Day 1 -Thursday 21 August 2025 - Ouistreham - Flers - 85 km / 50 mls

First day of a cycle tour down through France and then down through Spain, then turning right to Portugal with the final destination Faro in The Algarve. It will take me three weeks give or take a day or two.

Today was my first day cycling from Ouistreham on the Normandy coast, through Caen and then on in to the Normandy countryside to Flers. Just over 50 miles, but I thought I’d give myself an easy start ! Most of the riding was on very nice greenways, repurposed railway lines now used by cyclists and walkers. All very pleasant, with lovely green Normandy countryside and lots of contented looking cows.

Early on after leaving Ouistreham, following the Orne canal / river, I passed Pegasus Bridge where action took place very early on the morning of D Day by glider borne British paratroopers to take the crucial bridge over the canal / river. The house / bar / cafe on the other side of the bridge was the first house to be liberated by the Allies, and says so on its wall. It’s now a cafe / bar, frequented by old warriors, and as I stood there the rather stern Madame of the house flung open the shutters and opened the windows, grey hair all bunched up, and gave me a glowering look as if daring me to ask for a coffee so early in the morning. Which I didn’t. I wonder if her grandparents gave the paratroops a haughty look when they were woken up that June morning 81 years ago. Probably. Ungrateful lot, the French.

I’d crossed over from Portsmouth to Ouistreham on a brand new Brittany Ferries ship called Guillaume de Normande, aka William the Conquerer / William The Bastard (which he was). I had a very nice sleep during the six hour afternoon crossing in a couchette, and then headed for a hotel for the night.

Tonight, Thursday, I’m camping, the weather being set fair, and a decent camp ground on hand in Flers. Dinner was a take away from a traiteur, salmon lasagna, and then a very nice chocolate eclair from a patisserie. The restaurants / brasseries in town looked a bit manky and unappealing, so I thought something nice from the traiteur would do. And it did.

Flers is big on memorials to the Battle for Normandy, and I imagine that it was not liberated for a few weeks after D Day. Certainly Caen, which Montgomery expected to be taken on D-Day itself, if not at the latest on D +1, held out for weeks and only succumbed after being blitzed by Allied bombing.

Tomorrow, Friday, I’ll carry on south and hopefully get down to Laval and find a campsite there. The weather looks as though it is set fair over the weekend as I venture further south.

More to come…. !!!

Day 2 - Friday 22 August 2025 - Flers to Laval - 110 km / 65 mls

My campsite last night was perfectly pleasant. The night was a bit chilly, and there was quite a bit of dew on my tent in the morning. French time is an hour ahead of UK time, so I didn’t stir from my slumbers until 8:00 am, and was on the road about 9:15 am looking for some breakfast in Flers, which served up a pleasant enough coffee shop with pastries. Then I was quickly on to the repurposed railway line / greenway, and remained with that for most of the day going south, except for a navigation error on my part that took me on to another greenway going west. I had to cut back across country to rejoin the V43 / Francette, through Mayenne and then joining the River Mayenne chemin de halage all the way to a few miles outside Laval, where I am at a very nice campsite with all amenities, and a nice eating place down by the river. All boxes ticked.

I’d been this way last year, I recall, although I think I branched off further north from where I am now. I will need to look at my blog and work it out.

The only picture I have today is of my supper tonight down by the river, a plateau of fromage and charcuterie and frites, much too much for me, so I’ll package a good half of it and have it on the road tomorrow.

I’ll observe my usual theme of commenting on the French, and today I was amused at big, butch Frenchmen tottering along from the boulangerie with their fresh baguette, a routine most French people do a couple of times a day. And then, probably the same Frenchmen, but at a different time of day, walking their little lap dogs. The bigger the man the smaller the pooch. Somehow it amuses me. Well, I have to have something to think about and entertain myself with when I’m sitting in the saddle all those hours.

What else has caught my attention are the little towns I’ve been through and their still standing displays from the 80th anniversary of D-Day and the Battle for Normandy in 1944. Flers, where I stayed, was largely rebuilt after WW2 because it was blown to smithereens by a series of Allied bombing raids in order to dislodge the Germans, but the collateral damage was hundreds of local French civilians dying in the raids. The same goes for Mayenne, where the main square is called Place de 9 Juin, which is the night on which it too was smashed by Allied bombing. The displays, I noted, concentrated on the destruction to the towns and the civilian deaths, rather than the eventual liberation. Well, I suppose I don’t blame them for remembering being collateral damage in some great Allied campaign. I guess some planners at the time sat down and decided that such French civilian collateral damage was justified in the greater cause. No doubt Isreali military planners are sitting down and telling themselves that over 65,000 Gazan civilian deaths is completely justified by 1,200 Israeli deaths and a couple of hundred hostages taken on 7th October 2023. I think they need to go and retake a course on Just War Theory.

Day 3 - Saturday 23 August - Laval to Lion d’Angers - 80 km / 50 mls

Today turned out to be a short cycling day. I’m not really sure why. Probably because as I passed a rather nice camping site at Lion d’Angers along the River Mayenne, thought I’d stop there rather than go on another twenty miles. The weather was nice, I had some personal admin thing to do like get the wet washing from yesterday finally dried, do some route planning for the next few days, and generally have a gentle time. So at 4 pm I stopped and set up camp.

The route from just outside Laval was along the River Mayenne and very pleasant. The weather was lovely, and the scenery very rural, with lots of happy looking cows (no sheep, I noticed), and lovely French chateau towns. It’s pretty quiet along the way, because I think that the French have gone home in readiness for La Rentrée, when the kids go back to school. The campsite where I am tonight is only about a third full, and lots of those look like Germans, Dutch, and Brits of a certain vintage. I’m not sure August is as sacrosanct for holidays for the French as it used to be, when simply everybody took the month of August off.

Along the route, a few miles outside Laval, I came upon a memorial to a RAF Halifax bomber crew that crashed nearby in early June 1944, no doubt on a bombing raid of some of those towns I mentioned yesterday. Two things. First, it’s interesting that the French memorialise these bomber crews, given that they caused so much collateral civilian damage. And two, the photograph shows a very young group of men, no doubt in their very early twenties, including two by the name Henderson (pilot and navigator), possibly brothers. Only one is wearing his Officer’s No 1 SD Hat, the rest the Side Cap. During my time in the RAF I preferred the SD Hat. I never felt the Side Cap looked sharp on my head, whereas for others it looks very cool, as it does on these young men in the Halifax bomber crew. By the way, just to remind you that over 50,000 of these young men from Bomber Command died in WW2. Their odds of surviving were not great.

I’ve had a lovely galette with andouille and an egg and some frites for my supper from the petit’ resto which is on site here. My lunch was the remains of the fromage and charcuterie from last night, and lovely it was too. So, I am looking after myself, and I don’t think there is any chance that I will waste away.

The plan over the next few days is to continue south following the various river routes, mostly the Mayenne, the Loire and the Vienne. I really need to sort out some maps that I can post so that people can see my route and progress. Of course, I’m assuming that they are interested ! I’ll work on it anyhow.

I keep up with the news when I’m on my travels, and am just bemused /baffled/appalled/horrified/sometimes amused at the Trump nursery school of diplomatic negotiations. The thought that such a simpleton and narcissist is able to flip flop, be inconsistent, be unreliable, be dishonest and have every other serious world leader dancing to his tune and performing sickening sycophancy, and at the same time is in charge of such power and might and responsibility, not least the nuclear option, is…..well, very scary. How has it come to this ? I really do think Americans need to ask themselves some serious questions as to how they allowed this man in to the White House. Again, I ask myself why the hell is Congress and the Supreme Court not doing their job and making sure that the US Constitution is working effectively, rather than letting this Orange Child Man act so recklessly - and in all probability, illegally ? The Germans wised up to Hitler’s fascism too late, and then it was too late to do anything about it because the fascists had taken over all the organs and levers of power. The same could happen in the USA. It is happening..

Day 4 - Sunday 24 August -Lion d’Angers to Monsoreau - 100 kms / 60 mls

Today has been a very pleasant day of cycling, initially along the Mayenne, then joining the River Maine, and then over to the River Loire, where I find myself tonight at a very nice camping site au bord de La Loire. A very typical French campsite, with all amenities, with Frenchies playing pétanque, and with a nice brasserie that was tout complet, but they did a take away service, which I was able to have on the terrace. Typical French, why they couldn’t just put it on a plate for me, I do not know, but apparently chef only cooks for a certain amount of tables a night, and that’s it, but somehow takeaway doesn’t count ! As I say, typical French. Anyhow, it was very nice - salade perigorde and frites - so I’m not really complaining.

And another thing about French campsites, why do French men and women of a certain age and a certain body type - ie fat and / or sagging, insist on walking about in the tiniest little speedos / bikinis ? I mean, it was probably a good look 50 years ago when they were lithe and sleek, but not when you’re in your 60s and 70’s, please ! Fortunately, I was not put off my dinner. There are lots of English in the campsite, I guess La Loire is one of those places that the English of a certain type and class go for their holidays. Oh, we were holidaying on the Loire, dear !

There are lots of cyclists in the campsite tonight, so much so that there were no more cyclist sites available, and I was about the take one of the bigger sites at extra cost when a French cyclist appeared and we agreed to share the site and to split the cost. Bargain at 15 euro ! Communication is a bit stilted, but he does have the same Big Agnes tent as me, so he must be serious about his radonneur-ing.

This morning, I was up by 7 am at first light, and at the first glimpse of sun I had my tent out to dry off the moisture that had dropped during the night. The river was covered in a light haze, and the early morning scene was beautiful. By 9 am I was all packed up and in town looking for coffee, which I found at a patisserie, as well as some nice pastries. I had them in the church square, and noted that a Mass was advertised for 9 am, and I thought I’d pop in and do my Sunday duties, but, quelle dommage, pas de Messe, I’m afraid. Nothing materialised. So, I had to go on my merry way, trusting that the grace of the thought / intention and the effort would suffice to keep me out of trouble. I’m sure I learned that in The Penny Catechism.

I think my highlight of the day was passing, quite early on after leaving Lion d’Angers, and seeing a donkey milk / diary / creamery, with some very hairy shaggy donkeys. Fortunately, I learned from the sign, that the milk is used for making donkey milk soap, and not, I think, for drinking. I’m adventurous, but I don’t think I’d try it. Not having seen the donkeys.

I passed through Angers, with its formidable castle, picked up some Vietnamese street food for lunch, and then found myself on the River Loire, which is very wide with lots of sandbanks. Most the afternoon I stayed on the Loire, passing through Saumur, and then on to Monsoreau. There are lots of chateaux along the way, and wine estates. Think Crement de Loire. And Loire rosé.

Tomorrow, I will follow the Loire as far as Chinon, then cut inland a bit so that I can get down to near Poitiers. I’ll be following the EuroVelo Route 3 then all the way down to Biarritz / Bayonne before I head over in to Spain. That’s almost another week away..

Day 5 - Monday 25 August - Monsoreau to Cremault - 100 km / 60 ml

I was up early this morning at first light. It had been a warm night, and there was no dew this morning on my tent. My camping mate, Bruno, who is an about to retire teacher, was heading for his last day further along the Loire, to meet up with his wife in Tours, and then to do a Montgolfier ballon ride. Two other cyclists, whose names I didn’t get, had walked up to the patisserie and come back with fresh croissants, and gave one to me. See, the French can be nice ! It didn’t stop me having a croissant aux amandes a little later when I had coffee.

The ride out of Monsoreau along the Loire was very pleasant. It’s a lovely bit of the world. At some stage my route took me away from the Loire and overland for an hour or so to get to the River Vienne, which I will be following for the next few days. Vines are much in evidence around places like Chinon. At Chinon late morning I was aware that there was some sort of fair going on, streets blocked off, lots of noise etc, and lots of bric a brac for sale, people selling pretty much everything and anything at their door steps, as well as stalls. And food stalls, so I tried out some tripe à la maison, very offal-ly, strong, but interesting taste. Poor people food, I guess, when everything from nose / snout to tail would be eaten. I enjoyed it, in moderation. Andouille, basically tripe in a sausage, were also very much in evidence.

The weather has been lovely, and tonight it is set to hold fine, so I am camping again. I had intended to go another ten miles further on to a campsite, but suddenly saw where I am at Cremault as I cycled along, a site on the banks of the Vienne with all the accoutrements of happiness for a bicyclist camper - showers, food and drink. It’s only about 10 per cent full, so I’m taking it that the French must have packed up and gone home to get ready for the kids going back to school. I’ll eat at the little brasserie on site tonight and head on south along the Vienne and EuroVelo Route 3 tomorrow, probably to Confalens, where I know there is a campsite. In a day or two I probably do need to find a decent laundromat and give everything a good wash. Hand washing is fine, but….. !

I watched the first episode of King and Conqueror last night on the BBC. Mixed views. It’s evidently made for the American market, with Anglo Saxons and Normans using today’s American English sayings. Like 'hey' as a greeting; "drop it"; "sort it". Eastenders in tights. And, both with Harold and William, there’s the wife love interest, whereas in reality they probably barely spoke to their wives, marriages were political arrangements, and they only did the deed to produce an heir. The lovey stuff is just invented, I’m sure. And Edward the Confessor is portrayed as a deficient. I’m waiting for the gory battle scenes. And yes, I was right. William of Normandy was a bastard.

Is there anything else I need to comment on ? Well, it can wait until tomorrow. And so to bed.

Day 6 -Tuesday 26 August - Cremault to Confolens - 90 kms / 55 mls

The weather has been very nice today. Last night too. No dew, so no tent drying. The camp ground at Cremault was great, very quiet, all the things I needed. I was up early and on the road by 8:30 am. It usually takes me an hour and a half from waking to getting on to the road. There’s lot of campground organisation and personal admin to do to get ready, so it does take time. Also, I find I need to be very methodical about breaking camp and packing up the bike, just so I know where everything is, and to make sure that I’ve not left something behind.

Today’s route took me, more or less, along the line of the Vienne River, but unlike the Loire and the Mayenne, the Vienne is not canalised and therefore there in no towpath / chemin de halage to follow, so the route goes up and down and away in parts from the river. There were more climbs today than I’ve experienced so far. It is beautiful, and pretty quiet. The route followed rural roads. Small towns generally have a Romanesque church, dating back to the 11th century, and one place I came to had a Merovingian cemetery, that dates back to before the turn of the first century. As I remember from my history, Merovingian and Carolingian kings were called Clovis, Pepin the Short, and probably a fat one too. The cemetery was impressive, with hundreds of large trapezoid stone caskets. How they managed to move them to the site, I know not. And, I’m still wondering if they were buried in the earth, or just put in the stone casket with lid on top of the earth. I will Google it all when I get a moment.

At one turn I came across a couple of kids, boy and girl, probably brother and sister who were providing drinks and blackberries for the walkers and the bikers. They were very sweet, and so pleased with themselves. I had a water with sirop de menthe. Very refreshing. I took a picture. Please, spare me all the safeguarding stuff. Anyhow, the kids were delightful, the moment was lovely, and I was refreshed with a drink and a handful of freshly picked blackberries. How nice !

Tonight, I am in Confalens, a nice typical town on the banks of the Vienne with Romanesque church and lovely town. Although, food options were a bit limited. The campsite did pizza and that was it, in town the pan-asian place was closed, what passed for a brasserie looked pretty scrappy, so I ended up with pizza, but very up class pizza from a place run by very hip, cool, young guys, with wood fired oven, and it was very nice too. Savoyard, with potatoes and lardons, and a burrata salad. Very on trend. I go to bed replete.

And now to the thought for the day ! What I’m noticing is that Trump is picking off people with spurious, conflated, and made up reasons, such as Federal Treasury board member Cook, and ex UN ambassador and National Security Advisor Bolton who has since fallen out with Trump. Plus the General who headed up the military intelligence unit that assessed the US attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities as being less damaging that Trump was saying. So, he’s been sacked. This is dangerous stuff, where those who don’t agree completely with Trump and speak the facts and truth to him, find themselves under attack on spurious grounds. That’s right from the fascist / Nazi playbook, and means that everybody is watching their backs and only a very few people are prepared to say the truth and the facts. It’s exactly what was happening in Germany in the early 1930s. Except they killed them then. Trump just dismisses them. I suppose we should be grateful for small mercies ?

And, I could go on at length about Farage and his plan today for locking up illegal migrants / asylum seekers and sending them home. Again, classic playbook stuff. Appeal to peoples’ fears, insecurities and willingness to do transference, and blame it all on illegal migrants / asylum seekers. Whereas the truth is, if you really want to address the issue of immigration in the UK, illegal migrants, most of whom are asylum seekers, only make up 4 % of annual net migration in to the UK. The other 96 % are legal migrants, mostly these days from the Indian subcontinent, since Brexit stopped migration from European countries. Which was a kind of immigration that was less problematic than bringing people in from cultures and value systems that struggle with integration and acceptance of British values. But, nobody talks about that. Farage certainly doesn’t. That’s where the conversation should really be, if you want a conversation about immigration. Not whipping up peoples’ fears and anxieties about illegal migration / asylum seekers. And just watch, the Tories, especially the newly slimmed down Ozempic, rough boy hair cut, Jenrick who will be trying to out-Farage Farage. I was happy to hear on Radio 4 Today programme this morning, the Reform spokesman being skewered by the interviewer about the detail of such Reform plans. In other words, Reform and Farage don’t have a clue. Neither do the Tories. Sadly, Labour doesn't seem capable of gripping the conversation and coming up with a proper and workable solution.

Day 7 - Confolens to Chateauneuf sur Charente - 100 km / 60 mls

It rained last night. It’s the first rain I’ve had. Not an awful lot, but enough to make sure that my tent was damp as I packed it away this morning, and still overcast so that I wasn’t able to dry it out.

My route took me through the Charente countryside, east of Bordeaux and Cognac, where I was last year, through very pretty, sometimes hilly, countryside and lovely little villages. So many of the villages had at their centre an over 1,000 year old Romanesque church, so simple in design and yet so beautiful. And to think that those churches have been there since the 11th century, sort of William the Conqueror times, and are still standing, still at the centre of communities. At one place I sat and had my lunch (last night’s left over cold pizza - yummy !) outside the church, and there was the sound of kids playing in the distance, a sound that will have reverberated for over 1,000 years and the same walls will have heard the cries and shouts of various generations of children playing. Lovely. There’s a permanence and also timelessness about buildings like that. And here, in this part of France, they are everywhere, at the centre of pretty much every small community. One was St Gervase and St Protase, two early Christian Roman martyrs I knew a Gervase once when I was a student in Rome. Characterful, pleasant but occasionally crotchety type, with a brilliant mind and academic accomplishments, and also great company. I remember finishing off a bottle of Vin Santo in San Gimignano one night with Gervase, and being berated the next day by the portly Fra’ Girolomo. Italians only have a small glass or two. We philistines finished the whole bottle. Happy days.

Rain is threatening again tonight, so at my campsite I have taken the glamping option and am occupying a small cabin / pod for the night, rather than risking getting wet again. I can feel the wind getting up as I write, and there is the smell of rain in the air. So, a prudent decision on my part, I think. The campsite has a very pleasant little resto, and I had a nice meal and a couple of glasses of wine, so I will sleep well tonight in my watertight pod. Tomorrow, Thursday, is set for some rain, and Thursday night in to Friday a storm is coming in from the west, so I will AirBandB it tomorrow night in Libourne, which is my destination for tomorrow. I’ll take a view as to what I'll do on Friday, whether to stay put or to carry on. It depends on the weather.

No thought for the day tonight. I think I perhaps over did it last night with my pet themes - Trump / Farage / Brexit / immigration. So, I’ll give you a rest. Also, I might get to a point where I don’t do daily drops of musings according to Chris after a day of cycling. I might start to repeat myself. So, maybe every few days. We will see.

And so to bed in my glamping watertight pod-ette ! Luxury !

WEEK 1