The Last Day

French Section Only

Another great sleep, at the Auberge De Cheval Blanc - possibly better than we'd have had at the Prancing Pony! And Madame was just as considerate and helpful as yesterday, it would be nice to return.

All packed up for the last time, it's actually sunny! The roads are easy-going northern France style, which is good enough for the time being. There is a lot of traffic and so on going through Le Mans, but before we get there, we get to ride down the (in)famous Mulsanne Straight, so well-known to Le 24 Heures de Le Mans fans. At least neither of us took off and dived into the trees, like one Mercedes did a while back, at 200mph... The armco is stacked 3 sections high, and there are catch fences in  front of what are presumably critical places, although it seems a bit random - many private houses don't seem to have any, which can't be good.

Still waiting for food...

 Lunch was another restaurant stop, we had the menu but skipped dessert and coffee, owing to the fact that we reckoned we needed to keep moving. The place was absolutely packed, it's easy to see why no restauranteur wants to do anything but the menu for lunch, there's no time or resources to do anything different. Good though - pickled herring and potato salad, with steamed haddock in a cream sauce with cauli/broccoli au gratin for John, and smoked ham and beef bourguignon with spuds for Jim.
It wasn't long after we'd got going again that the wind arrived - huge wind, coming from the west, the bikes were really kicking around and it got pretty scary at times, especially with trucks coming in the opposite direction - they provide a very brief shelter and then BANG! the wind comes back in with the added effect of their tailwind - nasty! Needless to say, it rained... Too much to hope for, no rain I suppose.

We did arrive in plenty of time, which was good - it's always good to be relaxed! The guys parked beside us in a Ford had been bivvying beside a carp fishing lake in Normandy all week, and had seen every possible kind of weather over that time, from shorts/t-shirts to freezing cold, with thunderstorms and rain in between. Made us feel like complete wimps...

First on, all tied down safe

The trip itself was easy enough - we sat around for 6 hours, eating and drinking, talking about things, John drew a picture of the view from the window, read Jim some of a novel from his Kindle... the usual kind of stuff!

We finally docked 15 minutes late, but getting off was pretty easy. People do like to talk to one - the guy beside us in a pimped Mercedes van with family had driven the entire way from the S of France and was driving on to Preston, so much easier as he was happy to point out, than doing it on a bike! Thanks mate.

And it was wet all the way home, not raining hard, but enough, zooming through the night on the A34. Finally arrived about 11pm, waving goodbye to Jim at the end of his road, and pleased to see Jen and have a cup of tea at the end of a pretty epic 2500 miles!