The Fridays' Tour de Normandie 2015 -- Day 3: Honfleur to Dieppe (via Harfleur, Le Havre and Rouen)

Posts about previous days of this tour: 

Prologue

Day 1

Day 2

Sometimes things don't go to plan. 

Sometimes I argue with my body, knowing I need to win. 

(Usually, my knees are playing at being drama queens and need to be told to "shut up".)

Then sometimes the body says something to which there is no possible reply; it's game over.  

On a drab, damp Monday morning, about 5k out of Honfleur -- having (yet again) had little sleep, conquered a migraine in the wee hours, then fallen down the stairs on the way out of our accommodation -- the body spoke and that was that.

Let me rewind a few hours.

My day started at 5am -- with a migraine. An injection followed and two hours later I was very nearly recovered, from the migraine at least if not from the cumulative lack of sleep which was almost certainly its trigger.

We had to be dressed, packed, loaded and round the corner to the meet up point at 8am. We had plenty of time, as we had bought a few groceries in Houlgate the previous day, so ate "breakfast" while we packed without losing any time.

All was going well until the very last minute, when, arms full, I descended the narrow steep angled staircase and somehow missed the last step altogether. Down I went. I didn't drop anything but my head hit the wall. (By the way, that's how I discovered where my errant Polar cyclocomputer was: in my cycling cap. And briefly between my head and a wall. Ouch.)

I sat against the wall for a few minutes taking stock. I hadn't lost consciousness and didn't feel dizzy. Psychologically shaken but fairly certain I hadn't broken or sprained anything, I stood up and loaded my bike.

Two minutes later, we arrived at the meeting point -- to find not a single bicycle or cyclist in sight. And then we remembered that one line in that one email a few weeks previously:  "I am changing Monday's starting point..."   Now where the heck was the Mercure Hotel??  We set off for the harbour as fast as we could and -- by a stroke of good luck -- there it was. Phew.

The streets were damp so it had obviously rained during the night, but it wasn't raining now and it didn't feel too cold. 

However, I wasn't feeling too great. With our friend Stuart's recent experience (an 'off' on tram lines in Belgium, head injury and subsequent trip to A&E) fresh in my mind, my bump on the head had knocked my confidence and made me wonder whether I was now a liability to the group. Full disclosure to Simon? I asked Adam. "Only if you want to get kicked off the ride". Okay, not comforting. 

Maybe my knees were an excuse, a real reason in themselves but maybe not the main one. In hindsight, I am not sure. At the time, however, what I did know was that, with the degree of exhaustion I already felt at 8am, faced with the hilliest day of the whole tour, chances were good that I was going to suffer and be exceedingly slow, bump on the head or no. And cycling is supposed to be fun, right?

A few miles out of Honfleur, I called Adam's name. The other rider behind me must have heard something in my tone -- he overtook me, discreetly leaving me alone with Adam to simply say "I don't think I can do this today". 

Adam asked no questions. "Wait here while I tell Simon."  I pulled over into a side street and he sped on. The splash of bright jackets glowed in the mist ahead, about to disappear around a bend half a mile up the road. Adam's red jacket flew up the road gaining on them by the second. The splash of colour stopped. 

Olaf and Kat came up behind me and stopped. I don't know where they had stayed overnight but they had apparently suffered a slight delay leaving Honfleur. "Emergency breakfast" was all Olaf said. He may have meant, we needed breakfast and nobody was serving it! At 8am on Whit Monday in France, options would have been severely limited.  Whatever the case, we exchanged news and they rode on.

Time seemed suspended. I felt unusually calm. I would love to have ridden the roads and seen all the sights that Simon had chosen for us, but it was not to be and I did not regret or second-guess.

After some time -- 5 minutes? 10? -- Adam's jacket headed back toward me and I could see the multi-coloured blob begin to move off and then disappear out of sight.

Adam reached me brimming with information he'd been given by Simon and Martin as to possible routes we could take that would be much flatter than Simon's and cut off significant miles. They did all assume that we would be able to get a train for part of the journey. Simon knew there was a station in Harfleur, just over the River Seine from Honfleur, and Martin knew how to find the cycle path that would get us there. So off we went.

Martin's instructions for finding the path were spot on. It involved a wiggle through a residential area and crossing a roundabout -- which Adam approached on the left, the exit lane for oncoming traffic! I shouted "on the right!" and he swerved back onto the right (see what I did there) side. Phew! The roads were in fact deserted but complacency doesn't pay. 

Traversing wetlands along the Seine -- prime birdwatching territory.

  

One spire of the bridge comes into view

The road through the wetlands passed under the western approach to the bridge.

(c) Adam Bell 2015

Then we could see the signs pointing to the cycle route onto the bridge. It involved a couple of switchbacks. 

My fatal mistake was in putting my foot down at the bottom of the path onto the bridge: right into a goopy puddle that had formed where the tarmack of the path met the dirt track of the wetlands road. The problem? My cleats are Speedplay Light Actions. The operational part of the cleat interface is in the sole of the foot, not in the pedal. They are notoriously susceptible to any kind of grit, mud or other contaminant -- a tiny bit is all it takes to clog up the mechanism so that you can't clip in but even worse -- if you do manage to clip in, with difficulty -- you absolutely cannot clip out. 

And so it proved to be. I cycled up the switchbacks onto the edge of the bridge making desperate attempts to unclip but finally had to brake myself to a stop into the cement barrier, lean myself (still on the bicycle) onto the barrier, reach down and release the buckle of my shoe and pull my foot out, leaving the shoe dangling from the pedal. Locked in solid. I called Adam back. The pedal looked like a lollipop of pure mud. We spent several minutes doing what we could with grass, sticks, pointy rocks, baby wipes and the water in my bottle to clean both the pedal and the cleat. The pedal was easy as there are no real working parts there. The cleat was a mixed bag: it looked clean but still would not clip in and out without a great deal of effort. After that, I rode for several hours taking care not to clip in at all. I was mostly successful as, other than the bridge itself and an overpass we went over in Harfleur (twice), we were almost entirely on the flat. 

(c) Adam Bell 2015

Cycling over the Seine bridge was an accomplishment, but it wasn't particularly rewarding as, due to the weather, there wasn't much to see from the top. The cycle path is really a lane, with a solid white lane painted on the tarmac. The lane is narrow and the traffic beside it is fast moving. The prospect was entirely unappealing, so we used the pedestrian path instead, with its raised kerb forming a bit of a barrier and the cycle lane itself providing a bit more of a buffer in terms of space. The pedestrian path however was not tarmacked but simply painted metal, the same metal as the bridge. Adam warned me before we started up the western side of the bridge to be very careful braking on this surface. I found the entire experience quite stressful in terms of concentration and muscle tension: it's a steep-ish gradient which means low speeds and trying to control any wobble not to hit the kerbs on either side, plus struggling with muscle power with knees complaining and being paranoid about accidentally clipping the right foot into a pedal from which I would not be able to free myself. 

You can just about smell my intense concentration from here. (c) Adam Bell 2015

(c) Adam Bell 2015

The descent was just as fraught. It was such a relief to get safely down. Back on the cycle path, we carried on to where the road goes through the toll station for the bridge, there to find the cycle path ended and we had to traverse two mercifully short flights of metal stairs to get off it, there to re-join the road -- yes, dual carriageway -- until we could exit at the next junction. 

View of the bridge once safely over, looking back towards Honfleur.

Once off the dual carriageway, we rode several miles on a brand new road that was completely deserted. It ran along a railway line that was obviously not in current use, and the exits from this road seemed to feed an extensive network of ports and docks, few of which seemed to be in use. It was all very puzzling. 

As we approached where we would cut east across the Grand Canal du Havre to get to Harfleur, we found another cycle path that seemed to be a short cut. We began to see a few other cyclists -- all roadies in 'training mode' -- but they were all quite understandably using the flat, empty, smooth roads, not the cycle path, even though it was in good repair. 

We saw countless bunnies along this path. 

Not a bunny. (c) Adam Bell 2015

The route into Harfleur was mostly on cycle and shared use paths, until suddenly it wasn't -- it was fast moving multi-lane roads with roundabout after roundabout after roundabout. It felt like sheer chance that we got off that manic road and into the town centre itself. 

Unfortunately, Harfleur was rather disappointing:  nothing was open, there was no signage for the railway station, we just couldn't get a grip on where we were and where we needed to go. 

I tried to snap a few photos just to 'salvage' something from how we seemed to be going in circles.

We could see where the railway line ran and even cycled under it a couple of times, but we could not find a station or a road that looked like it might lead to a station, or any signage whatsoever. Finally, we realised we were leaving Harfleur altogether in obviously the wrong direction -- though headed towards Dieppe if we were minded to cycle there after all! 

So we flagged down a man with two young boys on small bicycles -- he was holding the back of the smallest boy's bike but was dressed in running gear, apparently seizing the opportunity to get his own kind of workout while teaching his son to cycle. The man's English was on a similar par to Adam's French, each being just about adequate for basics! He gave directions back to the other side of Harfleur altogether (which suggested that perhaps there is no longer a station operating in Harfleur as Simon had thought). 

His directions were clear and easy to follow...

... leading us to this. Closed. No trains today. In any direction. At all.

From station posters, it seemed this station was on a railway spur connecting Rolleville to LeHavre. We wanted to go inland to Rouen, to catch another train out to the coast at Dieppe. So this spur was of no use to us... unless perhaps we went to Le Havre which as a port and ferry terminal would surely offer more connections?  Problem was, this station was closed completely today -- no trains to Le Havre. 

Adam checked his GPS map again and realised we were only 4km from Le Havre anyway. We should just cycle there. So we did. 

Arriving at Gare du Havre, we found the display boards indicating there were trains to, guess where, Rolleville. Loads of them. (Adam continued to tax his brain wondering why so many trains to such an out of the way place.) There may be a train to Paris but not til much later in the day. If we could find a train going the right way, could we take our bicycles? We needed to talk to someone, ask some questions. 

Ticket office?  Closed. 

We found a self-service ticket machine. The menu was confusing and we had to go through all the options several times (not helped by strange translations into English) but eventually found we could get a train to Paris that stopped in Rouen. We would have a two-hour wait but could then get a train from Rouen to Dieppe, arriving 18.45. That would have to do. We bought the tickets (about £10 each), aware that there may still be a risk that one or both trains would not have space for bicycles or that special tickets might be needed, which we had no idea how to obtain. 

So we shut down all the questions and anxieties, and had lunch. In fact, we ate in the station, as the cooler section in the large W.H. Smith style news agent actually had decent salads with substantial amounts of protein (unlike the equivalents in the UK which treat meat and cheese as mere garnishes in a huge bowl of lettuce). 

Then we went outside to have a quick look around the part of Le Havre near the train station. It was not particularly picturesque -- in fact, I was put in mind somewhat of downtown Salt Lake City. If Salt Lake City had adult 'toy' shops. 

Back to the station, we discovered the ticket office was open! Turns out, it was merely closed for lunch when we first arrived. Adam popped in to ask about our bicycles and was pleased and relieved to be told, yes there will be bike space, first come first serve, and it's free. 

And so it was. 

Our train to Rouen was the Le Havre - Paris Intercity service and was very comfortable.

The journey to Rouen was through mainly rural countryside.

Rouen station is simply gorgeous.

It only took a minute at the ticket office to buy our onward tickets to Dieppe and confirm there would be space for bicycles on the same basis as our first train.

So what to do with two hours' free time?  Sightsee in Rouen, of course!

By now, the mists had burned off and it was another lovely day. 

The only thing I knew about Rouen was that it had a noteworthy cathedral. We would go look at that and whatever else caught our eye along the way. 

Perhaps it was a bit naive of me to point at the only church spire in sight and say "there it is, let's go". (I can only think we were feeling a bit of GPS/map fatigue by this point.)

But Adam saw a different spire and set off for that one. On the way, I could see "my" spire peeping between buildings off on our right at about two o'clock. However, it wasn't until we reached "Adam's" spire that I realised it was a different one. 

Hôtel de ville de Rouen

Adam's was certainly impressive, though! We gawked and admired and snapped photos, then Adam said "hmm, this isn't the way I remembered it" and the light dawned. This wasn't Rouen Cathedral.

(You mean there's another one? Bigger or better than this one?!)

Monastery of Saint-Ouen

In front of the Hôtel de ville de Rouen on the Place du Général de Gaulle stands an impressive copper statue of Napoleon Bonaparte. 

I mentioned the copper spire I had spotted earlier, off to the west. To get to it, we cycled through the "antique dealers' district" and past yet another stunning church (of Saint-Maclou), also in the 'Flamboyant style' of Gothic architecture. 

Without any difficulties, we soon found the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Rouen. (Yes, the big ones do seem to all be called "Notre-Dame"!)

(c) Adam Bell 2015

On the southside of the cathedral is a plaza surrounded by apartments with a few ground floor shops and bars. One bar/brasserie had just stopped serving lunch but we were able to buy cold drinks and sit in the warm sunshine beside the cathedral to enjoy them. 

We found the crows' choices of perch rather amusing. 

(c) Adam Bell 2015

And we saw yet another European tourist train, an only slightly satirical expose of which can be found here. 

Finishing our drinks, we had ample time to return to Gare de Rouen-Rive-Droite, approaching from the front this time which allowed us to appreciate its Art Nouveau beauty. 

Outside the station is one of the city's 20 Cy'clic bicycle share stations. I like that this is immediately outside the train station, visible and accessible (instead of tucked around corners out of sight and without consistent signage as outside London train stations). 

Inside the station, we still had a few minutes while waiting for the platform allocation for our train to be announced, so we studied the artwork within the main hall. Some of it is interesting. (Some of it is ghastly - I should have taken photos of that too.)

I ordered a cappuccino from the pseudo-pub inside the station. It was served in a glass mug wedged into a rather lovely metal tray with handle (an Italian design? a number of Italian manufacturers sell them on amazon.com, amazon.co.uk and ebay). It feels a little precarious - you have to be sure the glass is fitted tightly into the metal band around its base, otherwise you risk dumping your drink right down your front. 

Arrival in Dieppe was a little anti-climactic. The station was deserted. We took photos of trains though for Adrian, who rather likes things like this. 

Dieppe station's main hall.

Our hotel in Dieppe -- obviously a former Formule 1 (chain) hotel that has been refurbished. It wasn't as close to the harbour as I would have liked, but it was cheap and clean.

And they gave us a secure room for everyone to put their bicycles overnight. Score.

The room numbering and consequent signage was strange and amusing. (Chambre no. 7 is apparently used for housekeeping/storage.)

For the first time on tour, we did not need showers at the end of the day -- as we had cycled only 40.5k, all on the flat! While changing to go out, we received multiple messages via Facebook saying everybody was in the Retro Bar on the harbour. So off we went. 

A loud cheer went up when we entered. I was surprised, embarrassed and absurdly pleased. A few minutes later, Titus turned up, to be greeted with another round of applause (which made me feel simultaneously deflated and relieved!)

Simon, Susie, Chris, Peter, Louise, Julie

Louise, Julie, Stuart, Frank, Uta, Sonia

Uta, Sonia, Jenny, Adrian, Claudine, Michael, Steve

Oh I've now got confused: Peter or "old Chris" (!) and Charlie, who rode the tour on his Brompton

We set off in search of dinner shortly afterwards. I did not take any further photos that night.

*******************************************************
Epilogue (Day 4)

The next day, our ferry was not until 12.30. Our booking was for the entire group, so we had to meet at the terminal at 11.15.

This gave us ample time to explore Dieppe a little.

Here is the restaurant where we had dinner the night before.



Photos of the harbour area --

After several dead ends (no one seemed to serve breakfast), we settled on this bar for coffees and (for the others) croissants and orange juice.

Steve's lovely Thorn Audax bike)

The rest of our bikes, locked to another lamp post nearby.

Sonia, Steve, Claudine

CAUTION: Another funky glass mug in a metal tray-like holder.

These had various insignia from both the Imperial Russia and USSR eras.

Typical balconies

Town centre living: apartments over shops

the pedestrianised high street

morning market in the square (blighted with traders' vans, just as in the UK)

Dieppe's church: Église Saint-Jacques -- 

Asphalt overlaying pave --

 Final regroup at Dieppe's ferry terminal --

Adrian killed time by cleaning his bike. 

I knew those straps would come in handy for last-minute purchases.

Martin's Thorn sports a fetching Minnie Mouse shower cap

 Homeward bound --