I’m finishing a cycling tour from Breskens to Fécamp, with a parenthesis in Brussels to see lots of old friends. I meant to write every day like the estimable Long-Legged Science Fiction Writer when he walks Britain’s south west coast path, but I was behind myself from the start, so here it comes in one wallop.
Day 1: Breskens (NL) – Eeklo (BE), 33 km
It rained. Doing it up, I burst the zip of my yellow jacket. There was only one restaurant open for lunch in IJzendijke. From the menu I ordered uitsmijter. Sir, said the restauranteur, this is a meat restaurant.
The last seven hundred metres of the road to the border with Belgium were old fashioned cobbles. I had to walk my bike over them to stop the panniers bouncing off. After a ride on the other side that was faster than I wanted I caught the train to Brussels with two minutes to spare.
Brussels
I bought new panniers and a new yellow jacket. I asked the burly bike shop assistant if they had the jacket in XXL. No, he said, cycling shops don’t pay attention to the needs of les gros (the big ones) like you and I. As I left he came up to me for a fist bump. Les gros ont gagnés, he said, the big ones have won. On the basis of your request I called HQ and now we will stock XXL.
Day 2: Eeklo (BE) – Ostend (BE), 52 km
The Usilia restaurant in the eastern outskirts of Bruges was a reminder of how good Belgian bourgeois cooking is. It was mothers’ day and, Belgianly, I was therefore required to eat the mothers’ day menu: a fishy amuse-bouche, croquettes of cheese and crevettes grises, white artichokes with hard boiled egg and hollandaise sauce. Then a beautiful ride in the sun down the Bruges-Ostend canal.
Ostend benefits culturally and topographically, I think, from being a port as well as a seaside resort. I wish we had come here when we lived in Belgium.
Day 3: Ostend (BE) – Grand-Fort-Philippe (FR), 89 km
Strong wind on my right shoulder. Rain in the morning made the Belgian sea front grand.
This monument stands in the corner of Belgium that was not occupied during the first world war:
Then, coming towards the French frontier, I lost my way. The path I was on turned into soft sand at the top of the beach. In order to be able to cycle I went out onto the hard sand where the sea had been and crossed the frontier there. Google maps thought I was at sea.
A character in one of William Boyd’s books is the left-hand-most soldier of the Allied front line in WWI, somewhere round here. His job was to keep an eye out for people like me.
After Dunkirk in France the route followed a main road unpleasantly. I took an alternative that google maps proposed, further inland. It petered out in farm tracks and finally a field. I thought of Theresa May – Me and my friend… used to run through the fields of wheat – and turned back.
At Grand-Fort-Philippe I stayed in a room called Mon Désir. It had a jacuzzi. Since there’s only one of you, said my hostess, you’ll be able to stretch out. I was so tired that I couldn’t go further than McDonalds, which I enjoyed – cold coca-cola and hot egg McMuffins. (If it was ever true that French McDonalds sell red wine it doesn’t seem to be true any more.) When I got back to Mon Désir I brought my bike in for safety.
Day 4: Grand-Fort-Philippe (FR from now on) – Boulogne, 69 km
At Sangatte I had a marvellous plateau de fruits de mer in the restaurant Blanc-Nez,
followed by three local cheeses.
I got the server to write down the cheeses’ names. Sablé de Wissaut, Flamay du Mont des Cars and Fleur d’Audresseffes, none of which I had heard of. I thought of Charles de Gaulle (of whom there is a fine statue striding across a square in Calais with his wife Yvonne) – Comment voulez-vous gouverner un pays où il existe 246 variétés de fromage ? – how can you govern a country with 246 kinds of cheese?
From Sangatte beach you could see England.
On the beach was a police van and a group of officers. They’re always there, I was told.
I thought of Suella Braverman.
I’ve done multi-day cycle rides along the Danube and the Moselle and in the Netherlands. I’ve watched people cycle south along the coast from La Rochelle on EuroVelo route 1. I supposed that EuroVelo 4, running along a different coast, would, like these, not have hills. It was after lunch that I found out this is not so.
Came down to the coast at Ambleteuse. I love seaside shacks. Here there’s an excellent one. I ate waffles and drank local beer.
To the left (just out of the picture) is a 17th century Vauban fort.
Day 5, Boulogne – Berck-Sur-Mer, 62 km
During WWI there was a British military hospital at Etaples. Now there are war graves there.
I went into the cemetery. There is nothing useful to say.
My father wrote a book called the Administration of Archives. He used to get a small royalty cheque each year. I suppose he must have got a grant to include a comparative chapter on how this was done in France, because our family spent a month in Normandy in the summer of 1966. My father would drive our VW Dormobile off to Rouen to do his research leaving my mother and us children sitting on the campsite in the then three-sided awning.
On the way back to the ferry we had lunch in Le Touquet. He boldly ate a plateau de fruits de mer. I can see him spearing winkles with a pin. I made sure to have lunch there in his memory. My plateau didn’t include any winkles.
I found both Le Touquet (which used to be called Paris-Plage, and calls itself “the most elegant beach resort in France”) and Berck-sur-Mer, where I spent the night, disappointing. Not much life on the sea fronts. In Berck I ate a good couscous though.
Day 6, Berck-Eu, 90 km
Le Crotoy, on the bay of the river Somme, was the most attractive seaside resort since Ostend.
It was full of people who’d come from inland to start the long Ascension bank holiday weekend. I was happy to get a table with a sea view to eat moules marinières.
I had a long ride that afternoon, so skipped the Route’s wiggles and rode on a bigger road with noisy cars and no cycle path. Lesson: don’t. The Domaine I stayed in because the cheaper hotels were booked up was lovely though. Nespresso machine in the room, views of grassy lawns. This view from the breakfast room made me think of Vermeer.
Day 7, Eu-Dieppe, 39 km
My guidebook said daunting things about this stage’s hills. In fact there were only two steep climbs and two descents (this is the first descent):
Most of the time you were riding along on the plateau.
History is not forgotten here.
Joan of Arc, prisoner of the English, passed through Biville sur Mer on Thursday 21 December 1430 (I like the “Thursday”.)
Dieppe, passing through, appealed to me more than Dunkirk, Calais or Boulogne. It felt like a well-balanced working town.
But that night there was not a bed to be had there for less than €230. The ticket seller at the railway station said this was because the town was hosting the Alpinistes. That is to say, afficionados of the Renault Alpine, whose 50th anniversary is apparently this year. I saw a couple of hundred of them on the road, half of them mid-blue like the second car in the photo.
So I caught the train to Rouen, an hour away, and wrote up this account in a bar.
As I did so four people in Viking dress went past the window and came in. You don’t get that sort of thing much in Le Touquet. The bar was called Thor’s Tavern (La taverne de Thor).
Later I ate another plateau de fruits de mer. Look at these wonderful big langoustines said the restaurant owner. We used to get them from Scotland but after Brexit they take two days to get here rather than one and are no longer fresh. Now we get them from Norway and they are brought, still alive, by boat. It’s less ecological and costs more. I thought of David Cameron and Jeremy Corbyn.
Day 8, Dieppe – Sassetot-le-Mauconduit, 75 km
This was a day with a lot of ups and downs. The first part, west of Dieppe, and the last had woods and small fields and winding, dipping roads and knapped flint buildings and a few thatched roofs, it felt like Kent with longer village names and no oast houses.
In between there was bare field farming.
I’d looked forward to lunch in Veules-les-Roses, “the prettiest village in France”. It was packed with tourists like me. I arrived at 2, and at that precise moment every single restaurant stopped serving lunch – except one, a pizza place that I found just before its 2.30 closing time. As I ate, outside in a little square, a drummer and guitarist played Hard rain, Knocking on heaven’s door and the Sound of silence. What would we do without the sixties?
He played the guitar well, the harmonica badly.
Further along I wondered what these three smart men were doing in a small quiet town on a Saturday afternoon. Had they been or were they going to a wedding?
It was a long ride that afternoon. I missed my way, turning right rather than left at the Paluel nuclear power station.
At last I reached a château where the beautiful empress Elizabeth of Austro-Hungary stayed for two months in the summer of 1875, riding horses and swimming in the sea. Not only the château (Château Sissi) but also the street on which it stands are now named after her.
Day 9, Sassetot-le-Mauconduit – Fécamp, 20 km
I thought of going on to Le Havre but wasn’t sure I’d get there in time to get the train to Caen, from where I need to ride to the boat tomorrow.
On this tour I have done a lot of going uphill. I don’t like it too much, especially if I have to get off and walk. I also don’t like going downhill. This is a walker’s opinion: you work to gain height, you don’t want to throw that work away.
At the start I used to compensate by going downhill fast so as to minimise the amount of time I lost. Once I went at 49 kph. Later on I cared less about time. I still tried, though, to go fast at the bottom of downhills so I could use the momentum to go up as far as possible before having to drop to lower gears.
Day 9’s twenty km were well behaved. We stayed on the plateau and I only had one or two short end-of-climbs on foot. Then when the descent began it went on all the way down into Fécamp. Fécamp looked great from above but felt gloomy when I got into the town.
From there I caught three trains to Caen.
Day 9, Caen – Ouistreham
I will be up and out at 5.30 tomorrow morning cycling up a busy road to get the ferry back to England. But I will send this tonight from a Mexican-French tapas bar on my last night in France
Reflections
I have been lucky with the wind. It prevails from the southwest but on my trip has blown from between northwest and northeast.
I am pleased with my new bike.
In the past I’ve done this sort of thing on foot. Cycling is easier than walking. You impress people more when you cycle, though. What, you came all the way from Berck? from Belgium?
It was a satisfying tour.
Paul Hodson 