Articles from June 2016

We woke to dripping rain on the balcony and howling winds.  Apparently, three drops in the weather forecast means a deluge – yup, it rained all day.  Heavily, most of it, with some brisk winds (rarely tailwinds of course)¹.  Only 65 km, 450 m elevation gain, but it felt like much more elevation than that as the hills were sometimes quite steep² and the countryside sent us up one hill, and down another….. yeeesh.  Some spectacular pools of water on the roads, too – and many thanks to that large truck without flaps on the wheels that passed us in ongoing traffic.

Breakfast on the (closed) terrace was taken in concert with an English choir full of chatty, (loud) and apparently very hungry folk, as the remains at the buffet when we arrived resembled a field after a cloud of locusts.  The poor servers were trying to get food on the buffet but it was being snatched from their plates as they went past – really????  Eventually we managed to dart in and get some food, after did a bit of scouting around town for Tour de France shirts (only available online they say), did some bike maintenance and then onwards ho, just as it restarted raining after a brief respite.  That was the last rain pause we saw for the rest of the day….

Lovely countryside again, especially after the first few km. when we got off the main highway, although the poppies were closed in protest today and really, roses and geraniums do NOT look as nice in the rain…  Atop a steep hill (me – we’re really going up that???) was Coutances, our town for lunch, except it appears that Monday in France is much like Sunday, nothing open.  The bars are open, but only serve alcohol, and occasionally coffee, but no food despite the menus in the window.  And why can’t places post their hours on the door??  I guess that would suggest that hours are regular?  We went into a bar advertising sandwiches, dripping wet, and to the amusement of those inside stripped down to shorts (semi-dry), only to find no food served – at least the coffee was good – they had no idea where else was open (hmmm, small town, if they don’t know the opening hours how are we supposed to??) so the decision was made to go back to a kebab place (takeout) a couple of blocks back – dressed up again in our nice wet (and now cold) clothes, wrung out our gloves, and went back – oh, now they’re closed.  Other places we found open only had sandwiches with meat, so we eventually found a carrefour (small grocery store) and ate self assembled sandwiches standing in the alcove of an upscale handbag/shoe shop – happily the owners did not evict us, as we were at least sheltered from the wind.  But even grocery store cheese is great….

Suffice it to say the rest of the ride was wet, wet, wet and we were fairly happy to present ourselves, dripping, to the foyer of tonight’s hotel.  The receptionists are remarkably sanguine about bikes arriving in the lobby…..  The room is a bit like a sauna at the moment, with things drying everywhere…. (hopefully).  I was sloshing in my shoes on arrival, so hope a miracle happens there for tomorrow, and my MEC glove covers proved completely useless, to the point that the fourth and fifth fingers collected a pool of water and so when I picked up the water bottle to have a drink, the pool ran down my arm.  Ugh.

Dinner was a “meh” affair in one of the few cafes open in town, but hot and three courses so appreciated all the same.  It was turning people away by 8:30 pm, completely full.  Not surprising….

Memories from today?  Rain.  Pretty villages with nobody in sight (at work?  sheltering from the rain?).  Closed signs.  A lot of Tour de France decorations and signs along the route – apparently this town too is a stage start.  The sound of Étienne’s rain pants at the end of the day (squerch, squerch).

Étienne’s comments:

1. We actually had a ton of tailwinds today! Very nice. It just didn’t seem so, because we were being pelted with rain on our arrears.

2. They were not that steep. Just to the point that work is required =P – you can’t say a Hossack vacation is supposed to be easy!

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Skies grey to start, managed eventually to prod Étienne awake a bit earlier than usual¹ to get breakfast in and out to Mont St. Michel to get the abbey tour before leaving.  Again a spectacular view from the restaurant, and realizing that being Sunday there was likely to be little open along the way, managed to purloin enough bread, cheese and eggs for lunch from the spread in the true Hossack fashion….. a great call, as it turned out….

Back to Mont St. Michel by 9 a.m., again a quiet tour around and the Abbey; was well worth the return visit – crowds starting to amass by the time we left though, can’t imagine what it’s like in full summer there…. We packed up and hit the road to our next destination about 11 a.m. – many km. of gently undulating and lovely coastal roads passed then Étienne decided on a side trip to Avranche…. still searching for an open market to buy a tomato – we ended up on a pedestrian path that went straight uphill, and I mean straight – walking the bike up the unbelievable grade – hot sticky and tired by the time I got to the top of that (Etienne rode up, incredibly)².  Avranche a fairly unattractive town with a castle under restoration, where we had lunch on the grass as the only bench was occupied by a sleeping homeless person.  Have to admit, the ride downhill was kinda nice, on a real road with a reasonable grade…. rejoining the route we spent the rest of the day riding up and down (some fairly decent hills), through many spots marked as Tour de France routes/starts etc., and very scenic country.  Quite a tiring 60 km again (+15kms exploring I think) though with some fabulous downhill runs and some roadside cheering at one point (“Allez, Allez, Allez” near the top of one hill) was appreciated for its humour!  The roads got busier towards Granville, our next destination, and with little shoulder some of the curves uphill were a bit nervy, though have to say, the French drivers are pretty patient with cyclists…..

We arrived in the old town about 5 p.m., to find it crawling with shoppers and sightseers – happily we stumbled into a chocolaterie and patisserie, and had a well deserved ice cream and obtained birthday dessert treats (my birthday today).  Also got a few ideas for my next batch…..The hill up to our hotel was again of a grade beyond belief, but it is nice and handy for downtown old ville.  The obligatory shower and laundry completed, we set off to find some beer (we had been promised a good local spot which of course, being Sunday, was closed so Trip Advisor steered us to a bar in the upper town (yes, more flights of stairs and uphill….) but it was well worth it and hilarious to watch a pizza truck block the end of a street and set up shop – apparently an event going on in the square tonight….. with dwindling battery power on my phone we headed for a restaurant on the harbour front and had a FABULOUS seafood meal – a conglomeration of tastes and presentation accompanied by a lovely Bordeaux…..

Well, yes my blogs cover a lot about food but we are so appreciating the great cuisine….

Back home we devoured the amazing patisseries – wow, the best mousse creation I’ve ever had, sooo light ….

Memories from today?  Discovering at lunch that the eggs weren’t hardboiled (I hadn’t noticed the boiler beside them at the breakfast table, Eacute;tienne apparently had) – beautiful sandy beaches – “Allez, allez” and the first chocolaterie I’ve made it into!

Étienne’s notes:

1. Surprisingly late actually. But what can you do. We’ve been running a sleep deficit since a week before we left Vancouver…
2. Yeah. Second steepest road I’ve ever taken a bike up, and definitely the steepest I’ve been able to balance up. See the random path photo below. *phew*

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We started out with a spirited discussion of how many clothes to take, how much raingear, then finally left for a good tour of the walled city of St. Malo, (completely intentionally of course) riding around the interior trying to find the way to one of the two entrances…  First stop was to a hardware store to pick up a missing wrench, but without good GPS it entailed some back and forth, and then Etienne discovered he still had the keys to the garage door for the hotel in his jersey, so we split up and armed with a paper map I sallied forth to the hardware store and then Lidl (grocery store) to pick up lunch while he whizzed back to deliver them.  Then we were truly on our way, finally onto the designated route…

Riding around the rolling back roads in the French countryside on a sunny day, little traffic, flowers everywhere, fertile fields…..  THIS IS AWESOME!!!!

The longer route for today included a side trip to Cancale – pretty seaside town with huge oyster farms, great  place for lunch – then continuing through lush farmland onto a seaside road, coffee at the top of a hill passing by lovely well tended gardens – what is not to like???  We pedalled in sunshine but breezey enough not to be too hot, and the last 10 km on packed gravel through the woods.  We turned a corner into the open, and suddenly there was Mont St. Michel – the last few km along the dyke pedalling directly towards it were spectacular.  Our hotel was the last on the strip, i.e. closest to the Mont, and afforded a spectacular view of it from the balcony (which was also big enough to house our bikes, and to tell the truth, probably as big as our last hotel room…. definite step up here!).  Directly across from the hotel was a sign posted “Le grand depart” of the Tour de France 2016.

After the obligatory shower and laundry done for the following day, draping of previous days’ laundry over everything, we set out on the km. walk to the monument in a brisk headwind.  We noted an exodus of people both walking and on the free shuttle bus (no cars allowed on the promenade) and found out that the Abbey closed at 5 p.m., so likely the cause; we had quiet conditions to wander around the city – we were a bit surprised by all the tacky souvenir shops and restaurants on the lower levels though, given it is a world heritage site.  We conclude that this was the inspiration for “gondor” in “lord of the rings”…..

An amazing several course dinner in a restaurant past the tourist strip, a 2 hour affair, concluded an amazing day (love the french cuisine and cheeses) then back to our luxurious room to crash.  Surprisingly tired for only 65 km on the road with not a lot of hills.  Outstanding memories of the day?  Getting into a field for a “break naturale” and fortunately curtailing before squatting with the realization it was covered in nettles….  Swaths of wild poppies in amongst the hay.

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So, putting together a bike is just the reverse of taking it apart, right? Sigh.

Let’s start with the lovely breakfast, dampened only by a bit of rain, then we set off for our specific tasks – Karen to acquire laundry soap and a couple of other necessities,  plus lunch, and do some laundry, and Etienne to retrieve the bikes from the “beasts” (my new name for the bike boxes) and resurrect them.  Karen enjoyed poking around town, going to the “maison de pain”, the “Maison de beurre” (also host to a wide range of local cheeses) and of course the patisserie…. It was market day, which I completely missed, but was happy to have found the carrefour as the streets are the originals described in the book “All the Light you cannot see”, twisting, winding and with no logical layout.  Finding a place that did takeout coffee was the most challenging, but the worker in the dark garage was eventually administered a medicinal dose and I withdrew fairly quickly as the curses were getting more frequent at that point.  Laundry was much less interactive….

Like socks in the dryer vortex, it seemed there were a couple of bolts and washers that disappeared somewhere over the Atlantic. There were no extra chain links (someone, um, Etienne, forgot to pack them – [Étienne would like to note that in fact, we agreed that he would never remember them without a reminder from mother!]) and at the end of a fairly grueling four hours my bike was still not rideable (apart from the chain, the brakes were not functioning properly).   Hmmmm. We’d had several trips back and forth to the hotel to get things, the garage being several buildings away – then suddenly we couldn’t get into the hotel for a much needed piece of equipment.

Okay…..– well not okay actually, as apparently the front door lock was malfunctioning and the owner, who wasn’t there and had to be called (once more TG for the phone) couldn’t get in either – call to lock technicians, waste of 3/4 hr so that when we decided we needed to get to the bike shop, it was in the midst of rush hour traffic.  That’s when I discovered that during that time period obtaining a taxi was pretty dicey, as apparently most reserve ahead during these hours – let alone get one big enough to transport my bike.  Eventually, I found  a company that didn’t immediately say “we don’t have anything big enough” (we knew they did) and was on my way – time ticking towards store closure – somehow or other, Etienne managed to ride his bike across town without a GPS and was busy getting other odd parts when I eventually showed up.  Kudos to him, the newer part of town is also confusing.  The bike shop, one of a chain started by Bernard Hinault’s son Alex, wasn’t super helpful – they took one look at the malfunctioning brakes and said “don’t know that system” without making any effort to understand it…. Eventually Etienne was able to figure it out, borrowed a few essential tools to fix it and we were on our way back home at high speed, now being very tight on time to meet with the guy coming for orientation at 6 p.m. in the lobby…..  Glad the brakes were working again….No pressure or stress in this holiday!!!

And of course, the bridge was up again in the harbour…..

So back to orientation at the hotel lobby, GPS system received, and the “beasts”  were removed to be reconnected with on the last day.  I’m happy to have respite for a bit from dragging them around.

Another nice creperie for dinner, with lovely local cider after trying four or five others – lots of closed restaurants in this town.  Time for a quick walk around the ramparts (discovered “Quebec House” there) before crashing.  Tomorrow we actually get to start riding….

That was how the trip started – ironically.  As most people know, I’ve been struggling with significant insomnia for >1 year, so go figure that I would sleep through my alarm the day  I really needed to get up…. was having  a fabulous, deep sleep and then I’m woken by Etienne with a cup of coffee who tells me we have 15 minutes before the taxi arrives!  Tachycardia….  And the supreme irony was being woken by my “Sorry I’m late, I overslept” son…..

Hmmm.  What does that say, the fact that I slept really well the first night on holiday???

Well, entry one records that we got to our destination, St. Malo – through pretty much every mode of transport but pedalling.  Fourteen hours, two planes with a layover in Montreal,

With a lack of anything but watery beer at the lounge in Montreal, we settle on wine

six hours on two trains with no layover and a mad dash with the bike boxes to catch a second several platforms away (of course that involved stairs up and over the tracks so finding an “ascenceur” and cramming into it was a must, these are definite afterthoughts in France), then a cab (ten minutes that became twenty as the bridge was up)…

TG we had acquired a SIM card at the airport as all the waiting ones had been scooped up by the time we got out, and so we had to phone  for one.  Filed in my memories now are the big eyes and the “oh my” of the cab driver in St. Malo when he arrived and saw our bike boxes, hauling those beasts up the stairs to the upper floor of the TGV amongst the melee of everyone trying to get on and off (most everyone quite good natured and helped push mine up), the train conductor’s “Oh My” as she regarded us on the slow train in the extra space between carriages (breath hold as I got ready to be ejected but she just carried on).  Arrival at our hotel in the old city yielded a hotel which was “mignon” in the best of old European ways where things are cupboard sized, and the smallest “ascenceur”  I’ve ever seen.  There is some kind of convention/conference going on in St. Malo so they were unable to accomodate us in the usual hotel the bike company uses – this one has location for it, not a whole lot else – cardboard for walls, but the bed was absolutely delightful to behold….  We had a fabulous meal, diving directly into the regional favourites of mussels, frites and beer, and crepes.  The house merlot, I have to say, was better than most of the Okanogan ones I’ve been trying lately…

And so to a well deserved horizontal experience….. accompanied by earplugs, of course.  Etienne will be bruised tomorrow on his left side, as I had to keep elbowing him on the train to prevent him falling asleep – at his request – trying to adjust to local time quickly, deadly to fall asleep in the afternoon and in any case we didn’t want to miss our stop…..