Day 2
The skies were grey and overcast. It was chilly and rain was threatening. The ferry to Dieppe was due to sail at 9:30am but we had to check in at 8:00am, so no chance of a lie in.
On the way to the ferry we stopped off at Sainsburys’s for breakfast and provisions for the journey… and a few squirts of WD-40.
Once on the ferry, we had several hours to kill so we read the newspaper reports about ‘the’ wedding and admired the lacework on Kate’s wedding dress. There were at least three other cycle groups on the ferry, all bound for Paris. I was taken aback by some familiar faces – it was Ian and Sarah, two people I know from Weybridge! They would be staying in the same town as us tonight and were also cycling to Paris. Small world.
Disembarking at Dieppe was a bit of crush. What seemed like 100 people with bikes started to walk down the exit ramp. It was at this point that disaster struck. A safety cover had not been placed over an opening on the ramp. Barabara was unlucky enough to put her foot in it and went right in up to her knees. Her left knee swelled up straight away and she had a nasty scrape on her arm. The pompieres were called and a bag of ice fetched from the bar. We’d hardly set foot in France, it was starting to rain, one of our party was injured – and we hadn’t even got on our bikes yet. Not a good start.
The Sapeurs-pompiers are the French fire service, but in Dieppe they also run the ambulance service. They arrived within minutes and after a brief examination decided that Barbara needed to be taken to hospital for an X-ray.
As a veteran of the Dieppe Raids, Chris knew the town well so he lead us to the hospital. Helen hopped off the tandem and rode Barbara’s bike there, so we wouldn’t need to go back for it. The Urgences department was busy and it was clear that the X-rays were going to take a while. So Chris led the majority of the group to the start of the Avenue Vert route so they could set off towards today’s destination, Forges-Les-Eaux.
Fortunately the X-rays showed that nothing was broken. Barbara bravely decided to press on, taking the back seat on the tandem for a while to make it easier. We finally set off from Dieppe at 5:30pm which was three hours later than planned. We only had 35 miles to do today, so our destination was still achievable.
The Avenue Verte is a disused railway line but unlike the dirt track that we followed in England, this was tarmac all the way without a single bump or pothole. A motorway for cyclists. The rain had stopped, patches of blue sky were showing and we made good progress. Passing through the back of numerous small villages and we saw backyards full of chickens, geese, ducks, pigs and goats. Between the villages the meadows were filled with Charolais cattle and occasionally sheep. To our right we sometimes caught glimpses of the river Béthune that meandered through the bottom of the valley.
We stopped briefly to admire the Château de Mesnières-en-Bray. A beautiful renaissance style building with two large circular towers, each topped with slate conical roofs. It was badly damaged by fire in 2004 and parts are still being restored.
Our next target was Neufchâtel-en-Bray. The Avenue Verte was starting to slope upwards now and the clouds were darkening. The tarmac was wet indicating rain ahead.
About 3 miles outside Neufchâtel-en-Bray we got a text message from the lead group saying they were having tea there. We caught up with them just as they were finishing. From here it was now only 10 miles to Forges-les-Eaux.
On our way we came across a scaled model of the solar system – just to the side of the cycle path was a 1 metre diameter yellow sphere. This was a scale model of the Sun. As the real Sun is 1,392,000 kilometers in diameter this model was roughly 1.4 billion times smaller. A few yards away was another sphere, this was Mercury, quickly followed by Venus, the Earth and Mars all within 150 meters, and all placed at distances that were to the same scale as the Sun. At the same scale we passed the outermost planet Pluto about 8.5 kilometers later.
With the rain holding off and the group now all together we quickly completed the last stretch to Forges-les-Eaux. The Sofhotel was expecting us and quickly showed us the lockup garages at the rear where we could safely store our bikes. Just as quickly we were checked in and we could see our dinner table was already set and waiting for us.
Dinner was a feast. Traditional Normandy fare of cheese salad, sorbet with calvados, veal, more cheese, and tarte aux pommes avec more calvados. In the other part of the restuarant was a large birthday party going on accompanied by a trumpeter playing happy birthday and other French tunes. We were delighted when he came over to our table and serenaded us, first with Rule Britannia and later when he heard what we were doing he played It’s a Long Way to Tipperary. The whole evening was a great finish to a day that had definitely had it’s ups and downs.