London - Sevenoaks - 75km
Sevenoaks - Folkstone -100km
Fokstone - Dover- Calais campsite - 25km
Calais - Condette -50km (Headwind Day 1)
Condette - Labroye (tiny village) 75km
Labroye - Aumale (slightly larger village) 77km
Aumale - Les Andelys (town with castle!) 82km
Les Andelys - Dreux ( campsite in nameless village outside town) 94km
Dreux - Chartes 73km
Chartes - Orleans 89km
Orleans-train station - La Souterraine -Crepiat (where the Pugsley French house is) 27km
To continue the joys of cycling in England: it poured with rain on the day we left Folkstone, to cycle to Dover. This is a very short ride of about 10- 15km. but we managed to get soaked and miss the second ferry booking we had made!
After a hair-raising ride through Dover and the ferry port twice we got on the boat and used a copy of the Daily Mail to dry the inside of our shoes.
Since then we have had sun, sun, sun through France. We made our way south of Calais, along cliffs which gave us beautiful views across to England's white cliffs. This meant great downhill rides and uphill struggles. We rode to Condette, a little village with a holiday campsite and stayed there for a day, ate and went to the beach. It is not all about cycling!
Then we continued through the French countryside, camping in the little village campsites or holiday campsites. We stop every three days for a rest and Pugz does seem to have a knack of finding pretty towns for rest days.
As we passed through this part of France, we saw a number of reminders of both World Wars. We stopped in Etaples to visit a large war cementary and Ais learned just how long the Western front actually was. (It stretched from the French coast into Belgium, to just below Switzerand).
The following cycle days were a mix of headwinds, large fields of crops and sun. We stopped in little villages and ate cakes every day, sometimes twice a day! As we approached Chartes we saw a number of abbeys and larger churches which in the past, have played an important role for the education of the lucky few. We were impressed by the abbey in a tiny village called St. Riquier, which we visited and they also win the prize for the best bakery yet!
Chartes is a lovely town too and we were so pleased to finally arrive there! The last few days had been the hottest yet ( about 30-32 degrees) and there have been fewer and fewer trees to shade us or wee behind. Our annoying friend, Mr headwind is still about, keeping our average speed to about 12km an hour. Very slow!
Yet Ais misses the headwind when it stops as she is not very good with the heat and needs some light breeze to cool her down!
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what were you doing with a copy of the daily mail? drying your shoes is all its fit for!
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