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I make coffee in the almost-light that waits for sunrise. Shouldering the bike down the front steps into a silent city, the main road empty other than a gang of gulls ransacking the bins outside the local chippy. Urban foxes, an air of insolence and disobedience skulk suburban streets. Without the white noise drizzle of traffic my ears fill with birdsong, the dawn chorus of blackbirds and sparrows and other garden birds. As I edge through a hinterland of underpasses and bridges, escape routes to the Downs, light laps against the day, latent images of the land slowly exposed. My shadow creeps up on me as I climb but it’s OK he lives in my household so no rules broken.
The wind is coming from the wrong direction, in the lee of hedges the wind and sunlight both drop and I feel a chill I wasn’t expecting. The sun drags shadows across fields, flickers between trees. Reaching the exposed ridgeline in full view of the sun warmth becomes constant. Unzip my gilet, roll up sleeves. I gaze ahead, follow the lines of the hills from the left, skipping north-south to west-east, my mind jumping from hilltop to hilltop, trig point to trig point, all the way to the right where the Downs literally fall into the sea. Mist floods the weald to the north, the distinct curves and etched onto my memory shapes of hills the only land that can be seen. Islands in the sky. Just the other day I read that our word isolation derives from the latin for island: insula.
What I can see is the limit of where I can ride for now. Ditchling Beacon, Firle Beacon, Itford and Beddingham hills, Kingston Ridge. I’m riding as I did as a kid, not venturing too far from home but exploring, finding my own places, testing the limits of my knowledge. No plan, just going out and riding. Routes are dot-to-dot puzzles repeated using the same dots, joined differently each and every time. Variations on a theme, regular ways mixed with the unfamiliar. I take turns I usually pass or don’t notice, getting lost without actually being lost, mislaid if you like.
Unlatching a gate with my elbow only to notice the fence to the side has been peeled back. Later I will skid sideways to a halt where yesterday the trail ran uninterrupted but today a gate. Livestock and boundaries are moving. Tangled bundles of wire sit on trailers, silhouettes scribbled against the sky. Cattle and flocks of sheep move from pasture to pasture. New born lambs bundle along fencelines, race me up hills and invariably win. Graffiti spray painted numbers match kids to mums, each farmer his own tag. Field patterns obvious again after the fallow of winter. A track disappeared under plough yesterday only to be trodden back into existence by this morning.
The quiet of the hills, the (re)discoveries, the change of pace, the solitude I like but the café stop is missed, the chats about which way to ride back, the “Have you been down there?” whilst taking a swig of water where paths cross. Stories passed on and favourite places shared. Memories and landscape interwoven, layers compressed. During this period of physical isolation online means take on a different significance, social media creating digital songlines, archived folk memory. Trying to place photographs, pinged “Where’s that?” messages leading to guessing games. I’ve only just noticed the track introduced to me as Never Mind The Heffalumps has two labels on gps recordings, Deeply Dippy or Steeply Dippy depending which direction I approach. The vernacular of friends differs dependent on the medium of the telling.
I trace the lines of paths along and up hillsides, white chalk lines scrawled into the landscape, others hinted at by the subtle way the low sun glances differently from flattened grass. Long shadows describe the curves of land showing why a path is where it is, guided by the natural contour, millions of footsteps over thousands of years taking the easier option. Disappear into the long shadow of a coombe, out of sight, a zagging path, partly forgotten, partly obscured by crop, a right of way I feel the farmer would prefer wasn’t here. A tunnel of trees, a collapsing gate bound with blue nylon twine, a steep climb, rasping breath, flint shining silver-black in the chalk.
Futile Turnip Field #1. Striped patterns interlocking and distorting, sweeping curves intersect straight lines, vanishing points everywhere I look. Op art on an agri-industrial scale. I spy the ferry in harbour in the distance, its yellow funnel clear against a background of blue and green. My mind switches from the here and now to the past and future, thinking about rides across the sea in previous years and those existing only in my imagination and on the maps stacked in old shoeboxes on the bookshelf at home. A momentary melancholy but my destination will lie beyond the horizon again, that time will return. A temporary change in scale for a while, close cropped social distancing rather than wide angle.
Futile Turnip Field #2. Head for the aerials. Fields that were not that long ago the dusty tan of dry earth are shimmering green with new growth. Fields changing their attire from brown courduroy to green velvet. Spring is colouring in winter drab. Riding the same places days after day, week after week, repitition makes even the smallest changes noteworthy. The slow motion firework displays of blossom. The path through the woods has the aroma of wild garlic, the other woods nearer home the scent of swathes of bluebells. Dandelions scattered into yellow sunbursts across a meadow, clumps of daisies exploding into bloom. It makes me think of composite images of the universe, my mind jumping from here to there again.
In the warmth of the sun I lean my bike against the trig point and sit on the grass, pull my breakfast and a small bottle of hand gel from my pocket. The air is thick with the sound of larks, coming from everywhere and nowhere. I scan the view ahead, the river flowing towards the town to which I would normally be commuting. Mount Caburn, a true island, a South Downs hill that sits separate. The ridge of the Downs extends away to the west. Hidden from view but in my mind’s eye I can see other regularly visited hilltops; Newtimber, Devil’s Dyke, Truleigh, and further away Chanctonbury Ring but I’ve not ventured beyond the Adur yet. I’m tending to head east, always have done, not sure why, maybe because this way the hills stick closer to the sea. I like the constant of that flat horizon and the contrast of the hills against it, both concentrating the essence of the other.
I start for home. Same fields, different edges. A buzzard glides over the dip between ridges, a shallow valley with no paths or tracks, no one to disturb them, they can hunt in peace. A rabbit scarpers across the field ahead and disappears into the long grass. I remember the squirrel I saw last week bouncing along an empty city centre street before jumping into a shop doorway only to rebound startled from the glass. I couldn’t help but giggle a little, again. Three kites dive and swoop over a field, not far above tree height, playing, fighting? Two more join and all twist in a thermal until high in the sky and splitting off in different directions. Twenty minutes later a kestrel hovers over a field’s edge.
Into the Hidden Valley and climb out on the Italian prisoner of war path (more folk memory or possibly myth). I emerge from the hills into a street of bungalows and follow the white fence of the race course until the city is spread out below. Clicking down a couple of cogs I settle into the drops. Back home flick on kettle and laptop, start to switch brain to work mode. However whilst I wait to connect to the office network I scan the bottom edges of OS Explorer Series maps 122 and 123, looking for bridleways and tracks that I may have missed, expand to the repertoire. Maybe I can discover another new favourite tomorrow.
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No one bats an eyelid, raises an eyebrow, or tuts when a suggestion is made to drop down from the Downs to find coffee and some tarmac, maybe even the coastal suburbs to home. A quiet consensus. The weather hasn’t entirely matched the forecast, overcast has rather been cold driving drizzle. We’ve slipped and sludged through thick sucking mud and inches deep puddles. Everything but the topography has been flattened by grey. Twenty five miles has taken more time and energy than anticipated. Water and grit has worked it’s way through clothes and into shoes. As we summit Bignor Hill the Arun flood meadows are a series of interlocking lakes. At least we can see that far from here, at Harting Down low cloud obscured and muted the views. We reach the A29 crossing and turn onto the road towards Arundel.
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As the day tilts into action a thin gauze of cloud stretches across the sky. A meek light casts weak ghost shadows, there out of the edge of vision but disappear when I turn to look. An upside down world existing in a flooded farm track.
The sun rises through a bitterly eye-wateringly sharp wind. I sink into saturated earth, slip and slide left and right grasping for traction. My front wheel disappears into a puddle followed by my right foot. Away from the wind I bask in the apricity of the climbing sun, but as I turn towards the sea I feel the frigidity of the stiff breeze again. Stopping to close a gate I catch movement in the corner of my vision, turning I see two hares running across the bottom of a coombe towards woodland. I watch them until they disappear from sight and then head for the same woods. Drop to the main road and follow the cyclepaths towards Hidden Valley. Just got enough time to follow a path into the valley and back out past the farm. Crank the pedals to the seafront and back into the full force of the wind home along the coast.
Up and out with sun rise to play in the quiet cold and shadows. Sun reflects from the windows of the new house on the Tye. Pockets of frost and frozen puddles.
To as the radio masts and back, in and out of the low shadows and only the wind for company. The fizzle-hum under a pylon and the bright sparks of skylark song. A swirl of starlings and an ankle deep puddle.
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Jump on a train west to Chichester to make the most of the forecast weather. Head for home with the wind on my back and scudding clouds and an intermittent shadow for company, looking for a route with as little tarmac as possible rather than the shortest way. Out of the city on back streets and alleyways, a muddy desire path not on any official maps through woodland to a superstore carpark, tunnel under a roundabout. Head north to the hills, past the motor racing circuit and up towards the sculpture park where we once accidentally trespassed and had to slide our bikes under the fancy steel gates. A low barn on one side, a high wall on the other, both flint, containers made from the earth they sit upon.
From the ridge the sea sparkles the silver-grey of enamel paint far to the south. Ducking into the woods instantly lose all tractions, slide sideways along forestry lanes in the tracks of machines no longer present except for the stacks of logs at each junction. Beech and bracken glinting golden in the slanting winter sunlight. A Roman road intersects with a King’s escape route. Damp roots and bright chalk exposed in the grass. A long straight line to the many crossroads at the top of Bignor Hill. Stane Street and the South Downs Way the most ancient but I continue along the Monarch’s Way. A field’s boundary in the shadow of the trees and into the forest. A shotgun blast cracks open the sky, shards of sunlight cross the path as well as bolting deer. Another shot, more deer. Hooves tapping on the deep dark flint that shines through the rotting leaves underfoot.
Across a main road and a ploughed field and drop into a holloway almost to the River Arun. Join the South Downs Way for the rest of the way home. Steeply up Amberley Mount, looking down on flood plains reflecting the sky showing features usually only obvious on maps. A freshly eaten pheasant carcass, still brightly feathered, head and tail intact but it’s innards gone apart from bones, looking like a cut-away diagram from a biology text book. Play tag with hill tops; Rackham, Springhead, Kithurst, Chantry, Sullington, Barnsfarm, Highden. Splash in and out of puddles, let the wheels find their own way, last time I tried to steer my way I almost got thrown off, unclip and fling legs out for balance. The clang-clatter of a cattlegrid and slop through slurry, slip-slide up a field. More puddles, submerged feet, wet socks but clean shoes again.
Cross the A24, back within the perimeter, home turf, familiar hills. Heel into the wind past Chanctonbury Ring, surf the edge of Steyning Bowl. The narrow footbridge over the Arun and up to the youth hostel. Can see home from here still six miles away. A smudge of rain ahead and behind, caught between. Dark clouds stalk the hills but sunlight glances off the sea down to my left. The wind gives me a stiffer shove. Swap hilltops for golf courses, one, two, the caged bridge over the noise of traffic. Scruffy city edge woodland and suburbs into the sunshine.
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Crossing the bridge over the river the thick cold mist bites. Back in the village frozen droplets clung to the trees lining the road out. The cemetery across the field dissolving in the low cloud. It’s the kind of cold that freezes your sinuses and makes your eyes water. The grey sky is flat and dense, sitting on the land, sucking the luminosity from the world. I follow the small rivers across the flood plains to the edge of the limestone hills. As I climb the light sharpens into bright sunshine as the cloud settles below me. Luminous moss and lichen clings to ancient stone walls. The sun chases the frost into the shadows. Steam rises from the warmed griddle of a raked field. Keep climbing, past the war memorial at the summit, freewheel onto the undulations of the plateau. Navigate from memory and signposts. Trees cast tiger stripe shadows. Not a breath of wind, golden leaves hang still from branches. A buzzard lazily, unhurriedly, drifts along the road ahead. The landscape eases away in all directions, the vales between the hills turned translucent by indigo shadows. The gorge usually hidden exposed by the mist that spills over the top as if filled with plaster of Paris, tip the world upside down and tap it on the bottom and out falls an inverted model of the valley the river has scored through the Jurassic rock over millennia. Sit and listen to the midday bells that chime from the holy city in the rocks. Slowly pedal towards the edge of the upland and drop back into the mist. Pull the buff up around my ears, zip the jacket up as far as it goes. Follow the big river home.
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Pull my phone from gilet pocket and tap WhatsApp.
Aborted. Legs and head both gone. Heading back to Dieppe, should be there by 1pm. Three course lunch and beers?
Hit send.
Put phone back in pocket.
Turn around and roll back down the hill.
Not even half way up the climb from Grandcourt towards Blangy-sur-Bresle I’m calling it a day half way into the December RRtY ride. I love this climb usually, the way the road softly weaves around the contours of the hillside until abruptly turning into the hilltop forest that spills over the sides. Not today though. The legs are struggling and my head has wavered once too often in the last thirty kilometres. I’ve done the sums, I could still get round but it’s not going to be any fun and it’ll end up being a slow painful sprint for the ferry. I haven’t been riding enough recently for this. I could keep going as far as Blangy and grab a baguette sandwich from the bakery and a coffee from the cafe on the corner by the church and see how I feel after fuel and a short rest. Once I’m in Blangy though I’ve not only further distanced myself from Dieppe but added at least one extra hill if I still don’t fancy continuing. It makes sense to turn around here – drop back into Grandcourt, the easy climb up to Fresnoy-Folny, follow the internal autopilot across the plateau for the flattest thirty kilometres I can find back to the coast. The realisation I’ve ridden here so often the last five years that I know more than one way to Dieppe without referring to a map other than the one in my head.
A couple of friends popped round on Boxing Day and after a game of Scrabble and half a bottle of gin had decided to join the daytrip to France, but not for the full 200. I’d left them after sixty kilometres in Arques-la-Bataille playing cards and ordering a second coffee as I headed off up the hill towards St-Nicholas-d’Aliermont. I’d said if I was going OK I’d meet them back in Dieppe sometime between three and four, or if I didn’t go well I’d see them on the ferry. It’s not gone very well at all so looks like I’ll be spending even more time relaxing in a bar with them before the evening ferry home. As I rode away from Arques through woodland the darkness thinned and diluted to a luminous lilac-grey as I reached the ridge that I would stay on for the next fifteen kilometres. The only way I knew the sun had risen was because the Garmin flicked from night to day display when the satellites informed it local time of sunrise had passed.
Unfortunately those kilometres were all false flat, a slow creeping ascent that sapped my energy and desire to keep riding. Before turning east and sliding off the edge of the ridge I stopped and sat in a bus stop to eat the remainder of the pain aux raisins I’d bought back in the town. I thought maybe I could get a coffee in Londinieres sitting down in the valley but both the bars were shut when I got there, permanently by the looks of it. Damn, that’s a shame, it’s something of a tradition to stop for coffee in Londinieres if a ride passes through. It was the first place I ever had coffee on my first Normandy day trip years ago.
The lilac tint of dawn had faded to a lifeless blank grey, the views around me flattened by the mute light, shapes softened, greens and browns subdued. It’s not inspiring weather but it’s not unfavourable, relatively mild and still. My legs still weren’t working very well as I left the main road for a narrow lane through rolling farmland but I had a handful of optomistic kilometres when the road flattened, spinning along at pace comfortably and speeding down the flowing descent from Fresnoy-Folny. Then I hit the long climb out of Grandcourt.
The first sixty kilometres were great, initially heading west across a few river valleys before turning back towards Dieppe to then venture east. From the port we wiggled through the dark streets, Christmas lights sparkling from shop fronts and lamp posts, and climbed to the outskirts of town. We dropped down to the Scie valley and followed the river south for a handful of kilometres then turned up onto the empty blackness of the plateau between it and the next valley, the Saane. A still and silent dark surrounded us, no difference between land and sky, just the road ahead made visible by our lights. Sweeping down to the river Sâane we turned south again as far as Sâane-Saint-Just before returning towards the Scie north-east back over the hills. Sitting in the warmth of a cash machine lobby in Bacqueville-en-Caux George pulled chorizo and wraps from his bag for breakfast, or at least to keep us going until the patisseries started to open. From there we rode on to Arques-la-Bataille where I knew there should be a couple of bakeries and a couple of bars that should be open by the time we arrived.
“Trois grands cafés, s’il vous plait.”
Back in Dieppe the streets that were empty this morning are now filled to overflowing with shoppers and the Saturday market. The smell of cheese and rotisserie vans. I am craving savoury food! I track down the others and we have lunch on the quayside before retiring to a cosy bar on the road back to the ferry port. Travel Ludo is retrieved from a framebag and we settle in for the rest of the afternoon.
I still plan to do Randonneur Round The Year on French soil, I’ll just need to start over when I’ve regained some fitness. I wonder if DFDS do a loyalty scheme?
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Whilst idly plotting some routes earlier I realised that the last two months I’ve done 200 kilometre rides in France, both of them logged as DIY by GPS audaxes. There’s still one weekend between Christmas and New Year when I can get the ferry to Normandy and do another one which has got me thinking about completing an Audax UK Randonneur Round The Year challenge entirely on French soil. It has ‘randonneur’ in the title after all.
OCTOBER 2019
Some words I digitally scribbled on Instagram at the time
04:17 and the Soulwax remix of Klaxxon’s Gravity’s Rainbow is squelching away in my ears. Not in a club though and the double in front of me is a vending machine espresso rather than vodka. I don’t remember big hills towering over Dieppe? Moonlit clouds play tricks with my tired mind. Autopilot out of town to the silent solitude of the dark. A puddle of light, strobing white lines. Behind me the sodium spill of town smudges orange across silver moon clouds. The comfort of quiet familiarity of the landscape even when I can’t see it. The moon drops behind a cloudbank and Orion hunts above my head.
I sit on a village square and pull half a cheese sarnie from the framebag. Five years ago this Saturday was my first Normandy daytrip, riding the same route, a 200km version of the Dieppe Raid ‘Tour des Trois Vallees’ that we found online. This Saturday last year I sat on this bench eating a first breakfast on my way to Copenhagen. The long way always leads to a longer way. Next week I’ll attempt to ride the length of France in a week. Today is a nudge to remind myself how to ride a long way. The first 200 kilometres in one go since the Transcontinental.
By the time I’ve ridden 75km dawn is breaking. Stop for coffee and a pastry. I’m joined by soft shadows and gentle echoes when I continue. The sun has risen. Patterned fields, abstract sky. Harvest season, the smell of earth, piles of beets, drying corn flexing in the breeze. Following lanes, chasing horizons, dreaming of tailwinds.
135km, aching legs, dehydrated hungry body. Making all the usual mistakes. 160km, in and out of Casino is under two minutes. Might have forgotten how to ride but know how to shop for food quickly. Lunch staring into the distance listening to the sea. A rider strolls up, bikepacking bags, a Normandicat musette. We chat, he’s local, finished ninth in this year’s Transcontinental. We chat some more, his first big ride since the summer too.
The last bit, some roads new to me thrown in. I’ve ridden the coast road too many times. I’ll join it somewhere but not yet. A tailwind! Views of the sea. I can see the ferry approaching. The lonely melancholy of out of season seaside towns. That last hairpin. The first traffic that hasn’t been tractors. A beer on the quayside. Just about remembered how to do this.
NOVEMBER 2019
Dieppe to Dunkirk on the way to the Cyclocross World Cup in Koksijde.
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Having had barely a handful of hours kip on the ferry the night before last plus the four thirty start for the two hundred plus kilometres from Dieppe to Dunkirk I have a lie in before heading for Koksijde, just over the border in Belgium. Despite a decent night’s sleep my head is thumping with tiredness and dehydration, I drank nowhere near enough during the ride yesterday. My legs feel heavy and I ache almost all over. Before yesterday I’d not ridden since I was last in France in October. I didn’t intend to take a break or have a rest, I just haven’t been that fussed about riding. Or rather I’ve not been that bothered by not riding. A little after dawn and seventy five kilometres into the ride I was sat on a bike rack outside a supermarket eating a sandwich considering that I might have to find a train station at some point. The stupid part of my brain (the same dumb part that decided riding a DIY audax after a month off was a good idea) knew full well I would ride the whole distance regardless. It could have gone two ways, either the rest would have done me good or my fitness had dropped off a cliff. I knew precisely which way it was going to go.
A damp grey sky sags over the empty streets of Dunkirk, the tip of a church spire pokes into cloud, the upper floors of a block of flats the same. It’s a slow cold misty ride. In the town before the border I spot the familiar green sign of a PMU bar, pretty much guaranteed to be open on a Sunday morning. Surrounded by old men drinking beers and small glasses of wine whilst watching horse racing on the screen above the bar I order a ‘grand cafe’. A single isn’t going to cut it this morning. The roads around De Panne are familiar having been here a couple of times before, last time when George and I rode from here out to Roubaix and Ypres back in February. Friends Dan and H from Breakaway Digital drove over yesterday so I track them down to leave the bike on their roof rack saving me the hassle of finding a fence to lock it to. So I don’t have to lug them around all day I dump my helmet, Garmin, and lights in the car. I pull my down jacket from my Carradice and roll down my trouser legs.
“Is that all the luggage you’ve got!?”
“Nah, I’ve left the other bags and kit back at the hotel.”
“Ah, I knew Brooks saddles were comfortable but I didn’t think even you’d ride 200km in jeans!”
I can hear the beer tent before I see it. The mist has retreated but the air is now filled with banging Euro techno. We queue up to trade some euros for tokens and head for the bar. It’s not even midday and it’s already party time in here, dancing and singing. First beer of the day. Not sure this is textbook rehydration. Clamber up a dune, the ground shifting beneath my feet, it’s not aiding my aching limbs. Already missed the juniors but catch the final couple of laps of the Under 23s. There’s a long gap between the end of their race and the Elite Women so it’s back to the beer tent and then queue for chips. Everything costs one token it seems; a plastic beaker of Jupiler, one token, cardboard tray of frites, one token, dollop of mayo on top, one token. Beer drunk, chips eaten, another beer. Finding a spot on the barriers on a steep sandy descent we make ourselves at home. It’s quite comfortable sitting in the sand, maybe I’ll stay here all day. From the speakers at the top of the hill we can hear the women racers being introduced. Ten minutes to go…
The announcer calls the start. We look to the sand dune across the way and wait for the lead riders. The crowd’s cheers can be heard above the music that continues to pound from the beer tent between us and them. Riders come into sight, shouldering their bikes as they run through the sand, the camera crane swinging around after them. Down the bank and over the bridge and out of sight again. Turn to look up our dune and wait. The silhouette of a rider carrying a bike rises over the crest of the dune, then another. They jump back on and roll past us. The lead riders clear the sandy descent but further back it’s a bit more tentative, feet are unclipped, lines aren’t quite as straight, wheels dig into the sand, bikes jack knife, riders tumble, those behind unclipping as they try to avoid those that have hit the deck in front of them. We stay here for a couple of laps then head across the course to a ridiculously steep climb and descent. Bikes slung over shoulders, barriers gripped as they climb. As some riders take a line so tight around the bottom corner I hear the clunk of pedals on the barriers. From the tannoy hooked up in the trees I hear it’s the leaders have entered the final lap so stroll back round towards the beer tent…
Deafening music thumps out of the soundsystem set up on the sand dune where the biggest crowds are. From this section you can see a large chunk of the course and the crowd up to 7 or 8 people deep. The atmosphere is fantastic but there’s nowhere really to stand. This lot settled in a while ago, sending mates off to collect trays of Jupiler as required. The mens’ race is due to start any time now. I watch the first lap from here but then find my way through the crowds, grab another beer and wander under the bridge and back up the other side. The great thing about this course is it’s all pretty tight so you can get from one section to another easily, you can often see more than one part of the race at the same time, plus big screens show the television coverage. Stroll past the pits and end up back at the spot where we watched the first laps of the womens’ race. Find some space on the barriers on the far side this time, the racing line inches away. There’s big cheers coming from just over the top of the dune so I go to investigate. Another steep climb and plenty of space on the barriers back over the other side. Down, cross, back up again. Lean on the barrier and wait for the next lap. The Belgian riders get the biggest cheers but despite a partisan crowd all the riders are cheered. The fact a Dutch fella is giving them all a caning doesn’t dampen the Belgian spirits. Mathieu Van Der Poel is a class apart. Every lap he takes another few seconds from the rest of the field. First lap I’m stood here I can see why he is pulling out a bigger and bigger lead. Compared to everyone else he carries so much more speed into the climb and doesn’t hop off until far further up it than everyone else… and it’s obvious he wants to ride it all. People lean over the barriers urging, no… willing him on. Next lap he gets higher, the cheers get louder, then the lap after he clears the climb. A huge cheer goes up. Behind him a clump of Belgians are tripping over each other as they jump off opposite me. A couple of laps left I climb up to the top of the bank to watch the remainder of the race unfold and listen to the crowd on the dunes opposite. Sweet Caroline pumps out of the beer tent.
The racing over another queue forms for tokens, there’s beer to be drunk, Euro pop to dance to. The beer tent resembles something between a rave and a wedding party that is on the verge of getting out of control.
The riff from AC/DC’s Thunderstruck blasts out of the speakers.
The place goes mental.
There are some much better photos on the Instagram accounts of both Ben and Breakaway Digital.
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Wednesday
It’s pitch black when I wake up, I can hear rain outside. This isn’t surprising as it was forecast. I doze off again but my 6am alarm rouses me again. I need to get up and be on the road by seven today. I’ve got a very hilly 200km to ride, a good way beyond Limoges to stay with friends Tim and Jane. I’ve slept like a log but I feel tired and my legs heavy. The rain continues joined by the sound of wind in the trees. Hmm, maybe I’ll wait until 8 and the start of light. I check the forecast. Holy crap, that’s worse than it said yesterday. Storms with hail and gusts up to 70kph this morning. I’m not sure I want to ride in that. This isn’t some daft endurance race, I don’t need to ride in this. I do need to get to the next rendezvous though as I’m expected this evening, plus if I don’t ride today I leave myself three days of over 200km to make it to Saint-Malo and the ferry home on Sunday morning. I wonder if there are trains? Nope, a replacement bus for the only train to Brive this morning. The silhouettes of the trees bend in the gloom outside the window. Dad offers me a lift as far as Brive.
“Yes please. Thanks.”
That knocks 50km off the ride and means I should ride into improving weather, but I need to plot a new route as I was due to ride via Tulle and Uzerche further to the east. Then Dad says it’s not much further to Uzerche so he can drop me there.
“Great, thanks.”
I have a second breakfast and turn on the TV. Awful weather to the south all over the news. Orange warnings and flash floods. The banner along the bottom of the screen shows ‘A month’s worth of rain in a day’ in Aude, where I was two days ago. We load the bike into the car and set off in torrential rain. There’s standing water all over the roads, strong winds. This is vile. We join the motorway at Brive, the rain isn’t easing, if anything it’s getting heavier.
“Want me to drop you in Limoges?”
“If that’s OK, thanks. I’ll shout you lunch.”
After a plat du jour (tartiflette, green salad, bread, wine) near the centre of Limoges I slot the front wheel back in the bike in a car park and say goodbye to Dad. The weather has improved immeasurably in the last hour or so. I boot up the Garmin and ride a couple of streets to find my planned route out through the suburbs and out into the countryside. It’s very different to yesterday. Having had a lift for 140km I’ve jumped to a different landscape rather than felt it slowly change over a few hours of riding. The land is flattening. This is the halfway point, the bit where northern France starts, the less hilly half.
Tim has ridden out to meet me halfway between Limoges and his house. I turn off the Garmin route, I don’t need it anymore as Tim can guide me. The weather has definitely improved, even a hint of sun through the cloud. Seeing as I’ve shortened my day Tim offers a less direct but prettier route to his. We spin along chatting.
Thursday
Early morning clouds scuttle across the sky at speed, I’m going to have one hell of a tailwind today. By the time I’ve kitted up there are unexpected glimpses of blue sky. Tim and I ride into Lussac-les-Eglises to meet his friend Robbie so the locals can escort me off their patch. The first 10km or so are the reverse of the route I rode south a couple of years ago when I attempted Dieppe to Lot in 48 hours. I remember this road and that roundabout and feeling exhausted thirty hours and 480km into that ride. The sky is full of fast moving banks of clouds, smudges of rain visible on the horizon. We deviate from my planned route slightly to get to Saint-Savin as it’s where Tim knows there’s definitely a cafe. It starts to drizzle as we cross the river into town. The TV on the cafe wall shows more news of flooding and landslides in the south. Two metres of rain fell in Beziers yesterday! The train line between Montpelier and Barcelona is under water and out of action for at least two weeks. Coffees drunk Tim and Robbie turn back into the wind and I find a bakery before continuing northwest.
It rains for two hours, all the way to Chatellerault but the sky breaks with bright cracks as I drop into town, pulling into a bakery for lunch. Salad and coffee for now, a sandwich for the musette. A TV shows another weather forecast, black & white clouds cover this part of France, but no rain drops. Hopefully I’ve had all the rain I’m going to have.
An afternoon of long roads, big views, and a lot of sky. This definitely feels different to the last few days, I’m certainly transitioning to the north. I’ll finish today on the banks of the Loire which always feels like a dividing line between landscapes. I have had it in my head all day that it is 160km from Tim’s to Saumur where I’ve booked a room at the Campanile for the night, but I’m starting to have a niggling feeling it might be a little further. Swipe Garmin screen, 150km, next junction with a sign for Saumur, 25km. Ugh. Only 15km more than I thought but my legs and head are getting ready to stop at 160. I join the dead straight road towards the Loire. It goes on for an eternity. I think I hear woodpeckers in the woods but then recognise it as machine gun fire (grew up near army ranges and rode a BMX around neighbouring woods as a teen). Shortcut to Saumur through the forest. Army signs,
UNEXPLODED SHELLS. DO NOT LEAVE THE ROAD.
PROMENADE INTERDIT!
The air freshener smell of damp pine forest. Woodland gives way to vineyards and then a sharp drop to the edge of the Loire. Then I ride back up the hill to the hotel on the outskirts of town. Not even sure it’s the outskirts but another town entirely. That was an extra four kilometres I didn’t need to ride.
Friday
Hammer the breakfast buffet and snaffle a few things for the musette. Dry my tights with a hairdryer. Following the southern edge of the Loire I head west, the banks of the river often right next to the road. There are indications that historically this was an afluent area, lots of big houses pretending to be chateaus as well as actual chateaus. Everything feels a little posher and less rural that the last few days. More roadworks, the detour cut short with some offroading through a vineyard. Crossing to the other side of the river the roads are damp and the air smells of wet grass. I must be following the bad weather today rather than being chased. I transfer from the Loire valley to le Maine at Angers where the roads get busier. The city is a sprawling nondescript mess and it takes what feels an age to pass through and escape it’s orbit. A very near miss with a car driver not paying attention on a roundabout. We both skid to a halt. I give them a look that can very easily be translated into French.
I’m following yet another river now, le Mayenne. Lunch in a church yard in a village next to the river before strolling inside afterwards to discover incredibly ornate decoration for a village church. Beyond this the river splits again and I’m following the Oudon to Segre where I stop for a second lunch. Moving away from the river flood plains the countryside starts to roll through farmland. The daily afternoon coffee and Orangina at 140km with 40 to go. Engage TCR mode for this final part of the day, a long undulating main road into Rennes, head down, bash it out, get it done, find the hotel.
Saturday
The last two big days leave only about 80km to go today so I have a bit of a lie in and head down to breakfast in daylight. Snacks are pilfered for the musette. A pottering zigzag around the cobbled streets on my way out of Rennes. Maintain the daily routine of a coffee in a village PMU bar and a pastry in a bus stop. Things get scruffier as I near the coast, forgotten roads now that everything bombs along the dual carriageway. More roadworks and a dead end ‘deviation’ into an industrial estate. Two hundred metres of Cyclocross through the roadworks instead. More quiet roads watching fast traffic on the horizon. Past the Saint-Malo town sign but the kilometre marker below it has a 4 on it. Industrial estates, shopping centres, and a billion roundabouts. Catch every red light. Eventually I run out of land and am gazing out across the English Channel. From the Mediterranean to the Channel in a week, a thousand kilometres ridden. I press stop on the Garmin, turn around, and freewheel towards the old town to look for Maison Georges Larnicol, and on the recommendation of Bez buy a bag of kouignettes.
Thanks to dhb sport for supplying kit for this trip. As always, thanks to Reilly Cycleworks and Upgrade Bikes for the continued support.
