It’s morning, we’re packing up to get back on the bikes and I say to Rich, well that wasn’t really a rest day, was it? Rolling rest day, he says. Hmmm… I don’t think riding 50k, even without our panniers, counts as a rest day.
So here we are. The mouth of the Seine. Ride the river to Paris. That sounds easy. River, flat, pretty. Where’s the challenge there?
A few years ago in Caen we visited the memorial museum which has a fantastic display on D-Day. Timing, tide considerations, logistics, artifacts, and all really well done. But to see the actual sites where the Allies landed was something we knew we had to do.
From the info sign: Isolated in the countryside, it is one of the smallest cemeteries in Normandy; the Cross of Sacrifice emerges from wheat fields in summer. 117 soldiers are buried there, 98 British and 1 unidentified, as well as 18 Germans. The men buried here were killed during the first two weeks of combat after the landing west of Caen, among them many soldiers from the 43rd Wessex Infantry Division. Originally, Canadians were also resting in this place, they were then transferred to the cemetery Bény-sur-Mer Reviers. The youngest fighter named in the Register of the Dead was only 17 years old.
I don’t have a lot of photos of the American Cemetery. The visitor center is so very well done, films of events of the day, stories of individual people both military and civilian, details of what they carried and how they survived or did not. Quotes from family who chose to bury their dead in France instead of back in the US. I started crying quite quickly.
We couldn’t help but marvel at what a big lift it must have been to stitch together an off the road bike path for so many miles. The coordination between municipalities and land owners had to have taken years. The bureaucrat in me wants to know, but my googling has not paid off with any details. Yet.
Tomorrow as we head off I will realize the my “rest day” in Bayeux actually involved cycling over 50 somewhat hilly kilometers and was quite emotionally draining. But we have more history to cycle through, so off we’ll go!
As we ride into Morlaix we are on day 21 of our cycling trip and I have one of those “where are we now?” moments. We’ve had some rest days when we weren’t cycling but at this point I do forgive myself for losing track of where we are and how many days in. Although every day brings new sights and ideas to ponder, the mechanics become routine. The unpacking and packing, the visits to grocery stores to get lunch food. Washing out the days’ cycling gear and hoping it will dry by morning. We each have two pairs of bike shorts and two jerseys but it’s nice not to have pack damp shorts and try to remember to dry them during lunch breaks.
It’s funny how we can get a quick sense of a place, either good or bad, just from the ride in in the evening. Both of us were not thrilled with the one way traffic flow and the aggressive drivers in Morlaix, and as we rode out the next morning we both said “Buh bye!”. It hadn’t felt very friendly. But then, as we were about to follow the Koomot route out of town up a hill off the flat river route, a roadie cyclist called out to us and circled back to explain that we should stay on the flat route since it was Sunday and so there was not much car traffic. Oh, and it was prettier too. That one interaction made us both feel better about the town. Yay nice cyclists.
In our travel relationship Rich is the planner. We hear from other travel couples that having one planner and one not planner, one follower, or, as we recently heard it described, one passenger princess, works out well for most couples. Passenger princess. I guess that’s me. I’m not a princess type, more a low maintenance sensible shoes kinda gal, but I do get some pretty good travel treatment from Rich. Which I acknowledge and appreciate.
I always feel sorry for cyclists who haven’t gotten to ride behind The Wall of Rich into a headwind. Between his tall body and big bike frame and four wind blocking panniers it’s a pretty darn sweet slipstream. It’s not easy being the one pulling up front.
Rich will pick up the next post with our rest day in Rennes and on to Caen. Happy pedaling!
Where were we? Quimper. Another one of those amazing French cities where we get to be the only American tourists. As far as we can tell, anyway. One of the best things about visiting non A list sights is how friendly and nice and patient the locals are with tourists. A nice city for a rest day after a cranky ride from our last stop. You never know when the moodiness will hit. Sometimes it’s obvious, long ride in the rain or wind, sometimes it’s just bad luck of the day. Quimper was definitely an antidote to travel moodiness.
It’s easy as a tourist to focus only on the quaint history of a place and forget to look at the modern life. Yes, this is our fun vacation, but people live their modern complicated lives here as everywhere.
As usual a rest day involves taking care of business. This stop in Quimper allowed us to have our front hydraulic brakes looked after. The kind man in this shop installed new pads and rotors on both of our front wheels. Good timing as Rich’s really needed replacing. A big Rich plus a loaded bike means serious wear and tear on the brakes.
It was a bit rainy/misty/mizzly during our time in Quimper, which was fine since I’d rather walk around and have a rest day in the rain than ride in it.
Then where did we go? We headed out to Brest after two nights in Quimper. It was still raining lightly but since the route from Quimper to Brest isn’t completely bike friendly, as we were warned by on line resources and a fellow cyclist we met waiting for the train, we rode a fairly short ride to Châteaulin, 26k/16 miles but with 480m/1600ft of climbing. There we would catch a quick train to Brest, as the V45 route that traverses most of the Finistère coast had a gap here. It’s one of the few places we’ve encountered in France that has no bike routes marked and online forums confirmed parts of the route were on steep and often busy roads. No thanks.
By the time we got to Brest, about an hour and a half later, the sun was out and who cares about the wind when your hotel is only about 500 meters from the train station? Brest has been a ship building and important military port and harbor since the 1600s. It served as a crucial embarkation point in WW1. Thousands of US troops came through Brest heading to the front lines. And WW2 saw Germans use it for submarine and ship docking and repair. Which made it an important target for Allied forces to destroy. Only a tiny number of buildings were left standing after 1944’s Battle for Brest.
Even though the Maritime Museum was closed, we still had a good rest day in Brest. The city is different than the rest of Finistère. Wider streets and more car traffic due to post war rebuilding. No half timbered buildings as we’ve admired in other Breton Cities. But nice tram lines and good bikeways, as we’ve come to expect from French cities. In fact, our ride out of Brest was one of the more pleasant rides leaving a city.
Well designed and comfortable bike paths are very welcome on this day since we have 85k to ride to Roscoff, and the English Channel to greet. We’ll finally be leaving the Bay of Biscay.
Next post will continue the ride to Morlaix and on.
An Irish ex-pat couple we chatted with along the canal path told us that we would love Josselin. Very very pretty town, they said. Rich does a lot of research about distances, what we can reasonably ride in a day, places to stay which are bike friendly- and that generally means an enclosed space where we can lock the bikes – and grocery stores and bakeries to fuel us up for the ride. That means he, or we (I’m not super involved in that part of planning), don’t look at a lot of online photos of the actual towns and villages. Which means we get to be surprised! And that’s often a total treat.
Eat early and often. That’s a bike touring rule. Especially on a hot day. And a long day. We had 85 kilometers to do which is a long day this early in a bike trip and half on dirt and gravel. So, lots of snacks, electrolytes in our water bottles, and pod casts and music in our ears.
There were other Bike Touring Bingo moments, the well dressed gentleman strolling the canal path while reading a book, the small river otter darting out across the path and then changing their mind when they saw us and darting back to the canal bank. A farmer in a beret leading his draft horse along the Loire River path. And this is also a form of bike touring bingo; who will get sick? This time it’s Rich. Usually he has a stomach of iron and it’s me who gets an upset digestive system. In the midst of his illness he is still travel planning, trying to figure out where we go next as this hotel is full for the Friday night.
The Nantes Brest canal, conceived by Napoleon as a strategic inland connection of two important ports to avoid the British controlled ocean, is 390 kms long. That’s a good distance for a nice long game of Bike Touring Bingo.
Bike Touring Bingo is an adaptation to the office game BS Bingo, where you and your co-workers would have made up Bingo cards on the xerox machine of all your boss’s favorite and overused phrases, to be checked off during interminable conference calls.
Bike touring bingo is much more free form. It’s any bike touring eventuality – such as having to open all four panniers to find the thing you’re searching for. Or getting stung by nettles. It can also be any French cliche, for example an elegant French woman bicycling by with a baguette in her basket.
The canal links up four rivers, so it’s fascinating to see the change from canal to river. It was quite a clever engineering feat as only 20% of the route had to be made from scratch.
In our travels around the world we’ve always felt welcome as Americans, or at least not disliked. We always say people are good at distinguishing between a person and the country’s politics. But these are different times. Awful things are happening and the USA is responsible. We questioned if we wanted our American flags on our bikes at all. But we are American, we have to own it. Rich has a French flag to show our affection for France, and my No Kings flag hopefully conveys our lack of support for the current administration. We’ve had quite a few conversations so far and no French person has been anything but kind and understanding and as upset as we are about the war.
No photo of the hotel room in Redon. It was adequate. And small. We thought Redon would be a bit of a nothing town, and quite empty on Easter Sunday evening, but it turned out to have a lot of half timbered buildings and some fascinating historical plaques to help tourists understand the history of the buildings.
Part two of our canal ride up in our next post.
Yes, I admit straight off that we will need to visit Nantes again. We first came through in September 2023 and spent two nights mostly taking care of business and exploring the old town streets. We went to Les Machines de l’Île which is a fun steam punk type attraction. This time we spent two nights mostly taking care of business (laundry, blogging and travel planning) and exploring the new transit and bike improvements, and a trip to Trentemoult, a small fishing village turned art village.
After a good night’s sleep, despite some fellow hotel guests being inconsiderate until a big American opened the door and scowled at them, we headed out to visit Trentemoult. Best part? You get to take a little ferry boat across the River Loire.
Our day in Nantes was technically a rest day. But with so much to see and do we end up walking about 20,000 steps anyway. Is that really a rest day?
An afternoon of laundry and chilling left us needing more walking, so off to the Jardin des Plantes we went. One advantage of early spring bike touring is the blooms.
The tram system, which Nantes is expanding, is already quite impressive. Not only for its free flowing movements, unhampered by car traffic, but also for the fun color schemes on the trams.
We were also very impressed with the intersections on one of Nantes’ main streets, Cr des 50 Otages. The name of the street is another reason for us to come back to Nantes, to visit the history museum. The name of the boulevard pays tribute to the 50 hostages or victims of a WW2 event.
We rode this street on our way out of Nantes towards the Nantes Brest canal. It took us to an area we hadn’t visited and gave us another reason to come back to Nantes- the basin of the Erdre River with the Île de Versailles and live aboard boats and loads of quai side attractions.
Now that we have a home base again, what is it going to be like to travel? We spent four years with only a storage unit in California, so there were no worries about a house, or about things and stuff. We had with us what we had with us. It all got packed up and moved with us every time. A lot of thoughts and worries can now swirl around our brains. The house. The small garden. Our friends and neighbors. And, an even bigger worry is how will we be greeted in the world now that American leadership has lost even more international credibility and respect?
After seven months of no international travel – except one fun train trip to Vancouver BC – have we lost our nomad travel mojo? Well, we’re about to find out. We’re headed out for seven weeks of bike touring in France.
One big thing we don’t have to fret about is boxing and flying with our bikes. Our wonderful Koga World Traveler S bikes are still in France at our ‘What Did We Do to Deserve Such Good Friends’ place. We don’t really have to worry too much about our home either, since another set of WDWDDSGF will be checking in on it when house sitters aren’t in residence. We don’t need any new vaccinations or visas. So, any real worry is all in our heads.
But the biggest cloud over our American heads is what our country is doing to the rest of the world and ourselves. We always bike tour with small American flags flying from our bikes. We know that everyone’s first question about travelers is “Where are they from?” The flags answer that question and start a lot of fun conversations with folks. This time we’re adding a No Kings flag to show our dismay over our current leadership.
We can’t hide our nationality, we don’t pretend to be Canadian- which is always silly but particularly rude these days, in light of how we’ve been treating our lovely neighbors to the north. We’re American. It’s obvious in so many ways. So, we’ll see how the conversations are going to be different on this trip.
What is our basic itinerary? A fun meet up with friends in the Haute-Savoie, and sort out our bikes, then Brittany and Normandy, and Paris. The travel planner (Rich) has many ideas and tricks up his sleeve. And, since he’s actually had time to travel plan, bookings for the first week or two! Our usual fly by the seat of our pants travel isn’t necessary when he has time on a laptop to research and plan. His one client (me) has absolute confidence in him.
So here we go! More from the roads of France later. As our SF friend BikeDave always said: “Have a nice ride home.”
Saarburg Germany. The Venice of the Saar region. That’s what they say anyway. I’m not sure one river through town makes it Venice, but it was one of those towns that’s not super promising as you roll in, and actually had a fascinating and beautiful old part of town. The 15km long Leukbach River runs through the charming old town and meets up with the Saar River.
Since we spend so much time on bikes we entertain ourselves talking about bikes and bike infrastructure quite a bit. A lot. Ok, constantly! We had to detour off the river path to obtain that giant pastry and once again we were reminded that although Germany knocks it out of the ball park with bike paths connecting towns, in town is a different story. It was quite inhospitable in Merzig, the short ride from the river path to Bäckerei & Café Tinnes had zero bike infrastructure. The contrast with France, where so many towns have been given what we call the French City 2.0 treatment in town, with new bike and ped lanes and markings and calmed traffic, was dramatic. It was not an environment that would encourage bicycle use for errands and transportation.
We were booked into Au Vieux Moulin hotel, in a former mill and with a highly rated restaurant. After hanging our wet cycling clothes over every available surface in our room we headed downstairs to dinner. We opted for a four course tasting menu with the wine pairing – get ready for loads of photos of food. With only a few weeks left in France it made sense to maximize our dining experience. This meal certainly fulfilled that desire. The most French of modern French meals we’ve had. We don’t dine at fancy restaurants often, but French fancy is more attractive to us since the service is very straightforward and not overwhelming. The French assume that everyone enjoys food, it’s not a big deal, just life.
Trying to pay attention to and write down the details of this meal gave me so much respect for actual food writers. Ground ivy, the waiter said, I dutifully wrote that down and only now looked it up: Glechoma hederacea is an aromatic, perennial, evergreen creeper of the mint family Lamiaceae. It is commonly known as ground-ivy, gill-over-the-ground, creeping charlie, alehoof, tunhoof, catsfoot, field balm, and run-away-robin. Thankfully I had snapped a picture of the full menu, since these courses, or sequences, are mostly represented on the menu.
We definitely needed a walk after that amazing meal, so we headed out into the misty moonlit night for a turn around town.
Somewhere along the wet roads of the previous day, hiding from the rain, we decided that we were both ready to wrap this tour up and head back to our home base in France. Rich plotted out the fastest and most direct route: ride to Strasbourg, train to Basel and overnight, train to Geneva, ride to Annemasse and then up the valley to our good friends’ house. We were both looking forward to being in one place for a while before traveling back to the US, so off we went.
We knew we’d be busy once we returned to the US, so a nice long 13 day break at our friends’ house was very appealing. The bike ride from Geneva to Annemasse is very easy, bike path the entire way, one night in Annemasse so we can ride up the valley after rush hour. It’s a great feeling of accomplishment to close our 70 day loop. We rode down the valley to start this tour, and now we ride up the valley to end the tour. In better shape, with even more appreciation of the countries we’ve visited, and looking forward to some days of rest.
Our cat sit in Luxembourg was great for getting to explore the area, and with the free transit we keep raving about, we did explore. But, our big fluffy charge, the Maine Coon Cat, kept us on our toes.
Our hosts got messages from the neighbors alerting them to her escape via the scaffolding. After we tempted her back with treats and carried her in, we kept the doors and windows closed or cracked. There was a bit of hot spell so the house was stuffy and warm as a result. And yes, she managed to get out again, and yes, it was a kerfuffle, but we had some great hikes, fun side trips into Luxembourg City, and enjoyed cooking and watching a big screen tv.
Luxembourg City is an interesting place. The country and city are very wealthy, with the highest per capita GDP in the world. Its population of 681k people makes it the least populated country in Europe, and half of its population is foreign born. It reminded us both of Geneva, another capital of wealth and finance, with a similar feel to us of tidy, and calm, but not much in the way of organic city life with messiness and bustle. Pleasant, beautiful in places, easy to get around with free transit, but missing a sense of culture. Or, with a culture that is difficult for the visitor to find and appreciate.
As it always goes on these long bike tours, we were both getting a bit burnt out. The cat sit was not as comfortable as we had hoped, but we did get to rest and recharge. But I was happy to bid farewell to that huge mess of fluff and attitude. We hoped a change of county would help, Germany and beer gardens? Will that put a pep back in our pedals?
Less Car, More Life 