Another day, another campsite...

I left off in Dieppe a few days ago now, so here's my next little entry for you all. The day after arriving in Dieppe was a day off in the city for a spot of well deserved (if I say so myself) relaxation. The city is much older than I had thought, and there are obvious parts of the old town still around the place. There's a strange sight in Dieppe - almost every French flag (of which there are plenty) has a Canadian flag next to it to signify the sacrifice which that particular country made during the attempted landing there - after having read up on it a little more, I can fully understand why. Lunch was served at the Cafe de Paris overlooking the marina and consisted of a rather lovely Moules a la Rocquefort and a (maybe in fact several) glass(es) of cider. The evening was spent planning out the next day's route, and enjoying a sandwich made with the nicest bread that I've had yet in France, which is saying something in itself. I had planned a route of about 60k the next day, having pinpointed a target on the GPS (a small town near Saint Quentin en Tourmont) of about 50k away. Unfortunately the route that it took was even longer than it has been recently, and what should have been a nice relaxing ride turned out to be 90k. Ouch. My mood was not improved much with the discovery that the campsite that I was intending to stay at was "all-singing-all-dancing" and included a heated swimming-pool with flumes, bar, restaurant etc. etc. etc. This may sound good, unfortunately (a) the time I arrived meant that I wouldn't be using any of it; and (b) all of the extras meant that the bill came to a lovely €20 per night. Although this doesn't seem a huge amount, when travelling on a budget it really makes a mark on the wallet, especially when paying for so many facilities that you simply aren't using. The day's riding itself was also a little disheartening - long uphills combined with short downhills for most of the ride, and the last 10k, although pretty flat was also straight into a pretty hefty headwind, meaning that my progress was still pretty slow. The one plus-side to the day was finding a large Carrefour slap-bang in the middle of my route, meaning that I could stock up on my supplies without breaking the bank too badly! After a rainy night I packed up my still-wet tent and headed out on the road in a fairly bleak mood, which was swiftly lifted with a fantastic ride today. Still feeling a little tired from the 135k, and having done much more than I had envisaged yesterday I planned a 40k route (and double checked it to make sure that it wasn't too much more than that - something I'll be doing before every ride now!!) towards a town called Neuf-Chatel Harbelot (or Harbelot Neuf-Chatel, I can't quite remember which). The day's travel was just great - clear roads with good tarmac (good tarmac makes ALL the difference), beautiful scenery, nice long bike paths and a glorious tailwind for long tracts. The area that I'm in at the moment is real First World War territory (I passed through St. Valery sur Somme yesterday) and on a whim I decided to stop off at a War Cemetery near Etaples. I really don't have the words to describe any part of it, and the photographs will have to wait for a while, but it was stunning, breathtaking, serene, terrible, awe-inspiring, full of sorrow and full of peace all at once. I hadn't realised it until I was there, but I'd stumbled upon the largest war cemetery in France, with more than 12,000 graves neatly laid out and beautifully kept by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. I had planned to stop and have a quick look, but I ended up spending well over an hour walking up and down the rows of perfectly tended gravestones reading the names and inscriptions thereon. It was truly humbling, and very emotional. So where can I go after that? Back to life I suppose. The campsite that I'm in this evening is lovely - there are families all around me, with small children running riot (even at quarter past ten in the evening) - in fact one of them's just ridden a unicycle past me which was a bit bizarre and the family in the mobile-home in front of me have just broken into song! I'm well and truly fed after a huge amount of pate, cheese and fruit, with the obligatory few Kronenbourg's thrown into the equation, and am just about to settle down for the night. In contrast to last night's campsite, this one is just my cup of tea - down to earth and more than reasonable at €7.50 a night. So I think I'll sign off now - I'm not sure yet if I'm going to head off tomorrow or spend another night here - I have a feeling that the campsites around here are going to be filling up with English tourists celebrating the Queen's jubilee by getting out of the country, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. So that's all for now - if you've got any questions, let me know as it's always great to hear from you guys. Ciao for now.