The Last Leg – Le Mont Saint Michel to London

Meeting the Atlantic ocean at Le Mont Saint Michel was a point of reflection. Having been on the road for what was approaching three months, we were looking across the water into the blank space that we knew England to occupy. The curve of the horizon and the sound of seagulls were testament to the fact that our time on the road was ebbing. Soon we would be at our journey’s end.

Sentimentality to one side though, we packed up the tent and wacked out the camp stove and bunsen-burnered up a coffee. Occupying the prime tourist view point at 6am, we had a breakfast of bread and honey whilst we watched the fortressed island glow fiery red with the dawning sun.

With our eyes filled with the scene, we set off for the day, covering ground around the bay. Making it into Avaranches, the colour of the clouds began to change. Consulting the weather radars, the cause for concern was all too apparent. With this one of the biggest towns en route, we decided to look for cover, grab some lunch and wait out the weather…

And soon, the rain fell, only to be broken by teasing patches of more traditionally overcast skies. Sat in the trolley park of a supermarket, we sat down and enjoyed great shelter, but also great boredom. Unable to make any real progress, we took to properly scouring the aisles, and soon found that the “Back to School” section housed little boxes of piff-paffs – the small white paper bags with a little explosive in the middle that pop upon contact with the floor.

This was frankly brilliant. Between flicking them at each other and occasionally fumbling one onto the floor, we were able to pass some time while being idle.

Yet the rain kept coming. Full from our lunch, Will ended up nodding off against a wall, whilst Stef took some time to flick through her phone.

Eventually, we moved on, but with the most part of the day ushered away in the rain, we made it a modest 20 kilometres further up the road to the town of Villedieu-Les-Poeles, where in the dark we found a hippodrome and stuck up the tent. With the forecast looking good for the rest of the night, we were confident of keeping dry.

How wrong we were.

The alarm sung out at 5.30am, as a new volley of rain flittered in. That being so, we stayed put, but with the knowledge that the race track would open at 8am, we knew that if it didn’t stop, we would have to pack everything in the rain.

And that’s what happened. At 7am we could wait no longer and we packed our mats, put on our coats and stepped out of the tent.

With everything needing rolling, folding and arranging into our panniers, getting our bikes ready to roll took us a speedy 5 minutes. Even this though was enough to soak us to the bone. Once on the road, we tried out the train station for cover but found that it was closed for refurbishment. Instead, we had to roll into town and linger in a café come betting shop as the rest of the town swept in to buy the occasional scratch card or put money on Lucky Legs to come first in the Coutances Derby.

Leaving puddles on the floor as we checked phones for weather updates, we stuck around, waiting until we steadily started to dry out. Leaving the café, we moved on to a boulangerie and snuck ourselves some croissants to compensate for the drizzly and dreary morning. Riding onwards, we made our way deeper into Normandy and towards Saint Lo, where we stopped for lunch. Watching a number of other tourers ride around, we were clearly in good company.

After taking lunch, we pushed for our day’s final destination – Omaha Beach – site of the D-Day landings. Twisting and turning through the lumps and hedged lanes that lined the coast, we rose and fell past cider farms, finally making it towards the sandy shallow shores at Colleville-Sur-Mer.

Pushing our bikes about, we read the memorials and walked around the bunkers on the beachhead. With the day drawing in though, our mind was half on finding a place to sleep. We drifted into the small resort now situated on the seafront out of curiosity before deciding to return to the dunes and make camp with a view of the horizon and the troubled sea before us.

We quietly cooked ourselves another one pot dinner and put up our tent in a divot that gave us some cover from the wind. Our heads down at sunset, we were ready to rise with the sun.

Rising with a falling tide, we watched the shoreline receed and the day begin.

With history crystallised on this coastline, we took the time to visit the American cemetery and see for ourselves the rows of crosses.

Sobering and sombre, having taken it in we moved onwards, following the coastal road through the myriad towns and tiny villages that bore the brunt of the allied assault.

Visiting these villages was a veritable procession of cars. From every nation of western Europe a registration plate would whizz past us at an uncomfortably close distance. It was quite a spectacle, but it was also rather intimidating. Clearly here to remember, these cars were sadly not retaining a clear memory of how to drive with due care and attention.

Armed with boxes of piff-paffs however, we were determined to make our distaste for their driving known with distinctive popping noises on their bumpers. We made steady ground onwards along the coast, and by lunch time, we found ourselves in the port town of Ouistrham. Taking great care to stop for a “moules frites” that we had been longing to enjoy since the restaurants started advertising them.

A little time on our hands, we decided to peak our heads into the ferry terminal in the port and check prices. With a rather eye watering €150 quote for the next boat to the wrong part of Blighty, we set ourselves on covering the final 100 or so miles that remained to Dieppe. The previous quote having us panicked, Will got on the blower to the boat masters in Dieppe and bagged two tickets home for just £66.

This being the case, we decided that we needed to make a move. From Ouistrham, we followed the river back until the crossing at Pegasus Bridge, sweeping by the Café Gondré, the first house in France to be liberated in 1944. Pushing further onwards and along the coast, we made it quickly into Deauville and Trouville. Traditionally the party and play towns of rich Parisians, the number of cars from the 75 region rocketed, whilst driving standards lowered further. Three near misses later, we made the decision to make the steep climb out of town pronto.

Finally out of the city, we had a final set of slopes to tackle down towards Honfleur. The home town of Eric Satie, we were drawn initially to the local campsite, but upon finding it was full, we started to doubt our plans. We moved onwards and into town to take in the nightlife at full tilt, but other than asking a hotel to charge a power pack over night, we came up short. Riding back, we found a nice quiet patch around the back of a car park, shielded by trees and quite secluded. We got out the stove and started dinner before setting up the tent.

The next morning we packed up quickly, retrieved the battery pack from the hotel and sat in the harbour, brewing a coffee and chomping on some more bread and honey. After putting the lid back on the honey jar, we continued, onto one of the most iconic river crossings yet.

The Pont de Normandie was perhaps the largest road that we would tackle, itself a motorway over the river Seine. We made our ground over it, cautious of speeding trucks whilst nestled in a neck of the bottle thin bike lane. After crossing, we wound our way onto small roads once more, and spiralled to the north, dropping in on a carnival, complete with marching bands and copius quantities of confetti. Tearing ourselves away, we pushed onwards to finish the day on the outskirts of Dieppe.

A small municipal campsite delivering us our last night in France, we washed our dank and stinky clothes as best we could before making the return across the water.

Waking the next morning, we had only a 5 mile pedal into Dieppe, from where we would catch our ferry at 17hs. The last hill tearing at our legs, we made it to the harbour and the beach, enjoyed a wind swept picnic, dozed, and then frantically set about writing, stamping and sending twenty postcards we had hoarded since Nice. By the time we made it to the ferry terminal, we were thoroughly out of saliva.

Handing over our passports for only the second time on our trip, the weight of the return became quite apparent. Happily though, a huge cohort of Italian cycle tourers, over 50 in total decided to share our grey and dreary ferry ride, and their wide eyed intrepid enthusiasm for the sceptered isle encapsulated the same anticipation we had displayed upon reaching each frontier. Surrounded otherwise by rather dreary curtain conversations and “gunna win the leag” chat, for all the water in the channel, the boat back was a rather grounding experience.

Landing in Newhaven, we waited in a passport queue for a while as each rider was processed individually. While waiting, a trio of English tourers got talking and gave us a tip on a wild camping spot.

Heading out of Newhaven, we rode towards Lewes and onto the Egret’s Way. Thoroughly perplexed to be riding back on the left side of the road, we served about a bit to begin with.

A small gravel path through fields, we were able to stop and put up our tent – our last night under canvas. With the air heavy with water and thick with the smell of sheep manure, we took good note of the stars above, and sat down for our final pasta, tuna, sweetcorn meal as the moon swept through the sky. Blowing up our mattresses for the last night, we were asleep by 11:30pm, with an alarm set for 5.30am. Night 90 of our trip, three months on the road exactly.

And so the final sunrise of our trip ushered in the final stretch of pedalling. Packing our kit into the bag for the final time, we made our way back to the road and pedalled into Lewes. Continuing through the dense traffic of town, we soon turned off and moved onto the smaller roads around Wivelsfield and Haywards Heath. Going well, we began our own real hill climb of the day, up through Ardingly and onto Turner’s Hill. It being just nine in the morning but having already covered 45 kilometres, we were rather peckish. We wandered into a convenience shop that conveniently seemed to be selling it’s own pasties, and took one each. After stumbling over words in English, we could clearly see that this was going to take some getting used to.

We continued on, into Smallfield and Whitebushes before making it back into the realms of our familiarity at Reigate. We continued along the main road until we made it to Dorking, but with it being only 14hrs, we decided it best to pause and hover around some shops, desperately hoping to prolong our tour.

After visiting every charity shop in town, we ventured ourselves one last cafe stop, but finding our favourite haunt closed for summer holidays, there was precious little that remained – just 20 kilometres of our tour remained.

Past intimately known potholes and slight rises in the road, we steadily ticked off the small towns – Leatherhead, Oxshott, Esher. Then, with one final blast down Littleworth Road, we took our turn, rolled to a halt, and got off our bikes.

 

We rode out and we had ridden back.