Tag: bike-touring

Cottenham Ients cycle trip to Normandy!

Cottenham Ients cycle trip to Normandy! We had some fantastic rides through the countryside, by the coast and along the river Vire and on to Bayeaux

22nd to 28 of July 2024

For this trip I decided to give my  son and my grandsons a  chance to visit the Cherbourg peninsula. We travelled to Portsmouth on the train with our bicycles and not the overnight ferry to Cherbourg.  The ferry arrived at 8:00am the next morning so we took the opportunity to go and have a look at the La Cité de la Mer Is a maritime museum in the former cruise liner massive art-deco transatlantic liner terminal building constructed in 1933. We visited the submariners centre.  Well worth a visit. 

We had some fantastic rides through the countryside, by the coast and along the river Vire.  We had a great stopover on the west coast of the peninsula and dined at a superb restaurant overlooking the sea. 

It was William’s birthday, so I treated them to a fine meal and William had fruits de mer which he really enjoyed. During the trip I let the grandsons do the navigation between the towns we were staying at. They did a jolly good job of this.  We had great weather for the trip so it was nice to be able to sit on the roadside or near a village centre and have our midday baguette in the sunshine.

Apart from visiting the west coast of the peninsula we went on to Saint-Lô. On the way we passed through a number of towns and villages which still had the exhibits up in the streets commemorating the 80th anniversary of the liberation of this part of France just after the 6th of June 1944.  I found these particularly interesting.  The devastation at Saint-Lô and these villages was considerable as the battles during the liberation were quite fierce.

From Saint-Lô we travelled on to Bayeaux, firstly via the scenic towpath of the river Vire, where we visited the tapestries. We stayed here two nights in the superb youth hostel right in the centre of the old city. 

Great prices and great facilities.  I fully recommend this hostel. During a coastal  cycle ride  William and Edward took time out to do some kayaking in the calm sea and in the lovely sunshine.

Click HERE for photos of the trip

Click HERE for more information about cycling in France

Click HERE for Remembering the D Day Landings

Maps and Stats:

France Day 1
France Day 2
France Day 3
France Day 5 (Day 4 was sightseeing in Bayeaux)
Stats

French Coast to Coast + Canal du Midi cycle trip 2024- diary notes

French Coast to Coast + Canal du Midi cycle trip 2024. A great trip cycling 631 km!

10th to the 24th of May 2024 by Vic Ient

We cycled coast to coast starting in Royan on the Atlantic coast (Bay of Biscay), firstly along the Gironde, then the Garonne and then the Canal du Midi to Béziers and the river Orb to the Mediterranean coast!

This was a great trip – we cycled 631 km (392 miles). Over 400 miles if you include the trip we did further east in Languedoc near Nimes in order to visit the amazing Roman aqueduct at Pont du Gard.   Click: Photos trip details HERE. 

Pond du Gard – Roman Aqueduct

Once we had arrived at Royan the task was relatively simple, –  cycling 400 miles and enjoying visiting great places like the beautiful walled city of Carcassonne. 

The hard work in setting up this trip was arranging the logistics and booking tickets for the train journeys across France to and from St Malo. Arranging the crossing was really a piece of cake and getting to and from Portsmouth was no problem. 

The real problem was travelling by train with bicycles that will ‘fully assembled’.  If we had bicycles which could be disassembled the journey would be relatively simple but electric bikes are not easy to disassemble and they don’t fit into a box or bag of a maximum size of 130 cm x 90 cm. Therefore, we had to find railway routes which allowed us to take our bikes on and off just in the same way as you would on local trains here in Sussex.  The difference is we were covering much longer distances. From St Malo to the start of our journey was about 400 km (250 miles). However, with my growing knowledge of the French railway system I was able to achieve this, and we had the added benefit of staying overnight at the atmospheric old town in Nantes and at La Rochelle which is a beautiful ancient port on the west coast of France on our route. 

Historic Town Hall at La Rochelle