Day 24: Rouen to Cocherel

September 19, 2023

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Hotels in Europe make a lot of use of motion sensors or timed light switches, and I guess that is a good idea. But I find they often do not turn on when they should, or not quickly enough, or they turn off too soon. Their favourite trick is to put you in the pitch dark inside a toilet stall. But today the fun happened on the spiral stairs of death. Suddenly, it was pitch black!

One reason it could be so black was that there were no other lights on in the hotel. The kitchen on the first floor (where our bikes were resting) was shut tight, when I descended at 7:20 a.m. Simulating a morgue when it's time to be up and at 'em is another hotel trick.

To be fair, there was no need for the kitchen to be open, because it's not like you actually cook anything, for a standard French breakfast. At 7:30 we made our way to the ground floor, and indeed the hotel lady was on the case, beginning to assemble our baguettes and such. What she produced was the precisely standard French one jammer, the breakfast we would expect in the majority of places. You get one croissant, one piece of baguette, orange juice, plain yogurt, apple sauce, butter and jam. If you want bacon, eggs, pancakes, better go to America. If you want ham and many types of cheese, and lax, and fruit salad - that's Germany!

As is usually the case, I am just getting my bearings in the town, as we prepare to leave. The centre of town, in my world, is the Monoprix grocery store. At one end of the street with the Monoprix is the Cathedral, and at the other end is the Gros Horloge. And at right angles to that street is the one that ends at the Palais du Justice, and our hotel. So you see, Monoprix is the centre.

I stood with the bikes at the Monoprix while Dodie went in for some groceries. This gave me a good look at the Gros Horloge, and indeed it has no minute hand. Perhaps when it was made, that much accuracy was not needed. Anyway, you can see that we were well past the 8 a.m. opening time of Monoprix.

No minute hand, but Monoprix will be open anyway.

The time on the horloge had another significance, for the many street people that had passed the night in doorways. Monoprix called the police, to remove one from their doorway, and that got the ball rolling. The police strolled to each snoozer and informed them that it was wake up time. I liked that the police were very calm and gentle, and did not require that the offender leave, only that they wake up. It seemed like a civic funded wake up service. You can't even usually get that in a hotel anymore!

After that, it you want to sit in the street, fine.

With our pack now full of food, we made our way to the Seine. Some towns are focused on their waterfronts, but Rouen has its walking streets and cathedral slightly inland.

The Grampies have returned to the Seine!

The Seine had boats alright, but the area beside the river was rather industrial.

Something we liked along the Seine was the presence of a signed bike path. We followed it happily for a while, until both the signage and the path disappeared.

The Seine afforded some water birds to look at, though none were exotic or really new to us.

Cormorants we have photographed seem to have differing coloration one to the other.

Dodie said be sure to get the legs on these guys, because she is sure it will aid in identifying them.

Is this a "standard" gull? What is a standard gull?

Outside the town of Belbeuf there was some visual interest from tall white cliffs. And inside the town, some houses were placed up high, including a very fancy one. But one telltale from our town photo is the lack of any bike lane. France is frustrating that way. Sometimes there is great bike infrastructure, but quickly it can disappear.

Dodie spotted some white rocks in a field and was thinking it was something like Stonehenge. But as we approached we clearly saw that it was cows. Cow Henge!

Belbeuf, cute town, houses on high, no bike lane.

Belbeuf was the precursor to what turned out to be 30 km of pretty much hell. This took the form of a high speed road for which we could find no alternative, that was infested with semi-trailers and where we had to ride the dotted line.

Blurry shot because of trembling hand, probably.

One pernicious thing about the road was a variant on design that many cyclists have ranted about. That is in general the highway builder's idea of placing impediments in your way. The "favourite" is to have a shoulder but to put a rumble strip down the middle of it. In this case, we could not ride the dotted line, because the line was fitted with bumps! There was generally not enough room to ride to the right of the line, either.

We eventually made it to an area with a bike lane, but also high traffic in general.

While the first half of the day was spent dodging traffic, the second half was much more pleasant. This corresponds to reaching the river Eure, which is a tributary of the Seine. There is a Seine-Eure bikeway, that gave us some very nice riding, and good spots to stop for lunch.

This Coot came to see us as we ate our sandwiches, He came so close that I noticed his strange feet.

We ran by a small forest of planted trees. They were interesting for their smooth bark and regular diameters. I picked up a leaf to help in identification.

We made a picture of the Eure near Pinterville. It's a pretty river, but not spectacular.

Normandy has a unique cow, the Normande. They always have dark eye patches, and are so sweet.

Our route had now changed from the big roads to little ones. These of course are what we like to ride on. However in this region they were infested with Route Barree, our nemesis.

To get through, we had to squeeze by the gap. We had to take off all the bags to achieve it!

We found passion fruit growing on some walls, and were quite excited, but they did not turn out to be very good.

We got around this guy too, but he had other colleagues tearing up the road nearby. We got around that as well.

The route did a lot of dipsy doodling on small lanes, but Dodie's GPS kept us on track, until our destination, the little known village of Cocherel on the Eure.

We found our spot, which was a huge house with a thatch roof. We see from our past blogs that thatch is a thing in Normandy.

The property had a locked gate, but fortunately a small sign with the name l'Isle Normande, which corresponded to our Booking. I phoned the listed number and got a message machine. I hate that! But Dodie noticed another number on the gate and with that we reached the owner, Marie. She referred us to the check-in time being 16:00, and it was then 15:30. She said she was on her way, and would be with us in 20 minutes.

Marie turned out to be a very personable lady, and the property is gorgeous. Our room is huge - maybe triple sized, and it overlooks the Eure. So after a rough start to the day, we are very happy this evening.

Dodie and Marie head for the bike storage.

Today's ride: 62 km (39 miles)
Total: 1,262 km (784 miles)

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