Day three: Finding Normandy’s beauty

I set off from Honfleur in far better spirits after a good dinner the night before. As opposed to the nasty looking ports and factories of Le Harve and the even nastier dual carriage ways, I rode out of town along the coast.

Within two minutes I was gliding along a quiet road with a beautiful sandy beach flanking me on one side and rolling countryside on the other. If someone had told me sooner, I would’ve been down there in my Speedos at daybreak!

The ride took me along the coast through some small, beautiful seaside towns such as Villerville, Deauville and Blonville-sur-Mere. As the sun was shining, many of the beaches were really busy, although the towns didn’t seem overtly touristy.

At Villers-sur-Mere I stopped off for a spot of lunch and a quick paddle. From there it was inland and up numerous hills that I can only describe as bastards! According to my guidebook they were ‘moderate’. Steep must refer to cycling up the side of a building then, I will look forward to those.

Before long I had hit Douzle, where I stopped for a Yop and some sweets before heading 10km further to the tiny village of Beuvron-en-Auge.

Beuvron-en-Auge, according to the guide book, is one of France’s 100 most beautiful villages. It is essentially one street and square of cute little houses and shops. It had a late afternoon dusk feel to it too, which added to the atmosphere. Not touristy or tacky in the slightest, it was certainly worth the ride.

Finding a campsite

However no amount of beauty could make up for the fact that Beuvron does not have a campsite. After speaking to a lady in the tourist office and consulting the guidebook, I established that there was a farm on the way into the town of Cambremer that took campers. It was therefore another 15km through the countryside to find this farm.

I knew I must have missed it when I rode into the centre Cambremer. I was told it was 2km before you hit the town. By this time, it was nearing 9pm and virtually nothing was open. Getting a little frustrated, I asked a barman who directed me with finger pointing back in the direction I had come from.

I biked for what seemed like 2km, but still saw nothing. The road was really quiet, with a farm or large house about every 700 metres. I decided my best option was to knock on some doors.

The first farm I tried had a long uphill drive-way passed a field of cows that were not pleased to see me. At the farm house I could hear people talking in a small lodge next to the main house, so started shouting ‘Bonjour, Bonjour’. It was embarrassing. A lady came to the door and said she was on holiday but suggest I knock at the main house.

I knocked on the big white door of the main farmhouse. Within a split second a large Alsatian roared out of the side door barking aggressively. For a split second I thought this was it, I was going to get ripped apart by a dog, and dropped my helmet in paralysing fear. But just as the dog was about to maul me (or so I thought), an old lady opened the main door and calmed down her animal. It was turning into a humiliating few minutes.

Although the lady didn’t speak any English, she seemed to understand ‘le camping’, and pointed me back along the road. One gardener, and two front door knocks later, I found it – a little field with unwieldy grass, housing a single tent and a caravan.

Dinner

The owner of the farmhouse wasn’t there, so I just pitched my tent and headed back into town to find some dinner. I was starving.

I was worried about it getting dark and didn’t want to get stuck in town on my bike though. However there were literally no shops open. I asked an old lady, who again didn’t speak English but seemed to get the gist of me putting my hand to my mouth. She took me round the back of the village’s only restaurant and started knocking on the kitchen window presumably asking if they would feed me. I can imagine she is a generous grandmother.

Within a matter of minutes I had arranged for the restaurant to make me up a takeaway meal, complete with a borrowed plate, knife and fork. After a few minutes I decided that this was ridiculous and it wasn’t getting that dark so took my meal inside.

I was quite a smelly dirty mess, sitting in what was a lovely, small local restaurant. But the other diners didn’t seem to mind and neither did I.

It was then back to the so-called campsite where I joined 4 French people sitting outside a caravan for a couple of glasses of wine and some conversation using my very broken French and there significantly better broken English.

A good day, even with the elements of the unexpected. Today France was beautiful, and I went to bed far more excited about the week ahead than I did the night before.