Friday
After much behind the scenes organizing by Peter Walton, D-day finally arrived. At around 9 am on a sunny Friday morning, Peter Walton, Richard Henderson, Steve McCollum and Simon Costello assembled at the War Memorial in Hertford ready to depart for Portsmouth. At about 9:05, we all stopped at Brickenden Lane to fix Simon’s panniers. This became a recurring theme for the morning ride to Datchet. Graham Knight joined the ride to accompany us for the morning and to help with the mechanicals along the way. We made slow but steady progress, seeing the sights of Oxhey where Peter grew up, through Denham and onto Datchet near Windsor for lunch.
After lunch, we headed southwest past Sunningdale Golf Course and onto Farnham for chips and more pannier repairs. Heading out of Farnham, Simon handed over the baton to Peter, whose back rack decided to come loose. However we overcome these troubles with more cable ties and carried on into the countryside. For the latter part of the journey we were joined by Bruno who guided us through the South Downs, regaling us with tales of terrible hills. Ok, there was one, and Peter was the only one who got to the top. Steve almost made it, with the rest of us seeing sense and walking. Then it was a long fairly uneventful descent into Portsmouth, with only the occasional wrong turn, before we rolled up to the dockside around 9pm. All the contingency time had been taken up by the morning mechanicals, so we arrived to meet the rest of the Wheelers on the dockside fresh from their car journeys south to board the ferry, where food, beer and sleep were all attempted with varying degrees of success depending on which other members of the great British travelling public were snoring (or worse) nearby on the reclining seats.
Saturday
We disembarked and rode the couple of miles to the hotel, where the owner kindly let us drop our bags in a room around 7:30 am. So off we all set heading west in search of breakfast.
A slight misunderstanding after breakfast saw the group split in two – some heading for Arromanches to see the beach and the rest heading straight for Bayeux to visit the tapestry. Fortunately we all met up for a very enjoyable lunch in the sunshine and then we all headed to Arromanches to see the harbour and sea defences built for the Normandy landings. A few took the opportunity to stretch our legs and have a fast ride back to Lion-sur-Mer on the excellent road surfaces with the wind behind us before retiring for an afternoon nap and freshen up. We were joined by Jane, who had travelled over with Danny and Rob on the morning ferry, in time for an aperitif (beer) before dinner.
Sunday Morning
After a pleasant breakfast at the hotel, we gathered at the start of the Lion-sur-Mer audax. Jason went off like a hare, and the rest soon split into two groups – a faster and slower group. Brian Hill, Steve, Simon and Richard were in the fast group and after 5 miles or so, we saw Jason coming up from behind, as he had got lost coming out of Lion and taken the wrong turn. We gracefully let him catch us and we then continued in our chain to combat the headwind, but still enabling us to ride at a fast pace. We kept the pace reasonably fast until we got distracted by a car boot sale in the middle of nowhere. At this point, any business sense and negotiating skills held by this group of professionals seemed to vanish, as Brian fell in love with Louise…. €20 later we had a deer’s head sticking out of a pannier which caused some bewilderment among the French cyclists from Caen who we overtook. They caught us up at the next junction as we were bemused by the route instructions, before we overtook them again. This happened several times before we agreed to cycle with them and let them guide us for a couple of hours, even going off route to show us a local Chateau. They peeled off before the end and they didn’t want to go back to Lion but they made sure we got on the right road before leaving us.
When we got back to the clubhouse we were delighted to be greeted with a roar from the assembled cyclists as well as having a beer placed in our hands. Words cannot properly express the level of hospitality we received. A five course meal, with a small bottle of wine each, great atmosphere and even some special ‘Perrier’ which we had to drink in one go to toast ‘La Reine’. A little later the main group arrived with tales of stopping at a different Sunday market.
After lunch, we all gathered our things and said our farewells to the main group who headed back for the late afternoon ferry. Peter, Simon, Steve, Bruno and I found a pleasant seafront café (with wind protection) where we enjoyed a coffee with live music before moving to a restaurant for a three course meal (we were hungry with 3 days of cycling under our belt). Bruno stayed in Lion before continuing his French odyssey from Normandy to Calais over the next few days while we headed for the overnight ferry.
Monday
“I know this good way out of Portsmouth,” said Peter heading up the steepest hill possible shortly after leaving the harbour. Once at the top, we cycled a long descent back to sea level and then headed north into the downs. We did stop at a perfect café for big bacon rolls for breakfast and all felt better for it. The journey north was hard through the South Downs, hilly through Guildford and finally flat from Woking (brief mutiny about which way to go) to Staines and back to Datchet where we had lunch again. The afternoon was fairly uneventful, though we were all getting a bit grumpy and tired and we finally rolled back into Hertford at around 6 pm.
In Hertford after 320 miles of cycling in 4 days.
This was another fantastic excursion into France. Peter organized the ferries, the hotels and the entry for the audax, so thank you on behalf of all the wheelers on the trip. My own thanks also go to Jason who carried my bag in his car. What about 2012 anyone?
French Invaders were: Peter, Jason, Barry, Jane, Nikki, Simon, Steve McC, Steve W, Valdis, Bruno, Danny, Brian H, Rob (guest) and myself.
Richard Henderson
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