Merville-Franceville-Plage to Dieppe – 170km

Newhaven to Burgess Hill – 30km

As I’d visited all the landing beaches, I had some choices on getting back home. Either take a couple of days or just blast it. Plotting the route it seemed to be exactly 100 miles and I haven’t ridden a “Century” for a long while (or very often).So together with the fact that I’d recently been doing some armchair “dot watching” on ultra distance cycle races, and i felt like stretching my legs. The “dot watching” had been initially following my nephew on the 2,300km Pan Celtic Race, and subsquently just generally following the trials and tribulations of the 10th running of the 4,000+ km Trans Continental Race. Looking at the Dieppe ferries, there was one at 5pm and the next 1am. The later one seemed more likely, so a plan was set.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get the best night’s sleep. My trusty air mattress developed an unsightly bulge. The more I blew it up, the bulge got bigger rather than the airbed getting firmer, so I had to sleep on it when it was relatively flat. I was woken up in the middle of the night by a high pitch buzz in my ear, which I thought was a Mosquito. I got a torch out to track it down, but the noise was coming from the airbed. I tried letting out pressure, or putting a bit more air in, but it was an inconsistent and the noise continued sporadically. I was about to throw the bed out when I found it was an insect (maybe a bumble bee) trapped under the ground sheet. I tried to ease it out to the side and get back to sleep. This is all I needed before a long ride.

I got away after 9, after throwing the airbed away. It had been really good and lasted 10 years, it was one of my original pieces of kit bought to cycle to the north of Finland and Norway. As I pulled out of the campsite, directly on the EuroVelo 4 cycleway (which goes from Roscoff to Kiev), a Dutch couple passed me. We would change position a number of times for the next few hours, without ever actually overtaking. It’s all in the route planning, sometimes I would take signed turn and end up behind them, and vice versa. When I thought I’d lost them behind, I’d see them ahead on a long hill, it kept me entertained.

I didn’t take too many pictures as my focus was on keeping moving, and in the right direction. This proved impossible when I came across a police road block. It seemed like lots of caravans (travellers?) were moving into a field. The field already had over a 100 caravans setting up, and there must be more on the road. Obviously it was right at the bottom of a hill so I would have to cycle back up. A cyclist pedalling up had shouted something at me as I was wizzing down, I now know what, but at the time I just replied with the traditional “bonjour”. It wasn’t 100% sure whether the policeman would let me through or not – his English was terrible haha – so I elected on finding a diversion. As I was going up the hill, I managed to stop the Dutch couple. The first diversion ended in a really overgrown bridleway, which was just going to waste lots of time so I headed back to bigger roads. I last saw the Dutch couple as they were ready to tackle the undergrowth as a challenge, they said it would remind them of riding offroad in England!.

At the end of the diversion, there were still 20 or more caravans queueing in the main road, waiting to turn down where the cycleway should have exited. It would have been quite a thing to see them moving en-mass. After 60km I stopped for lunch, the leftovers from yesterday, right outside a church. I checked the map, and yes the attached graveyard had a water tap. This was good news, except the map showed it at top of the graveyard up a big hill. I thought I’d better check out the tap before gorging myself on my remaining water. I was pleased to find the working tap only halfway up the hill and even more pleased, on the way down, to find one behind the gate near where I was sitting.

It had been a much cooler day, which was good, but rain was threatening. This helped keep my impetus. Another thing that helped was my handlebar speaker. I always bring it, but rarely use it except on long, busy, noisy roads. However, today I really enjoyed the Radio 5 live Olympic coverage all day. It was excellent.

My route dropped down to the Seine, which is immensely wide a some points. I crossed the river on the Pont de Brotonne. It looked a bit intimidating, but wasn’t too bad, and cyclist got a whole lane to themselves.

I was doing ok on time, but I was getting slower and needed more food. I spotted that my path went right passed a Eclerc supermarket in Yvetot. It was massive, and took me ages to pick the few things I wanted. It was easier to buy a sack of 10 baguettes than just a half baguette. After packing my bike, I noticed a McDonalds. It had been drizzling a bit, was about 5pm so it seemed an appropriate place to stop. I can eat the other food later. I felt close enough to book on the night ferry, and after some faffing around with old logins and app pages that don’t work, I found all sailings over the weekend sold out with the exception of 6:30 tomorrow morning. I booked it, maybe I can change it, or at worst, spend the night in the ferry port.

The rain got worse, and it even started raining in the Stade de France, so I didn’t feel alone. As it was getting dimmer and intermittently wetter, I couldn’t resist the perfect bench under a huge sheltering tree. I did consider staying  here and cycling the last 20km later for the 6:30am ferry. A barking dog convinced me to carry on.

The main run into Dieppe is along old railway lines, or Voie Vert. This was perfect in the rain and diminishing light as navigation was very easy. I found a bus shelter to huddle in so I could enter the advanced passport details, I wanted to give myself the best chance to change my booking later on. I also scoped out the route into Dieppe. All the cycle planners showed the route going to the neighbouring coastal town with what looked like (and was) a climb up and down into Dieppe. The run through the town was good. I didn’t even think about using the cycle lanes on dark wet streets. It was just before 10pm so it had taken me about 12 hours to cycle 100 miles. To be fair a lot of that time was in McDonalds as the service was terrible ;)

I headed straight to the Ferry Port where cars were already queuing and cut through to the ticket office. I had to wait outside in the rain to hear the conclusion of a boxing match featuring an Irish woman. She lost, but my ticket was changed without a blink.  I joined the car queue, with everyone in their nice warm, dry boxes, jockeying to keep cyclist out in the rain for longer. Nice. Caught up with a young German guy, Noel, who was cycling to Brighton, for Pride, before cycling up to Cardiff. He’s done some good trips, cycling through Canada and getting his bicycle through Paris during the mens Olympic Road Race earlier today! Good luck with your trip.

We arrived at 5am which, surprisingly to me, was very dark. It was a really nice ride through familiar lanes as dawn arrived and everything gradually woke up around you.

All in all, a very good trip. Cycle camping touring along the Normandy coast is really nice and very accessible, I’d really recommend it to anyone. The history, and the way the French have preserved it is amazing. The message is clear and current history shows how precarious peace, even in Europe, is. The amount of effort put into WW2 is staggering, from the extent of the German defences that stretched from Norway to Spain, and for the Allied Forces to mobilise so many men and equipment. Imagine if all that time and resource from both sides had been used for something useful. On a personal level, it’s the only trip I’ve done from home and not used any other form of transport (other than boats). This in itself was very rewarding. Also it was really nice heading off knowing I’d be sightseeing and stopping frequently. Stopping usually make me feel guilty, but with no distances planned, it was really good. Also I was very pleased to complete over 200km in 24 hours, including at night and in rain. Not quite up to Ultra Racing standards, but I’m more than happy