April 30 & May 1 – Bellême and Alençon

We are making our way west from Chartres towards Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy. It takes four rides to make the journey: 75 km to Bellême, 43 km to Alençon, 53 km to Bagnoles de l’Orne, and 78 km to Pontaubault. We’ll be in Pontaubault for two nights; from there it’s a short 15 km ride to Mont Saint-Michel for a full day which we will, of course, time to coincide with the tides.

Wednesday April 30th, a.k.a. DAY ONE, we skipped the 18 Euro p.p. breakfast at the hotel (seriously) and opted, instead, for a cappuccino and espresso, croissant and pain au chocolat standing on the sidewalk beside our bikes outside a boulangerie 10 km down the road from the hotel.

Bellême is a lovely town within the Parc Perche Ornais. The ride began with flat farm lands: bright yellow fields of canola. Gradually, gentle rolling hills and ascents gave way to a beautiful forested ride under clear blue skies. We were thankful for some shade from the trees; the sun really was blazing and our pale winter skin didn’t a chance! Of course, just getting going, we’d forgotten to slather on the sunscreen. The ride was long enough to de-cobweb the legs and get reaquainted with the trikes.

Our hosts at the Bellême Blue hotel were great, and gracious about our having arrived three hours early for check-in. (We walked around town, and had a beer and a Coke at a cafe.) She’s a local and her husband a US ex-pat, twenty years in France, from Texas and Chicago.

Before leaving Chartres we had pumped up all of the tires to the recommended 5 bars of pressure. The reduced rolling resistance is a joy. Luckily John’s tire lasted the 75 kms, but blew out shortly after arriving in Bellême. (!!!) First stroke of luck: the tire didn’t blow in the middle of the forest. The bead of the tire that’s supposed to lock into the rim was damaged enough that the tire was unusable. BEYOND REPAIR. Second stroke of luck: there was a good bike shop only two blocks away. Unbelievable. AND – they had the perfect 26″ puncture-resistant mountainbike tire hanging on their wall.

Without those two gigantic lucky breaks we would have been shut down. John replaced the tire and had the bike shop pump it up. In the meantime, hedecided to fix a couple of other nagging issues: the chain was loose, requiring a link removal, and the automatic changer was rattling, requiring a reinstall with a lock washer. The bike shop had a washer. The job was done, but the axle nut that we had found by sheer luck in Portugal was of poor quality and its threads were finally stripped. It was gently tightened, but for sure wasn’t going to make it past a day or two. It was a very dirty, long job in a hot sunny parking lot at the end of a very hot day of riding but it’s all part of the journey. Sadly, the beautiful powerwash we had given John’s bike on Tuesday was completely undone by Wednesday’s greasy repairs. Needless to say, we slept well.

Thursday morning we enjoyed a typical French breakfast: croissants and baguettes. Seriously, this carb loading has to stop. Or does it?

Our ride started with a few chats about the trikes with some passersby, and we headed west out of town past some fantastic panoramic views over the valley. Thursday’s route was to be an easy 43 ride through some forest, uphill to about the quarter-way mark, then steadily down. We were surprised and delighted to notice a heritage site in the woods on the side of the road, “Le chene des Canadiens”, honouring the 30,000 lumberjacks who came from Canada at the request of the French government to fell timber during WWI (to build the trenches) in aid of the French war effort (“bois de tranchee, de construction, de piquets, de poteaux et de bois de feu.”)

We checked into Hotel Le Duc in Alencon, and headed off to visit the famous Alencon lace collection in the Musee de Beaux Arts. Outside the musee there was a large town festival happening – the Rotary Club sponsored a local jazz band, there were lots of flea market vendors, families roaming around… and when we went to the door of the musee a kind British expat pointed out that it was May 1st. Blank stares from us. MAY 1 IS A MAJOR FRENCH HOLIDAY. Then, it dawned on us: exactly the same thing had happened to us in Bordeaux, last May 1st. The town was shut down. Almost everything was closed, except… thanks to our savvv hotel owner, Sebastien, an excellent restaurant – La Reserve by Fano – where we enjoyed an absolutely incredible meal. Photos, below, naturally….

The Brit said he’d come to Normandy to live many years ago because Normandy reminded him of England years ago. You can appreciate what he feels. Normandy is quiet, peaceful, with very few cars and no sign of opulent upgrading. One person we talked to lamented the Parisiennes who are moving up here. Sort of how the rural English feel about Londoners.

N.B. Normandy: these people are very proud of their history of resistance. See the photo of the female resistance fighter in front of the train station.

N.B. This is a fantastic time of year for colour. The bright yellow of the fields of canola against the blue sky. The huge yellow laburnum hedges. Irises. Wisteria.