I've got wind !...... and rain....and cold

Apologies, apologies, apologies, for not posting a blog last night to cover our trip from Chateaubriand to La Motte (just south of Ponterson) but we stayed in the back of beyond overnight in Chris and Shirley’s holiday home which is without wifi and my allotted amount of mobile broadband for the phone had run out.

So for those forlorn souls who spent the evening refreshing their browser in the vain attempt to force a blog update onto your computer screen, wait not longer as here it is.

N.B. The holiday cottage is available to let at outrageous cost, but if you want to expose yourself as a cheapskate, then a deal could probably be done.

Anyway, lets get on to the grotty day in question. The Hotel Chateaubriand in the town of Chateaubriand (did I tell you what I had to eat last night ?) they did the buffet breakfast which means we all tucked into the standard cycle tourist approach of clearing as much as possible. What made it even better was when the lady came out to refill the table, she looked across sniffily at a bunch of what can only be called “Blue Collar” workers who took the rap for us.

Anyway, as indicated by the title, the weather was against us again. We have had wind or rain or cold or any permutation of those three. Today we had all three at the same time and in biblical proportions.

We had another ambitious day planned after yesterdays 125 km epic but for the first half of the day, it did not seem possible to get all the way. We eventually made our way into Retiers desperate for a cafe to dry out, warm up and basically recover. Despite being a town of what seems significant size, no cafe was to be found so it was yet another case of raiding the local patisserie for tarts and croissants then parking ourselves outside the local public toilets where a roof kept the worst of the conditions away.

Not happy !

By lunch time the rain eventually eased but the wind got stronger and we were going direct into it. After 14 days of solid riding, we were all very tired but battled on.

We did have some rest days planned but had decided earlier to take them when the sun was out as there was little point being sat about in crummy weather – result = no nice weather, no rest days.

We pulled into Chateaubourg for lunch where again we struggled to find a cafe so ended up in a pizza place during which time, the rains stopped and clouds broke. One giant savoury pancakey thing later and we set off again, this time with just two of the three elements battering us, cold and wind !

I even had the dubious honour of getting sunburnt this afternoon – on my ears ! Is this another sign of age or what, never happened before and really can't be bothered creaming up me lugs every time the sun comes out. Maybe I should become more of an aging hippy and let my hear grow long.

Anyway, off again where we eventually dropped off the edge of my final map as we turned onto the road to Trembelay and an area that both C & S were familiar with given our proximity to their holiday home (available to long & short term lets, in case I didn’t mention that).

The road was now directly into the wind and the rolling hills we have had recently got considerably larger, it was nearly like being back into the mountains. Needless to say, it was a slow and painful progress until we finally got to La Motte at about 18:00

We showered and donned our evening wear then took the opportunity to finish off our store of pasta etc and crawled into bed at about 21:00. Reconstituted french onion soup, paster, topped up with a tin of mushrooms and sweetcorn. Not the best meal but we needed to be fully fueled up for the followin morning

During the evening, C & S decided to stay on at their holiday home for a few days (did I say it was available for bookings – although not to poor people) so Mrs B and myself got all packed up and ready as it was an early start in order to go the 50 odd km’s to St Malo in order to get the 10:30 in the morning

Observation of the day

It may have been noticed that despite the purchase and transportation across Europe of full camping gear, it has not been as fully utilised as it might. 3 times to be precise.

This is because of a legal matter. We bought some brilliant sleeping bags, that did see the light of day more than 3 times as we used them in the Chalets. These bags, the Lifeventure Downlight 900 are 2 metres long (it was amazing that most sleeping bags are only built for those more vertically challenged members of our population) and really comfy but they are only good down to 5 degrees. If we had camped with them and the temperature went below that, we would of been in breach of contract !

See, so it was not me being soft, it was contract law.

Mind you, given it was a Down sleeping bag, it leaked feathers all over the place, in fact it was like being tarred and feathered, but without the tar.

As previously mentioned, we spent just over 300 quid on camping gear so the unit costs for camping was down to £100 per night. More expensive than the flippin hotels !