Day 24: Lisieux to Bourg-Achard

September 2, 2024

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Today starts with a bit of breakfast discussion. So many days in over a dozen years of touring have started that way. It makes sense, because each day of course starts with breakfast. Today I was thinking that on the low end of breakfast quality in France you can see it clearly, as a piece of bread and jam, and a coffee. But on the higher end, it's tricky. The other day, we thought Ibis Styles was awfully good, but today at Grand Hotel de l'Esperance we could see that a place may have cheese - but how many types and what quality; meat? how many types? , bread, fruit, pastry - there is no end to the variations. So here we are saying that this hotel was awfully good, and it was, but the field is open for even better to come?

We set off and quickly found ourselves back at the St Pierre church. Our track said we could sneak around behind it to get out of town, but there was no way, so we reverted to the street.

Lisieux is quite a charming town, or at least we could spot handsome half timber houses, like in the photo.

You can also see here a Renault "Ami" electric car. They are super cute, but may not have taken off in popularity, since we have not seen many.

We won't be able to show too many stunning landscapes or other interesting stuff for today's ride, since it was mainly a cruise through field and forest on small roads. Towns were quite few, and those that had shops or bakeries all had them closed today. I usually explain this as the people got so tired resting up on Sunday that they had to close Monday.

One quite attractive town was Moyaux. It's the half timbered houses that contribute to the interest in this region, and maybe these are what are considered the typical historic buildings of Normandy. Houses of purely stone construction, that we were seeing everywhere a couple of days ago, are now rarer.

In addition to the timber framing, the churches, and such, there are other touches of construction that are worth noting. For example, look at how this gate house was roofed. It is not such a big deal, but think about the care that was involved from whoever built this.

We also love the Normande cattle, which are spotted, and always with dark eye patches. The French say they are wearing sunglasses. They are so cute, we would love to have one at home. But what would we do with it? Well take it for walks of course. That why we would need one of these babies, to train it on going for walks. These kinds of silly thoughts, of course, can only happen while on tour. The truth is, there is almost no way to get a cow like this in or into North America.

We also put the same question to some Charollais. As you can see in the photo, these adults know we are nuts.

We tried it out on a baby, and got a better reception.

One local specialty that translates to home is apple cider. The Calvados department is famous for it, but so is our own island.

We, and Scott as well, rather think that this crop neatly laid out in the field is flax. I picked some up, and maybe found one seed, that could have been flax. So if it is, it has already been threshed. Next it is baled, and by some mystery method converted to linen.

Our roads today often looked like this. They are swell, until of course you encounter a swiftly approaching car.

The shortage of towns and bakeries also translated to a lack of benches or tables for lunch. The last days we have been using church graveyards. It's only a partial benefit, since I will not actually sit on a grave. But there is always shade somewhere in the lee of the church.

Today we were at St Pierre des Ifs. As at many other places there was a memorial to Resistance members killed in 1944. We feel honoured to be reproducing it here online:

Something of interest in the graveyard was many graves with notices on them indicating that the residents had lost their claim on the space, and they better rise up and straighten matters out with city hall. Failing that, I guess, they risk getting dug up and replaced by someone with more cash.

Here is an example, not necessarily of that someone with more cash, but they sure have family with lots of flowers.

This yew tree in the graveyard also offered a nice niche for whatever it is we are seeing in there.

With lunch over, we shot off again on the narrow roads, ending at Bourg-Achard, a place we chose that is in easy shooting distance of Rouen, for tomorrow!

Green and pleasant riding, until a car comes!

Dodie has just come off of three entertaining hours on the phone. It's all about three refunds sent by Booking.com, that never arrived. The first half of this was used trying to communicate with staff at CCF bank, who finally positively asserted that they have never seen the funds. The second half was with Booking, who assert that they did send them. I have been calling both parties for the past weeks, but finally got fed up and dropped the "nuclear" option - which is putting Dodie on their case. She still does not have the euros in hand, but did make a lot of progress! I expect that managers at both institutions are finding their ears ringing tonight!

Today's ride: 62 km (39 miles)
Total: 858 km (533 miles)

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