretty much swanning along the coast/beach, but now we were at the point where our maps and TI too had warned us to duck inland - like 20 kms inland, to avoid traffic. We ignored that, and took to the hills. Actually there had been quite a few significant hills on the way to this point, but now we really climbed. Then we fought to stay off any major roads, and wound our way toward Honfleur. We did spent a little time on D513 and the fairly equivalent D62, but it was ok. Pretty soon we cruised into Honfleur.
Honfleur shared some of the style of the other towns we had passed during the day, but it had several special twists. By the harbour, very tall and skinny houses made great photo subjects:
We only looked at a portion of Honfleur, but we did get to one of its big attractions, the Sainte Catherine's Church. This church is built mainly of wood, by local artisans. Because of Honfleur's location it was a base for privateers, and therefore in conflict with England. They occupoied it from 1415 to 1466 and during that time destroyed the original Ste Catherine church. The one we saw here is a rebuild.
The wooden interior really is striking, and includes a barrel vault ceiling. There are also lots of unique objects around - like a shrine for Ste Therese of Lisieux, including a relic. Ste Therese is really famous, and makes us think of a town near Montreal by that name. Another thing was a unique 15th century golden eagle lectern. We could also see the influence of this location near the D Day beaches, with prayer candles having a peace theme, rather than the name of a saint.
To this point our day had gone swimmingly. We had seen many things unique on this trip, and somehow sidestepped any dangerous traffic. But that would change now, and fast.
We made our way out of town and toward the immensely tall and long Normandy Bridge. We spun around on some busy roads until we were finally aligned with the bridge and ready to go up. In this we were helped by no bike signage whatever. The bridge has a bike lane - separated from herds of thundering semi trailers by a white painted line. It also has a sidewalk, separated by a curb. We had to use the sidewalk for sure. On the "bike lane" there was a real risk of being sucked toward a truck or blown away from one. As it was, even on the sidewalk, the truck wind effect was trouble, and the roar frightening.
I have no idea how long the crossing took us. I had to stay 100% focussed on just the bit of path in front of my wheel. I could not spare any attention for either clock or speedometer, and certainly not to look over the side of this sky high structure. I just really hoped Dodie was managing ok up ahead. Coming down the final bit, I had no feeling in the hands, since they had been gripping the bar as tightly as possible for a long time. I was looking forward to the relief of joining Dodie at the bottom, and being done with this stressful situation. But in fact, stress was just getting into gear.
Since we were on the "sidewalk" the bridge people had helpfully ended our crossing at a set of stairs, at a bridge structure that contained a restaurant, a museum about the bridge construction, and even a daycare. The restaurant had a nice meal offering and ambiance, a contrast to the harsh conditions out on the bridge. To get to all this, we had had to backtrack, find an underpass under the roadway, and locate an elevator. Any kind of signage was definitely not to be seen.
We did not linger long, because we still had that objective of the bike shop in Le Havre, which was still at least 15 km away. We were glad to see a bike path leading away from the bridge structure, and we happily followed it beside the truck filled road. After a couple of kilometers the bike path casually announced that it was ending - right in the middle of nowhere. Or at least, in the middle of that truck filled road. We could scarcely believe it.
We took to the road, scanning for a way off. A bit of a path appeared, and died again. So our bridge relief turned to more white knuckles. At one point a bicycle courier - the only other cyclist we had seen, came up to us (at that point, we were cringing on a shrinking piece of sidewalk) with some encouraging words - like we would be out of this real soon now.
We did of course get into town, but town in this case is a huge city. It is strung out in rather a long configuration, with a lower portion and some towering heights on a ridge. Our place was, of course, up the ridge. But first, the bike shop.
We cycled some standard city streets - no particular bike lanes either- for quite some distance until we reached the shop. The very nice young man listened to our brake story before asking us what day we would like the bikes back. He was alone in the shop, and this would take time...
In the end the fellow phoned another bike shop , one that said they could tackle the job, and we set off for a new point on our GPS. The second bike shop was called by the play on words name D'Air Ailleurs, which actually I am hard pressed to explain. The shop was busy, but willing to give it a shot, at least as far as the brakes went. We also know our chains need replacing, but that was more than they could tackle just then.
While we had thought our hydraulic systems would need purging, and while we were worried to see the brake pads not retracting when the levers were released, it turned out all issues were resolved when new pads went in. In these almost 5000 km we had effectively worn out the pads, even if some rubber was still visible.
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While looking for the bike shop(s) we had of course been observing and trying to absorb the city. We found it disappointing - fairly grungy, with many out of business establishments, lots of traffic, and no buildings of any attractiveness. Dodie surmised that as a port, the place had been flattened in WWII. Later we confirmed the awful facts. Hitler had declared Le Havre a fortress city, to be defended to the last man. It then took until September 1944 - with the allies first totally flattening the city and then having to capture it by land - for the German garrison to surrender. The city was left a total ruin. Starting in 1945 it was rebuilt, but not as it was. Rather it became a study in concrete. People here seem proud of the rebuild and we are told it has become a World Heritage Site. We would have to actually go see what they are talking about, but in fact we will leave quickly.
We found a map of Le Havre cycle routes - not very helpful, and not showing cycle route links to the Normandy Bridge nor the Seine Route nor the Littoral Route. EV 4 is really just a concept here as yet.
One thing, though. Once we had somehow cycled up to the B&B, we found a unique situation of almost a cabin perched on a hillside, with small terrace outside and clear view of the city below. Inside it is big, and I an staying up typing this on a nice table. The place is helping us recover from what turned out to be a very tough day!
Today's ride: 74 km (46 miles)
Total: 4,805 km (2,984 miles)
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Keep safe and enjoy the hills of Normandy
Tricia
6 years ago
6 years ago