Sunday, 09 May 2010, day 15
Effortless, that’s how I wanted to call this entry before our little mishap. Wind from the northeast which meant in the back, slightly undulating roads, gear on high cam in front.
First though let me say a little bit about our home for the last two nights, the camping in Pontabault. The owner is Dave, originally from near Manchester (fortunately no fan of United), came chasing his dream of running a camping in France and giving a better environment for his kids. Now, seventeen years later he is still running the camping, his wife has left him and two of the three kids have moved away. It is not difficult to see why he is not a happy man. Still, it was great to talk English to him and not having to search one’s limited French vocabulary to express oneself, not to mention the use of his caravan for two nights.
We partly retraced our tracks of the day before on the way to Mont Saint Michel before turning a little more south to avoid the bay. Luckily we asked some fellow cyclists for confirmation of our directions and they warned us that our intended route was closed for a marathon ending at Mont St Michel so we had to alter our plans on the fly. Nothing unusual.
Had lunch at the \\\”beach” nicely in the shelter of a hedge where my wildly growing beard got a much needed trim, pate and cummin cheese on very tough crusted bread.
Then disaster (nearly) struck. I had noticed the pressure in my rear tire had gone down so we stopped at a petrol station to put it back up to 3.5 bars and off we went again until 10 kms further Ellie noticed my backpack missing. Panic! Passport, netbook, sa credit card. Raced back, now against the wind but twice as fast. It was still there! Try that in South Africa. Mightily relieved I jabbered some explanation to two bemused Frenchmen and resumed our trip on the now familiar road.
In St Malo it was a bit of a search for McDonalds, of course everybody knows where it is but we get a bit confused between the droite, gauche and en droite and when we arrived I told Ellie all I wanted was a huge coke for some much needed sugar. Did our internet thing, disapointed at no comments and looked for a camping which fortunately was not far away and very well signposted.
Supper: Andive, sausage,macaroni
Distance: 88 k