Friday August 8, 2014

We woke up to rain on the tent (again).  We had already decided last night that we would cycle today regardless of the weather.  We got up, had breakfast and broke the down in a drizzly rain.  We were cycling to Ducey today in the hopes of finding a laundromat.  The drizzle eased a little and the weather was very humid.  We arrived in Ducey at around 11:00 after cycling only 23 kms.

There was no laundromat, so I decided we should carry on to Mont St Michel visit the UNESCO Heritage Site and carry on to Pontorson for the campsite.  It had started to drizzle again as we left Ducey but, because of the busy road we decided to take the rail trail it was only a little further than by the road.

We arrived in Mont St Michel at about 1:30 and cycled towards the Island.  However, we could only get so far, before it was prohibited to ride the bicycles.

We cycled back to a café and had lunch. When you have all your belongings on your bike you really do not want to lock it to a fence and leave it for a couple of hours. An English family who were also touring this area were trying to decide what to do as well.  They told us about the campsite at Mont St Michel which was just around the corner from the café.  We decided to stay the night expecting it to be expensive but it was only E12.00.  We decided we would get up early in the morning and visit the Abbey and then cycle a short distance to Pontorson and the next camp site.  We set up the tent and discovered that this campsite had a washing machine and dryer, I finally got some laundry done.

After the laundry was done we went out to eat – again a Prix Fixe Menu which was very good.  However, as we were eating it started to pour with rain and pour and pour.  By the time we had finished dinner it had stopped raining.  When we got back to the campsite, many of the sites were flooded.  Fortunately for us our site wasn’t too bad.  Although we did move the tent to slightly higher ground.  Unfortunately the tent hadn’t completely dried from the morning and the problem leak soaked Ralf’s duvet and bedding.  We went back to the laundry and put everything in the dryer.  It continued to rain and as we updated both the garmin’s in the laundry.  I checked the weather forecast, it turns out we are getting hit by the tail-end of Hurricane Bertha.  High winds and rain all night, it is going to be a very wet night for us. All the hotels in the area are booked.  No escape from the rain. The joys of travelling on a bike and in a tent.  Ralf managed to rig up the spare fly inside the tent, it looked like Aladdin’s cave but it kept the rain off us and we had a dry night.

They had a lot of cows in the Village.  I wanted to take a marker and draw our route on this one, but Ralf didn\’t think it was a good idea.