May 2 – Manoir du Lys (Bagnoles de l’Orne) – DAY 3

This was the day of our big indugence: a beautiful hotel, the Manoir du Lys, with a Michelin listed restaurant. And boy – was that dinner great!

But before that we had to get there. Hotel buffet breakfasts in Europe can be a depressing, especially at about 18 Euros each for day old croissants and bad coffee. We left Alençon’s Hotel du Duc and instead, found a fine local breakfast joint with orange juice, baguette, jam and coffee for a much more reasonable price.

Before leaving town we visited the Musee des Beaux-Arts (which had been closed on the national holiday on May 1st) to see its famous collection of lace. Alençon is a bit grimy, owing to its heritage as an industrial textile city for hundreds of years. It was the epicentre of French lace-making and the collection at the musee was spectacular.

In 1665 there were 8-10K lacemakers in France of whom 1200 lived in Alençon. By 2020 there remained only 6 lacemakers in the National Conservatory in Alençon.

Have you ever thought about what lace is, or how it’s made? Here’s something to consider: it takes 10-15 HOURS to make 1 square centimetre of lace. It is a true extravagance. There was a veil in the museum’s collection that would have taken between 350K-500K hours to make, i.e. a year of work for 100 lacemakers. The museum provided magnifying glasses for its visitors to take a closer look at its specimens. They were staggeringly intricate and beautiful.

BTW – the normal admission to this museum is 6 Euros each, but because we arrived by bicycle we were discounted to 2 Euros each. There were similar discounts offered for arrivals by bus, train or walking. Anything but a private automobile. Take that, Doug Ford!

After we left the museum, about 10 kms into the ride, the substandard nut on John’s rear wheel axle loosened up, causing erratic gear shift behaviour and lots of noise. A quick search on Google revealed a bike shop in La Ferte-Mace, Tendance-Velo, that was slightly off our planned route. It was open! The kind operator of the shop dug in his ‘boite des treasures’ and after much trial and error, found a high quality nut that fit. Apparently a nut can have 9 threads or 9.5 threads per centimetre. It makes a big difference. The gear changer required a not readily available nut and he had ONE. (Er, Patti here: SIZE MATTERS.)

The shop’s owner absolutely refused to take anything for his efforts. We thanked him profusely, he and John fist-bumped their very grimy, bike-greasy hands, and with the axle finally tightened up we continued on. (And later that day we wrote a glowing review of the bike shop on Google, of course.)

The route from the bike shop to Le Manoir was through the woods beside an abandoned rail line. Families were having fun riding pedal-powered buggies on the old tracks. It looked like great fun!

We arrived at the Manoir du Lys around 4. Luckily the diversion to the bike shop had only added about 5 km to our planned 49 km. and most of those kilometres were downhill. Our very twee ‘cabin’ looked out over a field of wheat, with a perfect breeze blowing through the room. The trikes were parked in a private carport underneath. John made a few adjustments to the trike’s chain path, needed after removing the chain link a couple of days before. A recumbent trike has a very long chain, and it’s important to have the chain travel in as straight a line as possible. We were grimier than the average guest.

After a nap (resistance was futile) we toddled off to dinner in a spectacular dining room. We declined the 7 and 5 course options, settling on 3 courses which would be interspersed with various amuse-bouches, all served on exquisite flatware/crockery. (See the photos.) Everything was perfect, right down to the mushroom-butter patties in the shape of mushrooms to slather on your mushroom bread. (I forgot to mention, Chef loves mushrooms.) It’s lamb season here, so I had lamb. John had squab. (Pigeon.)

Here’s an idea of the attention to detail paid by Chef and his team of sous chefs: above you will see a photo of a 1 cm slice of cooked pearl onion. Floating on it is 1/3 tsp. of green gourmet (mystery) sauce, and on top of that a paperthin 1 cm slice of baby radish. Now picture 8 of those time-consuming labour-intense delicacies floating in the jus of the lamb on your dinner plate.

That was followed by a mile of cheeses served table-side. (We pointed. He explained and then carved.)

And THEN dessert. (Mushroom ice-cream. I’m not kidding.)

The meal at Manoir du Lys is in my top three dining experiences ever. It’s a good thing we had a 78 km. long ride planned for the next day.