clairedavieswriter

This afternoon I definitely experienced one of those ‘can’t believe I’m here’ moments. It seems that if you start in Fleet and keep pedalling more or less south for over 700km then this is what happens. At the risk of repeating myself, it was another lovely day on the bike. Not having so far to…

Learning from my first night in the tent, I dressed accordingly, and slept very well, once the local likely lads had finished their ‘whose moped has the loudest exhaust’ competition. I was awake early – it’s definitely coldest before dawn – and was packed and ready to go by eight, while the motorhomers slumbered on.…

Today was a glorious day on the bike – cycling south east with the sun on my face and the wind at my back, with scarcely a hill in sight. Bernard may be relieved to know that, notwithstanding his performance over the last couple of days, I would happily ‘adopt the bicycle’. It helped that…

After a night free from neighbourly snoring, I was outside Arnaud’s bike shop when it opened at 10am. Sadly, he wasn’t there, but his colleague willingly set aside whatever he was working on to discuss my situation. Within the hour, he had fitted Bernard with two new Schwalbe Delta Cruise tyres with inner tubes. And…

I’m not a religious person, but I’m starting to believe in guardian angels. More on that in a moment. First though, phrase of the night: “Mon voisin ronfle comme un train”. There was only one other camper on the site – another cyclist. His (competently pitched) tent was about 20 feet from mine and in…

Word of the day: dégonflé. Today was a bit of a let down, metaphorically and literally. Metaphorically, because after five glorious trouble-free days on peaceful voie vertes, in perfect cycling weather, my luck seemed to turn the moment my domestique caught his train home. At this point, I had no idea what trials were in…

This (with the addition of salted caramel spread, obviously) was the perfect cyclist’s breakfast, thanks to Isabelle’s early morning foray to the man in the village who dishes out crêpes from his roulotte. Fully fuelled, we positively flew away from Damgan, although Guillaume and I had the first of several contretemps when I diverted from…

It has been another glorious day of cycling – thanks in large part to the feat of engineering that is the V3 cycle path, which flattened the lumpy Breton terrain and carried us all the way from Plöermel to Questembert on smooth tarmac. We rode along avenues of trees alive with birdsong… … or through…

Before I get on to today, it would be remiss not to mention our gourmet fare last night: Landujan is a modest hamlet of a few dozen (largely invisible) souls, and, somewhat inevitably, its only shop/newsagent/boulangerie/bar/restaurant was closed on Thursdays. However, as luck would have it, an enterprising citizen had installed a vending machine which…

Here’s my domestique looking a sight for sore eyes as our slow boat to St Malo was preparing to dock this morning. His startled expression may have something to do with Brittany Ferries’ uncompromising wake up methods: an eruption of static-distorted Celtic violin music, delivered at top volume to the speaker in our cabin. There…