Category: Biking

With great reluctance I departed from  Le Clos du Fouan  into the grey & wet morning. I headed back down to the canal, marvelling at the size of the barges, probably equivalent to half a dozen UK ones also on the distance between locks, this part of France is certainly flat. I left the canal at La Bassèe had a cake and coffee and then headed into the French road system. My carefully constructed route on Viewranger quickly turned to shambles when confronted by strictly no cycling signs and huge artics squeezing past. I hastily made another route which interestingly took me through all the ex mining village’s & distinctive conical pit tips.

I tried to repeat last nights success using @aroundme all it came with is the L’Aquarium Hotel with it’s closed restaurant,  this poor motel styled hotel is rather cut off by a motorway, high speed train track and a dual carriageway. But once you have navigated in it’s clean with good showers.

I’ve spent the evening using Viewranger to edit tomorrows route using the Bing aerial photos as a background so I can physically see the towpaths, fields and absence of bridges.

Legs are starting to loosen up and Sally’s pressie of Endura overshoes certainly came in very handy preventing wet feet, until google maps had me going down farm tracks with deep puddles 🙁

Here is the Strava result for the day:

A short day of 49 miles of which 9 were messing about trying to find the hotel, incorrectly shown on Aroundme but correct on Google Maps.

The pics are here today.

After a most magnificent breakfast at the Oyster Guest House, unusually, in my experience, cooked by the landlady.

I started  the final UK leg to Dover, I opted for the scenic route to avoid Canterbury & the evils of the A290.

The first part was on the Oyster Bay cyclepath, A REAL cycle path along the coast to Herne Bay then inland through delightful villages such as Preston finally arriving back on the coast at Sandwich. The ride along the coast here was pretty tough with a  10-15mph head wind. Then the monster climb from Kingsdown beach to St Margaret’s.

The descent into Dover was once again marred by the wretched Route 1 Kissing gates (although slightly larger this time) really pleased to be leaving those obstructions behind.

£20 later and I was grateful to be aboard the DFDS ferry to Calais, as the rain had started 🙁 I managed a lovely Facetime chat with Isla who enjoyed seeing the white cliffs of Dover from the ship 🙂

Now booked into the Hotel Pacific which I’m pretty sure is where I stayed last time.  Tonights Moule Marineres were made rather exciting as suddenly the heavens opened up with amazing ferocity . all we customers had to hang onto the awning to prevent its escape onto the English Channel.

Once again struggling to get internet access in France. I finally, reluctantly, decided to get the SFR Web Trotter dongle with a 4GB allowance to be used in 30 days. Lets hope it works, seems to be taking ages to charge up. The shop opens at 10am tomorrow…..

Todays Strava stats for the 39 miles (I did 3 more miles in Calais) are here:

and the days pics are here