Today begins the Le Manche Tour. A shorter one this time, only 200 miles over four days - from Cherbourg to Saint Malo. A bit of Normandy and a bit of Brittany. Day 1 is 50 miles, day 2 is 42 miles, day 3 is 59 miles (w/ some hills) and day 4 is 50 mile w/ a current forecast for rain. We’re staying in Carentan, Tessy-sur-Vire, Ducey and the last night in Saint Malo. Didn’t have as much time to train for this after our little fall in Florida, so should be interesting!
This is a good chunk of a ride called the Petit Tour de Manche. The full Tour de Manche covers coastal Dorset and Devon in the U.K. and Brittany / Normandy in France from Cherbourg to Roscoff in France. It also can include Jersey and Guernsey Islands. We’ve opted to start in Cherbourg and finish in Saint Malo because we want to stay in the Saint Malo walled city on our last night.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Malo
https://www.freewheelingfrance.com/where-to-go/the-tour-de-manche-bike-route.html
We drove from Blackburn to Portsmouth, roof bars woo-woo’ing all the way. Sounded like the wind in the rigging on the boat. Had to keep the speed down to 60mph due to the tandem being on top (which added to the woo-woo’ing) so it took a bit longer than it normally would. We arrived 5 hours early - oops!
The ferry from Portsmouth is a Brittany Ferry, we quite like those - very French. Departure time is 10:30pm so no 3-course meal on the way out, but since it’s a day sail we’re planning on one on the way back!
Ended up waiting for a couple hours on the dock before we could get on the ferry, a tad chilly out there, but eventually we got on. Very interesting entering the boat, can only pedal so far and then you have to get off and walk. They have a section for cycles, you lean them against the wall and then the crew tie them down. Bearing all the panniers, we clackity-clacked in our cycling shoes up eight flights of stairs to get from the car deck to our cabin. As the ferry left at 10pm, we had a boat picnic w/ our bbq chicken and a bottle of wine we’d picked up in Portsmouth - nice way to end the day watching as we headed out of the port and into the channel!
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