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| The End of the Journey |
We awoke wednesday with sore muscles from the intense climbing of the rolling hills and small mountains of the previous day's trip. At the start this day was no different, with a steep climb out of Villedieu-des-Poêles. We walked the bikes up it and then had a reasonably pleasant journey the rest of the day into the Bay of Saint-Michel. For lunch we hiked up into a small town on a steep hill overlooking the bay, called Avrranches. There, next to a old chateau or walled castle of some sort, we made a picnic with fresh bread, cheese, unwashed-gritty-lettuce, and sliced meats. For dessert, some Normandy Sandy Biscuits which were pretty good.
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| Patton Memorial. Next to Patton road, Patton Laudromat, Patton Restaurant, and Patton Hotel. |
The bike ride into the Bay area was scenic, being able to see Mont Saint-michel from what we'd guess was about 20km or more away. The ride into our Inn ended with a hard cycle through head winds, which slowed us to a crawl. We were off to explore St.-Michel, which was a city built on a small island, which the land around it is flooded at high tide, but sand for as far as you can see at low tide. The tide comes in and recesses at 200ft per minute, so we hear. We took a long walk out into the sandy bay, and ate dinner at the hotel after seeing that everywhere around st-michel was a tourist trap restaurant filled with bus tours. The hotel had saltwater bay raised lamb for dinner and mussels, which were surprisingly really good. We also enjoyed a bottle of locally-made apple cider wine, apparently Normandy is the only province in France that doesn't have a single vineyard, having apple/cider orchards instead. Before dinner and the next morning at around 6am, we were surprised with the sound of a hard rainstorm, only to find a stampede of sheep running down the street outside our window (Sheep video link).
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| An ancient lift & track |
Thursday we set off for our final day of biking, on reasonably flat terrain and low rolling hills for the best bike ride of the trip probably in so far as ease of biking goes, however it was significantly less scenic than Normandy (as we now were in Brittany). Given that we had blown out all our extra tires, and our only backup plan was a bottle of superglue and a tube with a broken valve as a backup, we were riding the red racer (which has thin tires) with heavy brakes down every hill. The tire did take a heavy hit somewhere in the past couple days and had a snake-like bend to it (pic). Despite the red racers nearly-gone brakes, actually... totally gone brakes, a screwy front tire, and the missing gear that shattered and now caused the chain to fall off if shifted into that, it was both our of bike of choice by the end of the trip. Eric was still nervous about the missing gear and rode it halfway to Rennes without shifting once, which despite the low hills was still a feat.
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| Red Racer's Wonky Tire |
Rennes was a great city for biking, with lanes everywhere, rental bikes like Dublin has, and generally just a very biker friendly environment. It was a little sad to be done with the bikes but we set off to sell them right away. Before going to the hotels, we hit the bike shops before they closed for the day. The first shop we found by happenstance didn't buy bikes, or speak english, but the guys were really helpful in suggesting where to go that might be interested, and so we went to the second shop. Before i could even finish telling the owner of the second store that we were leaving town and did he want to buy them, he cut me off saying no. However, he did question about the bikes and when we were leaving when i asked what else he could suggest, he looked at the Giant Hybrid (le coq noir as we called it) and seemed think that was sellable but laughed at the idea of the red racer. Luckily the other two people in the store were paying attention and so i threw out a price of €50 for the Giant, and said we would take whatever for the racer, that we just had to sell them. The one lady said she might know someone that would want them, so we gave her my number, and within an hour we met a guy that bought both of them. So 3 years of french, €400 in bikes, and an hours work had paid off in a sweet €70 payday. Le Jackpot!
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| Euro-Shades |
Eric cashed in with his newfound wealth with these Euro-Shades to protect from the Euro-Sun, and then we set out to explore Rennes. For dinner, we each cashed in the remainder of our bike-bounty to get Brittany-style pizzas. Eric's fine choice of the the “Chef” pizza included goat cheese, onions, and andouille sausage. Despite the great taste, a strange odor of sheep manure wafted from Eric's pizza...surprising Marc and the rest of the patrons, which all kept looking around and checking their shoes.
