Saturday August 2, 2014

What an excellent first full day of cycling in France.  We were late getting going this morning, I woke up at 6:15 as usual, but then went back to sleep for half an hour.  We had a leisurely breakfast and cleaned up, by the time the tent was packed away and we were ready to leave it was 9:45, the latest start for a very long time. We had to find the small village of Digosville where we would pick up the Eurovelo Route # 4 (EV4).  Digosville was a really pretty Town, and the flowers were beautiful.

As soon as we got to Digosville we found the signs for EV4 and followed it all the way to Sainte-Marie du Mont.  The route was really well signed, at the intersections along with the regular road signs, which is how cycle routes should be signed.

There was only one section which was a bit of a pain when the route meandered along the beach path, you really didn\’t want to go swimming in this area.

We stopped in Quineville for lunch and then headed towards the Utah Beach area.  Before we got to the beach we came across the Chrisbecq batteries.  We came up a hill and turned the corner and there was the biggest gun placement and bunker I have ever seen.

I turned around to look to see where the beach was and it was a couple of kilometres down the hill.  It bought me to tears.

Here were these massive guns trained on the beaches, that could throw shell after shell at the men coming from the landing crafts.  I was horrified.  All of the memorials, statues and words of peace could not bring the horror of war home to me more than seeing these massive guns.

As we arrived at Utah Beach we were told about the 70th anniversary of the liberation of this area.  This wasn’t about the landings, this was when France had its own army again.  There were various army displays and people were waiting for the parade.  It started in typical French fashion with no-one really knowing where to go or what was happening.

Eventually they crossed the road and did a circuit of the field before coming back to the display area.  They had all sorts of vehicles including the guy on the bike!  In the evening there was going to be a concert.

We arrived in Sainte-Marie du Mont at about 5:30 a little tired from the long ride (our longest day) and very hungry.  We still hadn’t found a camp site for the night, but we were really hungry.  We looked at the menu in the restaurants in Sainte Marie du Mont and decided to eat first then find a campsite.  We had a 3 course meal Prix-fixed menu EU18 each.  The food was fabulous, I had baked camembert with a mixed green salad, pork medallions with fries and profiteroles with ice-cream, Ralf had the same starter, pork burger and fries and Iles de meringue, (Islands of meringue).  Of course that would have broken the budget for today, if I hadn’t spotted a young man checking out the bikes.  I went over and introduced myself. Tom had spotted the Canadian flag on Ralf\’s bike.  Tom is studying at McGill University.  He asked where we were headed for and where we had come from.  I explained we were so hungry we had to stop to eat and then we had to look for a campsite.  He offered up his grandparents field.  His grandparent arrived and they said yes of course we could pitch our tent here.  So here we are in a field behind an Englishman’s house, they have allowed us the use of their toilet facilities.  Tom has lived in France since he was four, his Grandparents moved to France 14 years ago.

Tom was our road angel for today.  I think we would have had to wild camp if he hadn’t been interested in the bikes.