Greetings from Saumur

We had a leisurely breakfast and left the Hotel Relais Du Gue de Selle at about 08:30 and headed South. For the first few miles we experienced a symphony of magnificent V12 engines as a procession of Ferraris, Aston’s and Jaguars headed off to catch the final morning of the iconic Le Mans race.

 Hotel Relais Du Gue de Selle

As the silence of the French countryside returned, we found ourselves peddling along tree lined, straight roads through sleepy French villages. There’s something about these sleepy French villages on a Sunday, they are seriously, I mean seriously, sleepy. You really don’t see a soul. Shuttered shops, deserted streets, tumbleweed and the occasional barking dog. Because this was planned to be our shortest day at 82 miles and only day 2 of the trip, we were in high spirits and therefore couldn’t even keep ourselves amused with my constant moaning about age, my various ailments, BREXIT, and the fact that the see-through nature of Graham’s shorts were bordering on the obscene.

Pretty Quiet

Harley settled on the idea of calculating how many times the grand father clock that graces his hall at home, had ticked since it came into the family in 1840 (the year the postage stamp was invented). An hour’s quite contemplation produced a number of 560,000,000. Chris on the other hand, not to be out done, thought he might calculate the number of times he had turned his pedals since he’d taken up cycling seriously, 12 year’s ago. By calculating the average number of miles he cycles in a year, his average cadence of about 90 and some complicated algorithms involving the size of his wheels and the position of the moon came up with a number of about 15 and a half million.

You can take the man out of the finance dept...

Things were getting desperate but a wonderful lunch on the Loire at St.Remy-La-Varenne brought a sense of sanity and balance back to proceedings.

Lunch and a little sanity

After lunch only about 15 miles to the hotel and for the first time in the history of these rides, we managed to get there in time for tea. A charming old hotel in the centre of Saumur, the Hotel Saint-Pierre. 122 miles planned for tomorrow. Better get some sleep.

Greetings from Le Mans

So here we are in France after an excellent day in the saddle. It all started well enough, the ferry docked at 06:46 and we set off down the canal path from Ouistreham to Caen via Pegasus bridge, famously captured by British paratroopers the night before the D-Day landings in 1944.

Pegasus Bridge Cafe

We got to the bike shop about 45 minutes before it opened and thankfully there was a cafe next door so we settled in with cafe-au-lait and enormous croissants. Soon enough the bike shop was open for business and a small, rather earnest French mechanic examined my banana shaped rear wheel and with an enigmatic smile muttered something about 20 minutes and took my bike off to the back of the shop. One more coffee and the wheel had been rebuilt – beautiful and only 16 Euros; rather less expensive than having to buy a new wheel which is what I’d been expecting.

Now having made a detour to the bike shop, we were of course off our planned route, a route meticulously negotiated and planned by Chris and subsequently loaded into the Garmin ‘sat-nav’ to avoid any confusion. Graham, being a man of a certain age, has an inherent distrust of technology and has a tendency to take any and every opportunity to prove the superiority of his God given homing pigeon instincts. “We are in the wrong place, that bloody computer thing will be confused and will have mislaid it’s satellites” he declared, “I’d better take over” and set off at a breath-taking pace in almost exactly the wrong direction. Chris, Harley and I gave each other a knowing, rather resigned sort of look and mostly out of a sense of idle curiosity, decided to see where the homing pigeon would take us. “you just have to follow the sun” Graham declared, “make a U-turn when possible” replied the sat-nav. An hour and a half, 3 dead-ends, a cabbage field, a derelict cement works and a gaggle of irritated French motorists later, we found ourselves back on the planned route with only a modest 12 miles added to our journey. Better than that “pick your bikes up, I think we should hack our way through that forest” moment that had traumatized us in Italy last year and for which Harley is still receiving therapy, I understand.

Just waiting for the sun...

We headed south along pencil straight, tree-lined roads through sleepy French villages until we arrived at Argentan for lunch. Rather excellent cheese and ham baguettes and tarte-du-fraise to die for set us up for the final 50 miles to the Hotel Au Relais Du Gue De Selle, just outside Le Mans.

Lunch...

It’s the Le Mans 24 hour race this weekend and the hotel carpark was full of exotic motors; Lamborghinis, a selection of Aston Martins and a particularly fine E-Type Jaguar. Whilst the cars were pretty to look at their petrol-head owners were somewhat less so and meant we had to fight through the bar for our well-deserved, ritual gin and tonic.

Supper of excellent steaks and a very pleasant bottle of Croze Hermitage.  

  

     

Greetings from the English Channel

We are currently somewhere in the English Channel on board the Brittany Ferry bound for France. A wonderful gentle pedal through the rolling hills and fields of the British summer countryside. As a man who has spent the last six months in North Africa, everything is wonderfully green.

Ready for off...

We set off at about 13:00 from Chris' house and had only managed about five miles before Chris realised he'd left his phone at home. Off he went back home while the rest of us went to sample the hospitality afforded by the Boot Inn at Stanford Dingley. A couple of beers later and still no sign of Chris and by the time he did turn up we were all feeling distinctly mellow.

Man with phone

We set off south towards Basingstoke, picking our way through small country lanes. The miles flew by, lots of chatting as we caught up with all the news from the past few months. Big hills near Winchester and long green valleys as we headed for the coast. Just after a tea and pork pie stop at West Meon and everything seemed to be going to plan when there was a loud crack from my back wheel - a snapped spoke and a wheel that almost instantly changed shape into something resembling a banana. After some emergency surgery, we got the wheel to go round but riding the bike felt like being on a slightly disappointing fair ground ride.

A cautious 15 miles to Portsmouth hoping the wheel would hold together. We got to the Old Customs House in Gunwharf Quays in time for the second half of the Spain Portugal match and some frantic replanning for tomorrow which would involve visits to bike shpos in Caen to find new wheels.

We made it to the ferry for nine, and met up with lots of other bikers in the queue for boading. booze and bed. will the wheel get us to the bike shop tomorrow?

Waiting to board