Friday 24 June

I had planned to cycle to Portsmouth on Thursday and Friday, and to cycle back to London on Tuesday and Wednesday, but those plans were shelved due to a couple of domestic crises during the week.

The previous few days have been scorching, but heavy rain is forecast for later today.  We shall see what transpires.  

We meet at Enfield Station - Bharat, Ian, John, Kieron, Lyn, Peter, Richard, and myself.  Gavin is also there, sans vélo (gosh, I’m getting the hang of this French stuff already), since he just happens to be going somewhere by train at the same time as us.

Alan and Günsel board the train at later stations, and we all disembark at Liverpool Street, where Jane joins us.

We ride to Waterloo.  Though not in the concept of “towards Waterloo”, since we end up heading south-east when we’re meant to be heading west.  Our navigation (well, Richard’s, actually) is corrected by the police – not by a mere constable, but by a chief superintendent who happens to be passing.

Somehow we get to Waterloo, where we board two trains to Portsmouth.  We can’t get all the bikes on one train, but we were aware of that.  A moment of panic when a rail official mistakenly tells us that we can only put three bikes on a train, but it all works out ok.

When the second faster train overtakes the first slower train, we in the slower train are pleased to see that, purely by happenstance, our window is right next to the window of our clubmates in the other train.  But we’re less amused to see that they’re knocking back some cans of beer while we’re abstinent.

We get to Portsmouth, and the heavens open.  It buckets down torrentially, and the noise of the rain on the station roof renders conversation impossible.  When it improves, we go outside, but then thunder and lightning start, and the storm is almost directly overhead.  The gods are not pleased.

I reflect on my good fortune in having domestic crises that stop me cycling through such weather – perhaps the gods are trying to tell me something, such as the fact that I’m getting too old to do so much cycling.

Rebecca arrives on a later train, and we set off for the ferry terminal.  Jane knows Portsmouth, so she leads the way.  After being on the correct route, Jane decides that we should take a different route, so we cross the road and follow the signs for the port.  This takes us round a huge one-way system for about a mile ….. and we end up exactly where we’d been in the first place.  We arrive at the ferry port in dribs and drabs, but, thanks to the wonders of mobile phones, we all make it.  Steve, being a Portsmouth local, turns up.  He’s highly amused by Jane’s navigation.

We’ve cycled a grand total of 9 miles today.  So it’s a good thing that we had Jane’s detour to make up the mileage.

Saturday 25 June

We grab an on-board breakfast, disembark at Saint Malo, and take the coast road to Cancale.  It’s a nice route, and I’m sure that it would look lovely without the mist and the intermittent drizzle.  But we enjoy it anyway.

Near the Pointe du Grouin, Ian, Kieron, and I take a brief detour to look at the Pointe, and then we ride to Cancale where we descend a terrifying hill to the coast and meet the others for coffee.  John suggests that we don’t eat there, but that we save our appetites for lunch.  Some have a bite to eat, some don’t – this later becomes relevant.

The weather is getting better.  We climb out of Cancale on a steep road, then we check some tyre pressures since I’d noticed earlier that Lyn’s rear tyre looked a bit squashed on the road.  Lyn and Rebecca are riding tyres that are badly underinflated, so we remedy that.

We head south to Châteauneuf d’Ille-et-Villaine.  We keep splitting into different groups – it’s rather main-road-ish, but there’s no practical alternative.  Some of us (such as myself) are starving hungry, and therefore are desperate to get to the lunch stop.  Bharat and Günsel vanish into the distance, and I’m sent off to rein them in – they’re about a kilometre ahead.

We reach Châteauneuf (which is Newcastle, to us) and have pancakes all round.  Kieron fits new brake-blocks to Jane’s front brake.  A few glasses of wine, and Alan becomes quietly Merlot-ed.  Well, not that quietly, actually.  But it’s all good humoured, and he manages to ride his bike safely afterwards.

The weather is by now really quite pleasant.  At Pleudihen, Alan gets a puncture, and the pair of intercoms that John’s provided come in very useful for keeping everybody in touch, despite my natural talent for pressing the wrong buttons each and every time.  We head towards Dinan, where we climb the hill to our hotel.  A satisfying day all round – 39 miles.

John is rather put out to find that the six double rooms and one single room have been misunderstood as 13 double rooms.  Oops!  But it’s all ok, and Madame is extremely helpful.  She telephones the next night’s hotel so that John can check that the bookings there are ok.

The tour’s first major disaster strikes – Jane Has Brought The Wrong Shampoo With Her, so getting ready for dinner takes ages for her and Steve.  There is no word adequate to express Steve’s reaction ….. oh yes, it’s “hilarity”.

After showering, we stroll round Dinan, listen to the jazz in the square with the occasional drink, enjoy a most amenable dinner (at a restaurant recommended by Madame), listen to some more jazz with more drinks, and end up back at the hotel at one o’clock.  Far later than I’m used to, but it was just too enjoyable to retire earlier.

Sunday 26 June

I pack my panniers – damn, I’ve left my knee warmers at Chateauneuf.  Oh well, that’ll give me an excuse to buy some nicer ones some time.  I won’t need then today anyway, it’s a bit warmer than yesterday.

Breakfast at the hotel, and we hit the road.  Well, we would have hit the road, but Lyn has an overnight puncture.  We fix that, take lots of group photos, and drop down the hill to Dinan’s port, which is quite lovely

It is a gorgeous day.  We meander alongside the river Rance.  At one juncture, we cross a road where an English couple are concerned about a leak from their car.  John reassures them that it’s just condensation from the air conditioning, and it’s quite normal – we seem to be spreading a little sunshine wherever we go.

We rejoin the road and head for Plouër-sur-Rance and a coffee stop.  At Minihic, we split into two groups, with Alan, Jane, John, Lyn, Rebecca, and Steve heading directly to Dinard while Bharat, Günsel, Ian, Kieron, Peter, Richard, and myself take a slightly longer route.

We go to Saint Briac-sur-Mer via my rather ad hoc navigation.  The Michelin map indicates that the view from the bridge over to Saint Jacut-de-la-Mer “vaut le detour”, so we ride out on the bridge.  They’re not wrong – the view of Saint Briac from the bridge looks more like a beautiful seaside postcard than any postcard ever could.  Lots of photos, then into Saint Briac.

At a beach-side stall, I have a late lunch of croque monsieur, frites, and an orangina.  I’m hungry, it tastes great, the sun is shining, does life get much better than this? – not without taking one’s clothes off.  We paddle in the sea, listen to the band playing – this really is the life.  Little did we know what the next hour would bring…..

We set off, and Bharat is delayed by a problem with one of his panniers hitting the spokes.  A kilometre later, and it does it again, but this time it manages to jump off the carrier and wedge itself ‘twixt the carrier and the rear wheel.  The whole thing is locked completely solid.  We sort it out, and set off again.

Only a few minutes later, we’re going along a narrow road, Peter tries to jump his bike up onto the pavement in order to let the car behind get past, and bang, down he goes.  Blood from his leg, front light smashed.

Günsel and I had been in front of Peter, and so we hadn’t seen what happened.  Günsel berates the motorist for knocking Peter off his bike.  Some things never change, do they?  Peter insists that it was entirely his own fault, and I (as the token translator) persuade the motorist not to worry.  Richard provides excellent first aid to Peter, and we set off.  Accidents happen in threes, so what will happen next?

Minutes later, Richard stops at the roadside and tells us to continue.  His shoelace had come undone.  We jokingly say that this was the third accident that we’d been expecting.

Now it’s either into Dinard and take the ferry to Saint Malo, or head south and pick up the main road that crosses the Rance to Saint Malo.  We decide that the ferry will be nicer.  So we do a tour of Dinard, but we don’t find the ferry.  It’s now near the time of the last ferry, so we go for Plan B.  We head towards the main road, and Bharat gets a speck of grit in his eye.  It’s really painful, but fortunately we have enough water to try to wash it out.  This must be the real third accident, and Richard gets a lot of ribbing about his shoelace.

We reach the main road.  Mon dieu, it’s like a motorway.  But we have no choice, and we press on.  Crossing the Rance is really rather beautiful, but it’d have been a lot more beautiful from the ferry.

I navigate (and I’m using the term loosely) in a Saint Malo-ish direction, and suddenly we find the hotel by happenstance.  Kieron has punctured about a kilometre earlier, so we’ve had a rather more eventful afternoon than we’d have preferred.

36 miles – an excellent day except for the catalogue of disasters.

 Much hilarity at Peter’s sunburn and mine, and huge amounts of mock sympathy about Richard’s shoelace.  It’s a good thing that Richard is so good natured, since someone (I won’t say who, but for the sake of argument I’ll refer to him as Kieron) goes quite quite over the top in shoelace fantasies.

Bharat’s eye is still sore, so we have a look and find some grit under an eyelid – we remove the grit and he feels so much better immediately.

Off to an Alsacien restaurant that the hotel receptionist has recommended, and we commit some serious eating.  An excellent meal, and the mousse au chocolat really is to die for.  I could get used to this life.

During dinner, Richard is subjected to continuous ribbing about shoelaces.  Richard’s mobile phone rings (it’s Rebecca, who’d gone walkabout), and there’s a cry of “Shoelace Emergency Hotline – can I help you?”  You’re getting the picture, I’m sure – it really was quite over the top.  If a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing.

Some of us return to the hotel to sleep, some return to the hotel to pick up warmer clothing, others meander towards the port.  I’m in the pick-up-more-clothing group, and with Kieron’s navigation and the wonders of mobile phones we eventually join Ian on the beach, where there’s music, dancing, and a bonfire at the very water’s edge.

It’s pretty dark (well, it is midnight, after all), so we start to head back.  Going past a pub, we find Peter standing in the doorway, drink in hand.  You can imagine our surprise.  (Just in case it isn’t obvious, that’s sarcasm.)  So we go in for a quick drink.  I’m more than ready for sleepy byes, but I don’t know the way to the hotel, so I stay and have a beer.  It’s a most amenable pub, and as we leave I comment to Steve that one of the guys was hitting on Jane.  “Don’t be silly” she says, “he was gay – it’s a gay pub.”  Peter comes in for some ribbing on that account.

Bed at one o’clock for the second night running – my tired old body isn’t used to this.

Monday 27 June

Up early and we ride to the port to get our boarding passes.

But first, Richard has to sort out his shoelaces.  Someone (who’s name begins with K) had been a bit mischievous overnight.  This joke will run for many years, I think.  Many many years.

Back into the town for breakfast.  Yes, I know that a croque monsieur isn’t a traditional breakfast dish, but I may not have another one for quite a while.  Ian and Peter join me in establishing the new breakfast trend.

On the boat, many of us doze off at various stages, what with the warm weather, the late nights, and the strenuous (yeah, right) cycling.  In my case, I’m sure that lunch was a contributory factor to my afternoon nap.  Alan, Ian, Richard, and myself “did” the restaurant for lunch, and Lyn joined us at our table.  On the outward journey, we’d dined at the self-service restaurant, and while some dishes were quite good we were rather disappointed overall.  So this time we opted for the “real” restaurant, with a buffet of starters and a buffet of desserts.  Oh, and a couple of bottles of wine, but I’m sure that that’s not what caused my sleep.  Another excellent meal.  I don’t wish to become a creature of habit, but with habits like that, I really wouldn’t mind.

I watch the kids’ conjuring show, much to Ian’s amusement - I just love watching conjuring.

Ian takes us on a guided tour of the ship, after which I sit down and fall asleep.  Perhaps it’s the excitement of the conjuring that causes my fatigue.  But probably not.

As we wait to disembark, there’s a French couple there with bikes.  I notice that his hub quick-releases are set incorrectly (they’ve been tightened as if they were wing-nuts), so I set them correctly, and centre his rear brake while I’m at it.  For the first time, I’m grateful that the instruction leaflets that came with Simplex gears decades ago were in French, since I now remember the French for a Quick-Release Hub.  I can’t think of the French for anything useful or necessary, but I remember the names of bike parts – I should get a life 

We disembark, Steve navigates us to the station just in time to grab the train to Waterloo, and we manage to get all the bikes on.  On the train, Kieron fixes a slow puncture on Peter’s bike.  Or is it on Peter himself.

Waterloo, and all except me head towards Liverpool Street to pick up the train for Enfield.  I ride home from Waterloo.  19 miles today.

Can’t wait till we do it again next year.

Big big thanks to John for organising the whole thing – without him, none of this would have happened.  John planned it, got us all organised, booked ferries and hotels, and was the motivator for the whole thing.  Also big thanks to Richard for organising all the UK train travel.

Dave Le Fèvre

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