Epic European Cycle

Trip List Calendar

2015-05-16 : La Véloscénie to Bagnoles-de-l'Orne
Category Type Name Description Service Provider Cost Kms To Date Total
Activity Cycle La Véloscénie Carrouges / Bagnoles-de-l'Orne
$0.00 24.00 24.00
There was enough up and down today to make me glad that we didn't try to make it to Bagnoles-de-l'Orne yesterday, although we did reach the town extremely early. We walked around, had a meal, and saw the never-ending outdoor flea market. We saw lots of old lead figurines, a small, very old foosball table, a very large bottle of wine shaped like a musket, a "L'oncle américain" game which was kind of Monopoly-esque, and a scary spikey bra. This evening we're going to walk up the hill and hopefully see the Sacre Coeur lit up for Pierres en Lumières dans l’Orne.
Nemo has tried to escape several times. A couple of times Brent has had to go back to find him. Today, I wasn't sure we'd find him again, but Brent came through. Then he rigged up a safety pin connecting a couple of Nemo's fins together for me to rope the bungee cord through so that it doesn't happen again. We can't spend ALL of our time in Europe Finding Nemo!
Nemo has tried to escape several times. A couple of times Brent has had to go back to find him. Today, I wasn't sure we'd find him again, but Brent came through. Then he rigged up a safety pin connecting a couple of Nemo's fins together for me to rope the bungee cord through so that it doesn't happen again. We can't spend ALL of our time in Europe Finding Nemo!
My new favorite phrases:

Ensuite, je dois d'autre choix que de vous torturer avec mon français.

Je suis un humble canadienne avec une habileté douteuse en français. J'ai faim. S'il vous plaît me nourrir.

S'il vous plaît excusez mon français. J'ai utilisé toutes mes cellules du cerveau apprentissage de la géométrie.


2015-05-17 : La Véloscénie to Mortain
Category Type Name Description Service Provider Cost Kms To Date Total
Activity Cycle La Véloscénie Barenton / Mortain
$0.00 54.00 78.00
We left Bagnoles this morning with some uncertainty about where we'd stop for the night. Domfront was too soon, Mortain was a good distance, except it was a few km off our main trail, and likely to be on the tippy top of a mountain. St-Hilaire seemed too far. We ended up opting for Mortain, but trying to find our way into town efficiently proved to be a chore. We took a cycle trail that looked like it went into town, when, in fact, it bypasses town on the wrong side of a gorge. We got some directions from a verbose French man who spoke no English at all and figured we had an idea. We kept going along the trail and ended up at Le Neufbourg. There was a map there so we had a look and figured we might know where to find the campground, so we set off along a road back toward Mortain. Brent thought the campground was down a 20% grade hill, but I wasn't convinced. He went down the hill and didn't find a campground, so he came back up. I suggested going into Mortain which was a left-hand turn at that point. We did that and ultimately found the campground. It's right in town, but still pretty nice. It cost 8E for the night, and included full washroom facilities and a short hike to Petite Cascades, which has two steep entrances - one from the campground side and one from the side where Brent went down the hill. We ended up cycling 57km today, which was lots.


2015-05-18 : La Véloscénie to Ducey
Category Type Name Description Service Provider Cost Kms To Date Total
Activity Cycle La Véloscénie St-Hilaire-du-Harcouët / Ducey
$0.00 34.00 112.00
We went to bed last night while the sun was still up. We were in the tent and it was so warm that neither of us could conceive of having to get into our sleeping bags. During the night that changed... boy did it change. We woke up cold and we've been cold pretty much all day. We rode only as far as Ducey. It was cold, at times drizzly, and sometimes windy. I was weak and wimpy from the big cycling day yesterday. The forecast for the next couple of days looks even rainier. Ugh.
The more tired I am, the less I feel like speaking French. I am completely exhausted right now. I don't remember ever being this tired before. Wow!
Note from Brent: Our campsite was practically in the middle of town and I thought that there would be lots of light for us to find our way around the campground after dark but, no. I'd forgotten that European cities don't leave the lights burning all night as North American cities do. (Quite wise, really). After dark the sky was a blaze of stars, very pretty without light pollution to interfere.
Note from Brent: Getting back to Mortain; it isn't really on the Veloscenie route but the route passes nearby. We were getting near the end of a longish day of riding and Mortain was shown on the map as having good facilities and being only about 3 Km off the rail-trail so we turned and started to climb. But first a bit about topography: The land that we have been travelling through since leaving Paris has been mostly rolling farm land crossed by hundreds of slow-moving streams. We cross at least 20 every day and I have been at a bit of a loss as to where all of the water is coming from. The land is very green and reminds me most of the lower Fraser Valley. The streams are mostly small (1 or 2 feet wide) to medium (8 or 12 feet) and flow along nicely from low hills, but until today we really hadn't seen any rain since we left Paris. Mortian is on a sizable hill, and quite steep. The map we have shows a cycle route going passed the town then looping around behind and coming in from the opposite side. Unfortunately it's not very detailed. We met a nice lady who didn't speak much English and managed to get her to understand that we were looking for a camp site. She stood silently for 2 or 3 minutes, I could see her brain working. She gave us a couple of sentences in pretty good English that helped us along our way. I think it was all of the English that she could muster. A bit later, when the bike trail diverged from the roadway, and our map showed one direction while the road sign showed another, we met a man who spoke no English at all. He was more than happy to talk to us and talk to us and talk to us. However he did eventually point in the direction of the bike trail as being the right way to go to Mortain. We passed through Romagny, which is really only about a kilometre from Mortain and biked about 3 K's to town. The 2 towns are on opposite sides of a very steep gorge and although there is a road that links them, few people are stupid enough to try it on a bike. I saw one sign advertising a 20% grade.
Note from Brent: Directly below the campsite are Le Grande Cascade and Le Petit Cascade. Rhonda and I walked down the steep path to check them out. Le Grande Cascade is on the larger of two creeks that come together in the gorge. The creek is only about 6 feet wide and was dammed at one time to provide a mill-pond for some sort of factory. The stone- and earth-works are still there, as are portions of the flood gates, but the system is no longer used and much of the mill-pond looks to have been silted in and grown over. About 30 feet down stream from the dam the smaller stream joins in. It's small enough to step across but Oh So Magical. There is a tiny dale surrounded by towering stone cliffs. Walk up stream about 100 feet and and the steam curves, there are a series of waterfalls, stone cliffs covered with flowering plants. All so different from the rolling farm land that we've been travelling through and so tiny that Rhonda and I both thought that it looked more like a movie set than something real and living. That little unexpected view of Le Petit Cascade made the side trip worth it. Everything else was a happy extra.


2015-05-19 : La Véloscénie to Beauvoir
Category Type Name Description Service Provider Cost Kms To Date Total
Activity Cycle La Véloscénie Ducey / Mont-Saint-Michel
$0.00 55.00 167.00
I miss my rug bread! Brent and I have not bought Volkenbrot at home, but since we found it in Iceland we've been buying it and having it pretty much every day. A few days ago, we stopped being able to find it. We think we've just gone too far west (away from Germany). We've left the Volkenbrot coverage area! I'm looking forward to heading east again and finding some more.
Thankfully we didn't get thundershowers today like they were calling for, but I did climb the neverending 25km wind hill from Ducey to Beauvoir. It was supposed to be longer thsn that, but at one point, during the never ending wind hill, there was a sign for Mont St Michel for cars, this way, 9km, and a sign for Mont St Michel for bikes, that way, 18km, so, being the savvy cyclist that I am, I suggested taking the car route and shaving 10km off the wind hill. I'm sure the bike route would have been more scenic, but at that point I really didn't care. As soon as we got to town, a wind and rain storm blew in, but it only lasted about an hour.
Seeing Mont St Michel from a distance is quite the sight. The coastal countryside is very very flat plain, and for miles around you can see the Mont jutting up into the sky. We're both really excited about going there tomorrow to check it out up close.
We had to kill some time before we could check into our B&B so we had a glass of wine, adjusted our plan for the upcoming couple weeks, and went to Alligator Bay to see all the reptiles.
Almost without exception we have been having great experiences with the people of France. I haven't found anyone to be rude, in fact, everyone is so friendly and nice that I can't really imagine where the rudeness reputation came from. Even the "exceptions" aren't awful... just "less nice". I am really liking it here, and the people are one of the main things that make it enjoyable. Yay for France!
Map of first leg of trip: Paris to Beauvoir (near Mont St. Michel)


2015-05-20 : Visit Mt-st-Michel and stay in Pontorson
Category Type Name Description Service Provider Cost Kms To Date Total
Activity Cycle Beauvoir - Pontorson - Mont St Michel - Pontorson
$0.00 26.00 193.00
We stayed in a BnB last night - the first "real" BnB (ie. not a "just B" through AirBnB) and it was great. The room was small, but nice and comfortable. The highlight, though, was the breakfast. In addition to some fruit, yogurt and cheese, our host had wonderful homemade pastries, and homemade jams and marmalade (I particularly enjoyed the rhubarb).
After we left the BnB we rode the "wrong" direction from Beauvoir to Pontorson to take care of some business before visiting Mont St. Michel. We left our baggage at our hotel then went and bought our train tickets to Nantes before riding out to Mont St. Michel. OH MY GOD riding my bike without all the baggage is amazing. It feels like riding a feather!
Mont St. Michel was really interesting. We left our velos at the near end of the causeway and took a free shuttle bus over to the island. The island apparently is only still and island because the people diligently scoop out the silt deposited by the over-enthusiastic river that empties into the ocean right in front of the island. We walked all around the Mont. It was full of little restaurants and shops along the bottom, but then just really interesting history and scenery above.
Today wasn't a particularly strenuously day. 20 or so easy km on unburdened velos. So, at dinner time (in France, restaurants don't even open until 7PM), Brent and I set out in search of some lighter sustenance. There was a place around the corner that had snacky things posted on their menu. We circled the block and looked at a few other places and Brent decided he'd like the snacky place (said it was slummy enough for him). I think he may have been slightly traumatized by a couple of the fancier dinners we'd had to contend with lately (we won't say anything about him throwing his wine at me the one night). So, we went back to the snacky place, which was called Le Train Bleu. They had an extensive drink menu, and a small, hand-written food menu. We ordered drinks, looked at the food menu, and I asked if they were serving. Our server said that they were changing their menu, and she ran to get a big poster with pictures of the food items offered. There were three things on offer, a lasagna, mac and cheese, and something else. Brent ordered the lasagna and I ordered the mac and cheese. After the server left, Brent joked that the meals may be TV Dinners. Annnnnnd... life imitates art (and sometimes Brent's jokes). Several minutes later, our meals arrived, in their cardboard containers, with bits of plastic cover still stuck to the top of the cardboard containers. It was awesome. Who would have ever thought that such a thing existed... in France! The Train Bleu was playing the standard (for France) radio station filled with bad covers of old English pop tunes and had tonnes of posters up on the wall of live music acts they'd had play there. The most recent looked to be from 2012, but a lot of the posters didn't have years on them, so maybe some were more recent. In the back there was a pool table, which, oddly, seemed to be a pretty much normal-proportioned pool table, only smaller (including the balls). We finished our experience with a very poorly played game of pool and a good time was had by all.
Something I'm finding really interesting is that, in spite of how hard I'm working each day, and how tired I feel, I actually have way more energy already than I did before the trip. Before the trip I was crashing early every evening, and sometimes taking afternoon naps. None of that for me anymore. Now I would struggle to go to sleep before 10:00 and I'm waking up by 6:00. A nice, solid 8 hours. Before the trip I felt like a wreck if I didn't get at least 9 hours. I've known that I've been depressed living in Edmonton for a while now, and I can't wait to move away from there... it's interesting to feel the depression start to lift for real (and not just in an "ok, I'm not going to be depressed anymore", mind-over-matter unrealistic way).


2015-05-21 : To Nantes
We had a smooth train trip from Pontorson to Nantes via Rennes today. Bikes are allowed on the regional trains without being packed up (on the bullet trains, bikes need to be packed up). You just have to be careful to get on the right car... the right car has a bike icon on the door, which indicates there's a space on that car for bikes. The trains run faithfully on time and you don't have long to get on - the train pulls in, you leap on, and away you go. So, it can be a little stressful to watch for the train (which isn't always anywhere near as long as the platform), then figure out which end of the train has the bike icon, then get to that door, and pile on.

On the first leg of the journey, we kept the bikes on the floor and Brent held them in place. On the second leg, there was no room for them on the floor and we had to hang them up. It was kind of an ordeal to get them vertical and get the tires looped through the hooks. We thought it would be worse getting them down, but it was actually easier.

Another interesting aspect was dealing with the elevators to get them up and down from the various platforms at the stations. At Rennes, there were "walkways" from one train platform to another, which looked like they'd be real easy to just walk the bikes over the tracks from one platform to another, but of course, the public wasn't allowed to use the walkways (with trains coming in from different directions). So, we had to go up to the main level, then back down to another platform. They only give you 20 minutes notice as to what platform your train will be on, so we had to make sure we were ready to get the bikes up to main then back down to the next platform. We had considered just staying on our arrival platform (1&2) in hopes that we wouldn't have to move platforms (there were three other platforms), but with only 20 minutes, and busy elevators to share, we decided to take the bikes up to main right away. Dewey fit into an elevator sort of turned in on himself, but sitting on the ground. Brent had to raise The Tank up onto his rear wheel to get him to fit into the elevator. We did end up having to switch platforms anyway, so it was a good decision. When we got to Nantes, the elevator wasn't an option. Brent pushed The Tank up the ramp. I wanted to take the lift, but the door wouldn't close properly so I ended up having to push up the ramp as well.


2015-05-22 : Day in Nantes
My first 'craving' to report for Lana: English movies and French music. We have been to a lot of pubs and brasseries which all seem to be playing the same radio station, with a theme of 'bad covers of English hits'. Brent has speculated that it may have something to do with differences in copyright. I hate it. Not only are the covers bad, but they're all songs that I was finished with years ago. I want to hear something new, and I would like it to be in French. I have always enjoyed trying to decipher French lyrics. Last night, in Nantes, we walked past an enormous theatre with something like 24 screens and I started hankering to go to a movie, but I really didn't care to see one in French.
The Nantes tourist information book provides a number of walking tours indicated in the city by green lines painted on the ground. We walked a couple of "green lines" today - the one for Isle de Nantes Quarter (where we saw Le Grand Elephant), and the one for the Bouffay Quarter (where we saw the Chateau des Ducs de Bretagne and the Jardin des Plantes. A highlight for us, which isn't part of the tourist book was an apartment that was covered in gardens - on every balcony and on the roof.
One thing we saw while walking around Nantes today that was really cool was a building that had a bunch of strips of metal "art" encasing it. As we passed the building, we noticed a continuous metallic chirping sound that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere, and realized that it was the holes in the strips of "art" that were making the chirping.
Once again we were unsuccessful at getting Brent's bike serviced. The first time, in Alencon, we didn't realize it was a national holiday on the day we tried and all the velo stores were closed. This time we found some open velo stores, but they're booked solid for the next couple of weeks, so Brent just bought some grease and has decided to do his own bike maintenance as the spirit moves him on our journey.


2015-05-23 : Loire à Vélo / EuroVelo 6 to Ancenis
Category Type Name Description Service Provider Cost Kms To Date Total
Activity Cycle EV6 from Nantes to Ancenis
$0.00 45.00 238.00
Map of our intended Loire Valley route
Cycling east from Nantes has proven to be extremely easy so far in comparison to the trip in the l'Eure river valley (La Véloscénie route). It's flat, well marked and the trail surfaces are great. We could see the 14th century tower of the Château d'Oudon (in Oudon) from several kilometers back. After a cafe au lait stop at Restaurant Le Port du Moulin in Champtoceaux we detoured over there to have a look. As I had sort of expected, we ended up in Ancenis for the night where we're camping at "Camping de l’île Mouchet".
Cycling in Ancenis itself has proven to be less easy. It is the same kind of France tight narrow streets going in all directions that we've gotten used to, but just about every street is a one-way (going the opposite way of where we want to go), and bikes aren't allowed to go the "wrong way" here like they have been everywhere else. We went the wrong way down a one-way and got stopped by the cops. One officer was giving me heck, but I didn't understand what he was saying so I asked him if he spoke English. He replied "oui", but kept lecturing me in Francais! Hehheh. Oh my.


2015-05-24 : Loire à Vélo / EuroVelo 6 to la Possonniere
Category Type Name Description Service Provider Cost Kms To Date Total
Activity Cycle La Loire à Vélo Ancenis to la Possonniere
$0.00 52.00 290.00
Last night we stayed at a really nice campground that was quite tranquil... until... the hoard of wedding revelers from the hall next door decided they were all too drunk to drive home and descended on the campground at around 3:00 or 4:00AM. Ugh. Thank goodness for ear plugs. A high point for me at breakfast was seeing the guy who camped out in his suit. There's nothing worse than getting drunk, sleeping out, and waking up the next day in your suit. Hehehe.
The awesome thing about our campground is that we met Maryvonne and Valerie from Les Sables D'Olonne. Maryvonne is an experienced cycle tourist and she set up a long weekend cycle tour for Valerie's son who was celebrating his 16th birthday. Such great people and I got my first "French style hug" from Maryvonne. Yay! As we cycled today, we "leap frogged" them several times as we all cycle at about the same pace. Hopefully they'll come visit us in Canada some day and we can take them cycling in the Kettle Valley Rail Trail.
Today was another easy day of cycling. Kilometers and kilometers along very flat dikes. My favorite part was cycling on Ile de Chalonnes.
We're camping out tonight at Camping Du Port in la Possonniere where we met Mark from the Netherlands. He is touring France as an alternate to Ireland which proved to be too windy for a tour right now. It worked out well for him since his folks are camping in the south of France, so he will tour down to where they are and then catch a lift back home with them.


2015-05-25 : Loire à Vélo / EuroVelo 6 to St. Mathurin-sur-Loire *Whit Monday
Category Type Name Description Service Provider Cost Kms To Date Total
Activity Cycle Loire à Vélo / EuroVelo 6 la Possonniere to St. Mathurin-sur-Loire
$0.00 42.00 332.00
We got a bit of an early start this morning when it started drizzling shortly after we woke up. We packed up quickly and got on the road. We got drizzled on a little bit but it turned out to be a great day for riding - beautiful weather.
We took a detour at Ste-Gemmes-sur-Loire to find a grocery store before it closed (short hours on Mondays). We're having to plan around the business hours for Sundays and Mondays... there have been a couple of times we've run dangerously short on food and nothing is open. After we found the grocery store we had another detour near les-Ponts-de-Ce. We had gone a ways on the main road to find the grocery and then had to figure out where we were and how to get back on the velo path. We missed a small bridge and ended up on a greenway that we thought was "the" velo path but turned out to be just "a" velo path. We were a few hundred meters north of our path... on the wrong side of a body of water. With a little back tracking and sleuthing, we managed to find out way back onto the path.
We're camped tonight at Camping Port La Vallee in St-Mathurin-sur-Loire. It's our third night in a row camping, and our second night in a row without WiFi. We've decided to camp as much as possible for the next little while. We probably won't have our tent in the UK, and after we return it may be too stinkin' hot for camping so now is our camping sweet spot.
Thankfully we survived the May long weekend in France. I was quite disappointed the last couple of nights with the long weekend celebrations... folks in France have absolutely no more class than Canadians. Drunken debauchery until 4AM both nights, and last night was even complete with a late-60s Ford Mustang being revved at 4AM by the enthusiastic inebriated owner. This morning we cycled through a park that had garbage and empties strewn about everywhere and spilling out of the trash cans. Who would have guessed.
For the first couple weeks of this trip I wondered why I had lugged the ukulele along. I never had the inclination to play it - it was just extra stuff to worry about... not that it's heavy, but inconvenient because I was always worried about it getting squished. At about week three, the urge to uke returned and I've been happily uking at least once a day. It's good. At last night's campground, Brent caught a camper from a few doors down singing along while we played and sang Hallelujah. Awesome.
The backpacking wine carafe. I had stricken it from the list of gear to bring. Brent brought it along anyway. That's why Brent is the smart one.


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