Blogoriffic.

So where was I? Ah yes - Tourigny-sur-vire. What a lovely place - I can heartily recommend it to anyone heading around that area. I had a lovely chilled day off, not doing much at all, other than a touch of shopping, reorganising my panniers, heading out to the local(ish) Carrefour to see if they had a particular computer part (they didn't), writing a couple of emails and generally dossing about. Lovely. Unfortunately the weather broke that night - it had been so good that I had decided to leave my bike outside the tent. Big mistake. I woke up in the morning to thunder and lightning with, of course, the associated downpour pounding onto my tent, and bike beside it. Bugger. The ride that day wasn't too strenuous - it warmed up pretty quickly and I was able to stow my waterproofs into the panniers and head off in earnest towards a town called Luc-sur-Mer (that's beside the sea that is). The highlight of the day was lunch - I've learnt to stop trusting my GPS for large tracts of the time now, as it has the habit of sending me on pretty convoluted routes - I had decided to ignore it until about 12.30 when it suggested a more sensible route to my destination, and so slipped off the D road I was following, and straight through a stunning little village surrounding a small lake, replete with swans, ducks and carp (that obviously all needed feeding), so I settled down for my piedmontaise salad and smoked ham sandwich - bliss. Passing a field a couple of hours later, a pannier decided to unloose itself, so I stopped to fiddle with it for a bit only to look up a couple of minutes later at an entire herd of cows who had wandered over to the part of the fence nearest me to stare enquisitively at what I was doing. The destination itself wasn't up to much, the campsite was clean and quiet(ish) but few Brits, and no people of my own age. I headed down to the beach for a spot of reading, but called it a night shortly thereafter and prepared for a big ride the next day - and what a ride it was. I shipped out at quarter past nine in the morning (I'm getting quicker at striking the tent now!) and headed out onto the open road - field after field in the morning, progressing to more towns and small villages as I approached the Seine. I stopped for lunch at a picnic area (the French have plenty of these where I am) and joined a thoroughly miserable looking French couple in silence for a bit. Finally the smell of me after 70km on the road drove them away. Crossing the Seine was fun - a tiny RoRo ferry provided the simplest solution, and was deposited into a thoroughly disgusting industrial area sponsored, it seemed, by ExxonMobil Petrochemicals. Cycling for several kilometres without breathing is, it turns out, remarkably difficult. I won't go into the details of the ride, other than the fact that if I'm honest with myself, it was too long. Ten and half hours on the road covering over 135km really took it out of me, and towards the end seeing the next hill rear up in front of me at the bottom of a nice downhill patch was a touch depressing, and getting into a campsite at half past seven in the evening doesn't leave a lot of time for relaxing. We live and learn - I'll stick to more sensible routes in future. I was planning on staying there another night, but the campsite turned out to be a bit dismal - it's still in the processed of being remodelled after being transferred from being a municipal campsite into a private one, so the next day I headed off to Dieppe. After a relatively late start (10.20) I hit the road and headed uphill for what seemed like an eternity. Being on a campsite next to the beach has some serious drawbacks when heading back inland!! Lessons learnt on today's ride - never pass up an opportunity, especially for the loo. Thankfully I managed to find a garage before I was forced to adopt yet another French tradition...! The ride brought a lot of hills today, some of them seriously steep, as well as one interesting route through an off-road mountain bike track - methinks I'll send the photo's to Garmin when they're uploaded to ask what they were thinking off, bearing in mind that I wouldn't have attempted that one going downhill (I was going UP by the way) on a mountain bike in full body armour, let alone a touring bike replete with panniers... I was pretty drained, mainly to do with yesterday's ride, but also because of a lack of a decent breakfast - most campsites offer a service whereby you can order bread & croissant for the next morning - this one didn't, so I left on an empty stomach and didn't pass an open shop for a fair few hours. Not great. This, added to the length of the ride yesterday led me to make quite a few stops to try and recover some energy. After ignoring my GPS for quite a while I ended up in today's campsite (CAmping Le Marqueval) just outside of Dieppe at around half past four this afternoon and am now sitting outside their bar listening to horrendously bad French pop music with a fresh pression sitting on the table. Tomorrow's a break day (I'm experimenting with a three-on one-off policy at the moment) so I'm going to try to grab some of the historic sites in the city, notably the landing beaches for the high-priced Canadian raid in '42. So that's me up to date again - I'm still enjoying myself thoroughly, and even if I am dog-tired I'm still looking forward to tomorrow.

On the road again (pt. 2)

This is the second entry of my main trip, part one is below (apologies for any confusion, and the lack of line breaks - that's my iPad's fault not mine!). If you want to read part one first, scroll down accordinglly!! When I left off I was sitting at a campsite just outside Bague-Picon after my first day back in the saddle. I packed up early(ish) the next morning, oh alright - I left at half-ten - not quite early, but better than eleven. I had half an idea of where I wanted to get to, and so duly punched the route into my GPS and headed towards St. Martin de Brehal, just north of Granville. To my amazement, I actually managed the whole thing and as such completed my longest ride to date - 77km all in! The weather was great, not quite as hot as Wednesday, but just about right. En route I overtook and was subsequently overtaken (and repeat ad infinitum - almost) a couple of French chaps on racing bikes. A few miles outside Avranches they had stopped by the side of the road and flagged me down to share a drink with me. Despite them not speaking a word of English and my French still being limited at best, I still managed to convey the scope of my journey to them, and also to learn that they (in their late sixties or early seventies at my best guess) were embarked on their own Tour de France, all the way around the edge, in 30 days. They were in a team of three, two riders and one chase car, changing the driver every day. For those of you that say that you're too old or out of shape, there's hope for you yet!! The campsite itself was nothing special, but a cycle along the front showed the place off very well. Unfortunately their bar and pizza restaurant were only open for July and August, so amenities were a little hard to come by. I settled for a half bottle of Chote du Rhone and a steak at a nearby restaurant! Today's ride was markedly shorter - only 62km, but the weather has taken a turn for the worse. Hang on, I think I might be lying there. Yep - turns out the weather's fantastic. According to my cycling computer it hit 34 degrees this afternoon whilst I was stopped for lunch, and has only dropped a few degrees since then and now (ten past five). As it is, I'm sitting inside typing this as I think that my face might not quite appreciate it tomorrow if I don't... I popped in to a little charcuterie earlier today and picked up a chicken leg (lunch) and some ham and pate (dinner) for today's nourishment, accompanied by a couple of Mars bars (French Mars bars are FAR better than English ones) and a chocolate eclair whilst overlooking a beautiful parish church. Today's ride was great, though very hard work due to the heat. I'm definitely rethinking when I'm going to be cycling in future, and will make sure that in the heat of the day I'm sitting in the share for some lunch and a nap. As it was today I was stopping every thirty minutes and have gone through more than four litres of water. Arriving a little later will not be a problem to avoid the heat of the day, especially as sunset yesterday was around ten o'clock!! The campsite here, Les Chapellos (I think - I'll confirm that later) in Tourigny-sur-vie, is absolutely stunning. There's a couple of English campers around and I was treated to my first cuppa of the trip - a welcome sight I can tell you! There's a swimming pool, so I'm now clean, and a bar, so I'm shortly to be signing off! As it's so hot and this site is so beautiful (next to a huge couple of lakes) I'm going to stay here to recharge for another day and head off up towards Bayeaux on Sunday. Just as an aside, I've got a mobile for whilst I'm away - if anyone wants to get hold of me, message me on Facebook and I'll drop you the number. That's me for now...

On the road again (pt. 1)

A few days blogs are coming close together I'm afraid - this is part one, part two is above!! Methinks I should've started this a little earlier! Quite a bit has happened since my last update, including heading back to Jersey, setting off to Vegas, surviving Vegas (somehow) and arriving back in Jersey, before once again leaving for the continent. Not all of this was done by bicycle. I left off last time in La Tarbadiere, as previously mentioned somewhere towards the arse-end of nowhere. I set out on a dreary morning and aimed towards St. Nazaire (for any of you interested, the location (unsurprisingly) of the St. Nazaire raids during the Second World War to destroy the submarine pens. My GPS had decided that it was a cool 70km, which I thought was achievable for a good day's riding, unfortunately once I'd travelled 60 of the 70 it mentioned that I had another 80 to go. Once again my adventure was foiled by my GPS calculating distance as the crow flies - I hadn't realised that (a) I couldn't cross a convenient bridge as it is only open to cars &c. and that it thus necessitated a monumental diversion inland. As such I ended up in a campsite called (insert name of campsite here, because I'll be buggered if I can remember it's name) which was an interesting experience. The weather turned pretty dreary as soon as I had erected my tent which put a dampener on things in more ways that one, as did the fact that as soon as I went off bar-hunting I managed to turn my ankle pretty badly. Thankfully the bar, when I found it, had a plentiful supply of ice. I had decided to stay two nights at this campsite so I could have a rest day, and this decision was reinforced by the pain in my ankle. The campsite itself wasn't much to talk about, though I did learn a couple of lessons - mainly, if a campsite's description maintains that it is "family orientated", there will be a lot of kids (i.e. for any other Adam's out there, avoid like the plague). Kids Karaoke does NOT liven up a good bar, especially when they don't seem to have moved away from 70's/80's pop. My time in France pretty much being up I headed inland to Nantes and caught the train back to St. Malo where I was, as ever, enthusiastically greeted by the Hery family before heading back to Jersey at stupid o'clock the next morning. What happens next will stay between the few survivors of my brother's stag party. All I will say is that Vegas is (a) fun; and (b) not very cheap. So where am I now? Well, I arrived in France this morning (23rd) and set off North. I'm currently sitting outside of a (closed, though for the life of me I can't begin to comprehend why) bar at a campsite called La Vieux Chain (sp?). My day was spent cycling in the absolutely beautiful sunshine through a procession of ever prettier little towns and villages. The campsite itself is gorgeous - my view as I'm typing this is of their lake and masses of very well kept green pitches. It's quarter to eight and the sun is still high in the sky. If I had a beer in my hand, life would be nigh on perfect... All journey's begin with one tentative step. Mine has been a pretty long one, including a week of practice, but I'm finally off, doing what I want to do, and am loving it. I could not be happier that I finally took that step.