Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
DAY 4 84km
Much of the morning spent organising and packing equipment, from chain whips to cooking utensils and camping gear. Breakfast, in classic French style, consists of croissants ans pain au chocolats with extra butter. After much repacking and finalising our bike setups, we wave goodbye to our French friends and hit the road, winding along narrow back lanes enclosed by thick hedges, the sun rolling lazily across the blue sky before us.
For a lunch break we stop at Portbail, a quaint fishing village which is linked to Guernsey by ferry. Lunch comprises baguettes, camembert and apple cake, all wolfed down in a matter of minutes between sips of water.
The next leg is spent powering along the coastal road, making our way south. The road is fairly busy but we make good progress. Now I'm beginning to feel like we're really on our way. Some way down this road, before it begins to get dark, Laurence and Ollie pull in to a pub to get in a round of beers, helping themselves to a couple of forks from the dining room with which to eat dinner later that evening. For all their forward planning; everything from portable solar panels to playing cards and marble chess set; forks, it seems, didn't quite make the list. At the shop across the road we stock up on chocolate and a case of beer.
A short distance further down the road, just before the outskirts of Granville, we spot a secluded meadow and pitch the 5-man Colemans family tent which the other two have brought along as lodgings for the trip. The farmers in the adjacent field are milking a cow and have clearly seen us, so I go over to negotiate in my broken French. They readily grant us permission to camp for the night as long as we are gone the next morning.
Laurence cooks up a delicious spaghetti bolognese for dinner while Ollie and I make war on the chessboard over a few beers.
- comments