Our rides to date. 13 trips, 607kms, 5450m of climbing. Halfway through.
The 60km ride from Caen to Honfleur was absolutely beautiful. Patti’s favorite ride so far. We followed the Orne River toward the Channel, crossing the Orne at the famous ‘Pegasus Bridge’. Originally named Pont Bénouville, it was renamed Pegasus in honour of the shoulder emblem of the British 1st Airborne Corps. Just after midnight on D-Day (June 6 1944) 181 men were delivered in silence near the bridge by six gliders. One of the gliders landed within fifty metres of the bridge!!! They completely surprised the defending Germans and secured the bridge in ten minutes. After the war, the original Pegasus bridge was replaced with a slightly larger higher capacity replica, and the original bridge resides behind the adjoining Pegasus Museum.
We spent an hour in the museum looking at the detailed displays, and went outside to walk on the original Pegasus bridge and peer into the sparse interior of a full-size model of a Horsa glider. No creature comforts in these aircraft! It felt like a wooden cigar tube.
Continuing on, we followed the Channel coast through several very picturesque seaside towns packed with weekend beach-goers. Roads were snarly with cars jockeying for the very few parking spaces, but we cyclists snuck through without problems. With the warm day, brilliant sunshine and great beaches one could mistake this area for the Mediterranean. It’s hard to believe we were on the English Channel.
And the houses!!! Three and four storey beauties with ornately carved and painted trim. I’d highly recommend this ride, and this area, to anyone who likes white sand beaches, good restaurants, interesting architecture. It was just so gosh darned pretty.
As we approached Honfleur we could see Le Havre across the bay with its massive seaport, and eventually the Pont du Normandie, a 2 km long suspension bridge spanning the mouth of the Seine River. We climbed a hill, cycling past some huge old manoirs, and then descended into the picturesque harbour area on Honfleur. We had a couple of false starts finding our hotel, but finally settled in with our trikes locked up outside in the hotel parking lot. (Saucy of Mercure Hotels to require us to pay for parking, I think that’s the first hotel that has done that.) We cleaned up, and walked to centre ville to take a few pictures and enjoy a great meal of oysters, moules frites and deep-fried seabass. Falling asleep later, we thought – with a certain element of excitement – about the next morning: crossing the beautiful Pont du Normandie.
UNTIL…
I – Patti – woke up around 3 a.m. concerned about a photo I had seen of a very narrow bicycle lane provision over the 2 km long span, to say nothing of the high winds that we might encounter. (And my crippling vertigo.) A little deep dive on the internet confirmed my worst fears: one YouTube cyclist even went as far as to call the bridge a “deathtrap” (and her video of huge trucks whistling past her on the bridge just a foot away confirmed my worst fears. I mean, even the Normandy tourism site recommends that cyclists don’t use the bridge, despite the existence of a cycling path. And cycling bloggers hate it.)
So… I began to research options. (John slumbered on, in peace. Lucky sod.) The next bridge along the Seine doesn’t allow cyclists at all. There’s a small ferry that runs fairly frequently BUT IT WAS A TWO HOUR CYCLE EVEN FURTHER EAST and then we would have to cycle back, to basically just get to where the bridge would have dumped us in the first place.
Could we brave the Normandy Bridge really early in the morning when there isn’t as much traffic? (And risk killing ourselves or someone else?)
Could we hire a van to carry us and our bikes across?
And John slumbered on.
I was glad when he finally awoke at 7 and I broke the bad news to him: we would have to cancel our visit to Etretat and just arrive in Rouen a day early, thus giving us two nights there.
Not exactly a horrible solution. And that is precisely what we did after confirming with Rouen that we could find accommodations for the early arrival, creating a new GPS route (76 km, a bit of a slog but do-able), and giving up the costs of our night’s accommodations in Etretat. That reservation couldn’t be refunded. Ah well. Better alive…
Luckily we had great weather for the long ride, it only began spitting a very little toward the end of our day. We took a brief holiday from the sun halfway through the day, enjoying a baguette sandwich in the shade of an empty market stand in “Routot”. (God it was good.) There was a very long descent into Rouen which helped with the leg fatigue. It was a treat, actually.
Our day early arrival to the city meant that I could (a) do some laundry, and (b) celebrate Mothers’ Day at “La Couronne”, a restaurant I had read about months ago. (Boeuf avec foie gras pour moi, turbot pour John, followed by a rhubarb tarte.) It’s purported to be the oldest restaurant in France, and it is where Julia Childe discovered her love of French cuisine. The rest is history. We had a gorgeous meal there in a beautiful room. The stairway is lined with photos of French and international celebrities who have eaten there. (See photos.)
Monday morning: the two week anniversary of our arrival in France!!! John visited a hardware store he found online because – shockingly – he was missing a tool in his arsenal. We walked across the river, found the store, and were back in no time. I should mention, our hotel was right on the river, we had a great view of the bridges and of the Viking Riverboat Cruise boats. Viking comes up from Paris (3 days’ cruise), their guests then take buses from Rouen to visit the Normandy Beaches and return in the evening, then 3 days of cruising back to Paris. That would be a nice trip.
To fill the day (because so many things are closed on Mondays) John created a 25 km route for us to explore the northeast end of Rouen. In other words, we had some exercise to wear off the excesses of the previous evening. We saw the viewpoint from which Claude Monet painted the first of his series of 30 very famous paintings of the Rouen cathedral.
When we arrived back into Rouen we bought a new pair of Oakley sunnies for John to replace his 20 year old Adidas frames. He looks tres chic, as you will see in tomorrow’s blog! We ditched the bikes at the hotel, cleaned up and then walked to the cathedral (so TALL) and the site of Joan of Arc’s execution (guilty of heresy in 1431: blasphemies such as wearing men’s clothes, acting upon visions that were demonic, and refusing to submit her words and deeds to the judgment of the church. She was nineteen years old when they burned her at the stake.)
I should mention the timber buildings of Rouen. They are charming. Crooked. Colourful. The streets downtown are very pretty but with grim reminders of the savage street fighting and punishing bombardments that happened in 1944. The walls of the Palais Justice are pockmarked with machine-gun and shrapnel scars and bear a plaque that reminds visitors of what happened during that time.
Which brings us to now: we’ve written this blog sitting at a table in the hotel restaurant, eating octopus and pasta. Tomorrow’s ride is a shorty: 44 km to Forge-les-Eaux. It’s back to the small villages for us!
