Day 21: Mayenne to Flers

August 30, 2024

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Relative to some other "chambre d'hotes" we enjoyed our stay with Josiane. The reason was the warm welcome given by Josiane and her husband Denis. Their house was quite humble and the room and shared bathroom cluttered, but we liked them. That being said, there was also my standard reason for disliking chambres d'hotes, or Warmshowers for that matter, the expectation of talking to people. In this case, Josiane sat down to keep us company at dinner and breakfast. This is hard for me, even in English, but eating and translating is too much. I had to just let Dodie and Josiane chatter on.

We set off from Josiane's place but did not reach the centre of Mayenne, where we did spot what looked like a big cathedral in the distance. Instead we veered off toward our route, and importantly, to a bakery. While I had thought yesterday's chambre d'hote had hit the bottom of the French breakfast barrel, with it's one croissant, 1/4 bagette, yogurt, and coffee, Josiane did them one better (one worse?) by dropping the yogurt and croissant. But this is not really rock bottom, as illustrated by Josiane herself, who took only a bowl of tea. I must say, it was a large bowl, so there is still room to move!

In front of the bakery (which is visible in the background) was a display about the bombing of Mayenne in 1944 - on the ocassion of the 80th anniversary. It happened June 8, 1944. Photos showed a really extreme amount of destruction. It seems strange to me to be bombing civilian infrastructure, but maybe it was necessary. Mayenne was finally liberated on August 5, 1944.

Also while standing by the bakery, I noticed a very efficient operation. It was revealed that the sidewalk side trash bin is actually about eight feet deep. A garbage truck with an arm extracted it from its hole, under control of the single driver, with a joystick. The bottom of the bin was then opened and the bin emptied, soon to be replaced in its hole. Very slick.

Wheras for all of yesterday the Velo Francette ran along the Mayenne river path, it switched now to be entirely along a rail trail, running from Laval (south of Mayenne) to at least Flers.

The rail trail was really good for almost the whole distance, and as we'll see in some photos coming up, it ran through some agricultural scenery that was just great - with crops, scenic farm buildings, and various types of cattle.

I thought this warning about an intersection coming was hilarious, except that the cavalier attitude of the car is uncalled for.

I backtracked a bit to get the photo about the intersection, and because of that spotted this really cute spotted horse!

A local cyclist passed us, and stopped to point out that the route was barrée up ahead. He said that it was possible to get around the problem area, but that it would be tough with the loaded bikes.

Sure enough, we came to the barricade. Just for fun we walked up to read the story about what was the problem. The story was a whole page of legalese, detailing the authority that was being used to block the road, and we generally gathered that they were trying to repair a bridge.

We could see that the detour would take us to St Fraimbault. Since it was early in the day, we were up for an excursion anyway. It turned out to be worth it, since the town was lovely, with many stone houses and a nice church plus a small chapel.

The house included this great stone oven out back.

Back on track, we were entering an area with herds of really good looking and picturesque cows.

We also came to a bit of the rail line where the tracks had been left in, and where it seemed people could travel on the track with some sort of bike adapter. There was also a lot of information about the rail line and about the animals, such as badgers, that could be found along the right of way.

Here is the bike path, and the rails left in place.

At one point along the path we encountered a lady with a nic e Golden Retriever, and two kids who were travelling along in quite a good electric vehicle. As you might see, it is branded Mercedes, and it was in fact quite fast and went quite far down the track, before the lady and kids turned back.

Undoubtedly the most exciting party of the day came when a young farmer brought his cows out of a field and down the road in front of us. The cows knew perfectly well where they were going, and ambled along the road calmly. But then they had to cope with me, a camera wielding cyclist zooming up behind them. The trailing cow turned and gave me the stink eye, which I saw through my camera viewfinder. This destabilised me a bit, and I also backed off, slightly. The cows then proceeded to calmly make their turn toward the barn, and the farmer lifted for us the string he had put to remind them of the turn. He wished us "bonne journée", and our little adventure came to an end!

From this point forward we continued in a green world of crops and cows, the kind of environment we absolutely adore.

Near Ceauce, the Francette gave the option of a direct shot by rail trail to Domfront, vs a meander by St Fraimbault (not the same St Fraimbault we had visited earlier). We chose the rail trail and did not regret it, because the surface was fine and the scenery good too.

We were rewarded with these Normande cows. We would love to have some at home!

We stopped for lunch at a table in a nice intersection, where we also had some blue chicory a bee and some kind of fly.

As you see from the signs, the rail trail saved us 10 km!

And from there, we were back on the trail again!

Near the Varenne river, we passed by an iron producing forge, that we later saw was using ore from a mine further up the rail line. Although the line also carried passengers and freight, no doubt this iron production was part of its reason for being.

We took the slight detour past the old forge, and found a variety of buildings, with a bit of explanation, but not enough for us to figure out how the operation operated.

There was this chateau on the grounds, and it seems sort of in operation, but we could not figure out exactly what was happening there.

We continued to Domfront, which is famous to us for (a) being up a hill - so forget it! and (b) being at the intersection of the Francette and the Veloscenie. The Veloscenie runs from Paris to Mont St Michel.

We just carried on to Fler, where we had a room at the Ibis Styles. (Styles!, wow, fancy!)

Along the way, these multicoloured Hydrangea.

And this Common Buzzard, quite distant on an electric pole. It took the Nikon P950 to pull it in.

Today's ride: 70 km (43 miles)
Total: 652 km (405 miles)

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