Day 2

I awoke to the sound of the morning alarm on the ferry and crawled out from behind the row of seats, a space that I had made my “cabin” for the night. It was early, sometime around 6am and I was achy, tired, sunburned, unshowered and still in my cycling clothes from the previous day. Greg hadn’t slept well either, and the two of us stumbled bleary-eyed into the bathroom to brush our teeth (though I had to do this with my fingers as I had, unbelievably, forgotten my toothbrush) and wash our faces before heading down to our bikes. As we were freshening up a short, chubby French guy with frizzy hair wandered in from the lounge we slept in and struck up conversation with us when he noticed that we had bike bottles with us. It turned out that he had brought his bike on the ferry too and was planning to cycle around Le Havre for a while before catching the evening boat back to Portsmouth. He was living in England but had come over to Le Havre with the 2 main aims of eating some deliceau pastries and having a look at a ship that was moored in Le Havre harbour. Although he was going a considerably shorter distance than us, it was nice to meet another cycling enthusiast – and I remember being impressed with how chirpy he was as 6am despite spending the night without a proper bed.
Down on the car deck we mounted our bikes, and after some friendly words of encouragement from a truck driver we scooted down the ramp and into the cool crisp morning air of Le Havre. Within 10 minutes we were lost – just following the “All Routes” signs seemed to have brought us into the middle of the city. As both of us were pretty hungry we stopped at a boulangerie in a square for some breakfast.
Three years in Japan had not done wonders for our French ability, and the shop owner looked distinctly unamused as we blundered through a strange mix of Japanese, French and English whilst trying to order. Perusing our big European map we tried to figure out our best escape route from the city as we ate breakfast. Having decided that taking the northern coastal road in the direction of Dieppe was our best bet we wandered up to a respectable looking French guy who was having a cigarette outside what must have been his office. We wanted to know the way onto the road to Dieppe, and I was anticipating another awkward exchange but luckily he spoke pretty good English. Our newfound guide was friendly, and obviously keen to practice his English. He pointed us in the right direction and wished us “good chance” on our journey.
We cruised back part of the way to the ferry port we had just come from and then got on a wide boulevard which eventually led us out of the city. It was nice to get out into the countryside – it was a glorious day and I was enjoying the cycling. In comparison to the roads I had ridden on in England the previous day the one we were on now was a dream. There was not too much traffic, and the cars that there were seemed to be traveling significantly slower than their UK counterparts. I have always associated cycling in England with windy conditions, but now on our first day in France the air was completely still. Perhaps it was just part of the “good chance” that the guy in the square wished us.
Étretat was the first decent sized town that we came to on the road – or at least the first one marked on our massive map. It had already become clear that our huge scale map of Europe was not going to cut the mustard when it came to negotiating a route through the small towns and villages of France for the simple reason that none of them were marked on it. We located a bookshop in Étretat and bought ourselves a more detailed map of northern France, and also one of Germany. I also got myself a toothbrush, which despite its very ordinary outward appearance must have had some sort of special design feature as it set me back a massive 4 euros.
We had changed over some pounds to euros on the boat the previous night, but I made my first big withdrawal from the bank machine here too. It remained to be seen how long 250 euros was going to last us, but we celebrated our newfound paper wealth with a couple of orange juices and a game of table football at the local café – a game which I might add was won with considerable ease by me!
Back on the road again after our mid-morning stop we were having trouble making good time as one of Greg’s pedals kept coming loose and falling off. The pattern we fell into was one where we would cycle for a few kilometers and the pedal would fall off. We would then try and fix it back on ourselves using Greg’s pliers – a tool clearly not designed for the job – and then get it further tightened at any garages we passed. At one point we even borrowed a tool from some guys with a broken down car by the side of the road to tighten it up.
Despite the makeshift repairs it was clear that something was obviously seriously wrong with the pedal shaft of Greg’s bike, and it was luckily for us that we chanced upon a bike shop at lunch time somewhere in or around Fecamp. The guy in the shop replaced the whole left pedal shaft for a fairly reasonable price, and that seemed to solve the problem. This was all doubly annoying for Greg as he had paid someone at his local cycle shop 150 pounds to get his bike roadworthy for the trip, and the pedal shaft that had to be replaced had actually been newly fitted as part of that pre-trip makeover! That’s English workmanship for you!
We bought ourselves some baguettes, pasta sauce, cheese and ham and made ourselves an impromptu picnic for lunch in the local park of the town before getting back on our saddles for the afternoon. After consulting our new, more detailed map, and also seeing signs for a campsite we ended up heading slightly inland rather than following the main road all the way to Dieppe. We eventually found the campsite that had been signposted in a small village called Ouvrille la Riviere. It took us a while to find, but the beautiful rural scenery had been amazing through the afternoon which completely made up for it.
Unsurprisingly we were pretty tired on our arrival at the campsite – it had been 12 hours in the hot sun since we rolled off the ferry in Le Havre that morning – but nonetheless thrilled that we had made our first bit of progress into France. However, when I plotted the day’s ride on to our larger map of Europe it really highlighted how insignificant a chunk of the full distance to Budapest it was. There was still a long, long way to go, and we had only taken our first tentative step. Within the first 2 days both of us had also had problems with our bikes, and I wondered whether the steel and wheels beneath us would hold up for the trip. We were aiming for Budapest by September 26th at the very latest, but if we continued to have mechanical problems every day the chances of us arriving in time for our course seemed rather slim.
Luckily we had arrived at the campsite early enough to put in a food order. The big pizzas and cool Kronenbourg they served up went down a treat after a hard day’s riding, and I went to bed thoroughly satisfied. This was our first night of proper camping and I slept like a baby.