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 that 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!
So Rennes wasn’t really a city on our must-see short list and probably isn’t on yours either. It’s the largest city in Normandy with 230,000 inhabitants and sits at the confluence of the Vilaine River and the Ille et Rance Canal. It’s the only major city in the region not on an estuary and also a major train hub for eastern Brittany.
Since it is a key train hub, we had to transfer in Rennes to head further east, so we decided to take a rest day to explore it. We enjoyed it’s vast commercial core, which is buzzing with people, very walkable, and has a wide variety of restaurants and shops. Nice trams too of course. The city is a little short on sights, but we managed to easily amuse ourselves for the day.
So from Rennes our next goal was to get northeast to the Normandy coast to explore the countryside and see some of the extensive World War II history. But the winds were blowing strongly from the east for 3 days, so we decided to take a train hop east from Rennes to Laval and take the Velo Francette route due North. Inland areas can be protected from the wind (sometimes!) and we’d mostly have cross winds as we cycled. With the unfavorable winds, we had to be clever and I was glad for our flexibility without advanced bookings. Sure we could press into the east wind, but the stretch from Rennes to Laval was not particularly interesting, and we’d burn a few days that we could spend elsewhere.
The great experience you get on a long distance cycle route is the variety of local segments. Sometimes you’re on very popular (and likely more scenic) stretch with lots of people and other times (such as Mayenne to Flers, and Flers to the La Suisse Normande) you are basically on your own. But some of the most scenic areas were in little valley and roads in between and we really enjoyed the whole 3 days on the route to Caen. And of course you get to stay in little off the beaten track towns like Mayenne.
After Mayenne, we headed about 70km north to Flers and a small Best Western hotel. (Yup, reliable and usually bike friendly in Europe) We were off the designated Francette route for 30km or so heading out of Flers but following other small bike routes on quiet and hilly back roads and valleys. And as soon as we turned off the main road out of Flers, we were again struck by the ubiquitous memorials and stories of WWII. Flers was liberated by the British and Canadians in 1944 who had landed at Juno Beach. As you ride, you work back through time of the Allies liberation trek from the beaches.
We finally rolled into Caen on a warm Saturday afternoon, and the old city and core was packed with people. Even though it was legal to bike on the streets in old town, we often had to walk our bike through the throngs of people. Caen is a nice little city with a castle and the unmissable Memorial de Caen museum we visited on a past trip. So this visit was just a quick overnight on the way to our next destination and the Normandy coast.
We like to see big sights sometimes and the famous cities and villages are popular for a reason, but to us the deep memories of our bike touring adventures are in the small places in between. It’s a travel cliché, but so much more true for bike tourists. And we get so used to being away from other tourists that it is a bit of a shock when we re-enter the more trodden tourist-sphere. And so our next destination after Caen is on the heavy tourist map, as it is a perfect gateway to the miles of history along the DDay coast. But I’ll leave this for Cheryl and another day.
Less Car, More Life 