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Stayed in an actual hotel in Cobh, seven road miles from Ringaskiddy, where the ferry port was actually located across the bay, it was either that or find a quiet spot in the woods and I wanted to have my act together when crossing into France (turns out I needn't have worried).

It was a 15 hour crossing, due to arrive at sunrise. The ferry was a big boat, like a mini-cruise ship, with restaurants, a pool and a movie theater. Even without a cabin there was floor space to sleep, outlets to plug in the electronics, and accessible showers. The boat was so big up close I couldn't get all of it in a photo.



About a 90 minute wait, bikes had to queue with vehicles, no searches, no dogs (France and Ireland are both EU), just checking documents and boarding passes. I was concerned that since Ireland didn't offically know I was there (there is no border crossing of any sort between Ulster and the Republic) there might be a glitch. Likewise when I returned to the UK after Ireland and France without having officially left the country across a formal border, but again no worries, no search, in my case just passport stamps each arrival. Not even that for most folks on board.





A sailboat (25-30 ft?), somewhere off the coast of France, turning I think in anticipation of our prob'ly quite considerable wake. Every ferry crossing (Isle of Man, Ireland, France and England) I'd see a couple of actual sailors like this, out there in small sailboats, sometimes out of sight of land. My sense of it is there exists a hardcore sailing fraternity out there, and my hat is off to 'em



Next morning, dawn at sea, just surreal....

Thats a way cool sunrise... one for the wall so to speak.

Mike I have been silently following your journey, I do thank you for sharing. I truly envy your ability to do these trips Sir.

Thanks T, I will say that bicycles are awesome. With my knees I can't hardly run down the block yet I can cycle across a continent. The bike frame is steel, usual in touring bikes as it gives a much softer ride tho at the expense of weight and a lack of rigidity, both of which are premiums among the ordinary road bike crowd.

The bike weighs 33 pounds, about double what a good road bike would, on top of that I was hauling about 35 pounds of laptop, locks, pump, tubes, tools, clothes, sleeping bag, food, tent, water etc.. for an all up weight of around 70 pounds. How cycling a 70 pound bike is possible is the gearset, I got gears so low I can practically climb walls.

Likewise I am completely indifferent to speed, doesn't matter how fast you are going long as the wheels are rolling, and the overriding principle for me is to preserve the knees. Most of my time was spent at a leisurely 8 to 12 mph, slower than that uphill, faster down. Slow enough that I could actually take in the scenery. If you actually get physically tired on a bike expedition you are doing it wrong.

Brooks saddles cost around $130 and are made of leather, hard as a rock when new but they soon break in to your own butt. Because I'm using a Brooks saddle I can dispense with those absolutely horrible lycra/spandex bicycle clothes and padded crotches.

I wear just a single layer of loose-fitting nylon; oversize Magellan fishing shirts, loose-fitting pants from REI. Nylon doesn't hold moisture, you can sweat right through it, and it keeps its UPF rating even when wet, so if ya wear a broad-brimmed hat on sunny days with long sleeves and long pants ya don't need sunblock either.

Same thing with the pedals; I use ordinary platform pedals, no clips or special bicycle shoes. What this allows me to do is move my feet on the pedals if I start to get sore knees; change the angle of load on your knees and the pain subsides, or does for me. Plus I get to wear ordinary, functional footwear. I did this whole 1,400 mile trip in Crocs, the 2,000 mile NY trip two years back I did in slip-on sandals. My pants tuck into my ordinary socks.

Longest day with this set-up when I was actually trying to cover ground was 75 miles on my first day in France, shortest day was less than 40 miles of crossing a series of very steep-sided valleys in the Pennines when I was coming back north up England.

The trick is a comfortable bike, and patience. The hardest part is setting aside the time to do it. TX to NY took me a month. I set aside 42 days for this shorter, slower trip. I did it in 40.

It also saves ya a LOT of money if you can sleep outside on the ground. Actually I brung an air mattress on this trip, mostly to lift me up out of any puddles in the tent. Never used it.

I gotta say I suspect most people could do a trip like this, easier than they know.

Birdwatcher

Arrived in France on a quiet Sunday morning. Upon arrival I was in for something of a shock.

My intent had been to ride from Cherbourg to Calais, 300 miles. Across the Normandy beaches, through Dieppe, and on to Calais with its migrant camps, crossing back over to the famous white cliffs of Dover.

Problem was the ferry went to Roscoff, I thought Roscoff was close to Cherbourg in the same way that at Cork you actually catch the ferry at a nearby village called Ringaskiddy. I came to this conclusion based on a prior conversation with another cyclist in Ireland and because of a dotted line on a road map showing the only ferry from Cork going to Cherbourg. That and a general lack of internet access in the days prior.

As it turned out Roscoff is actually about 250 highway miles west of Cherbourg, on the other side of Brittany over by Brest

Fortunately I was riding the solution to the problem. Plan B was 220 miles east across Brittany and then Normandy to Bayeux, and then another 50 miles past Omaha and Utah Beaches north to Cherbourg, ferry to England from there.

That morning I was in a whole 'nother climate after two weeks of rain and mist in Ireland, it was clear and gonna be hot, it felt not a whole lot different from being on the coast in Texas except prettier.

Other than the ferry port, Roscoff if a quiet old resort town, not that big at all.








I rode into town and found a place selling breakfast (basically bread and strong coffee in France, not yer regular grease commonly served up in the English-speaking world). The architecture was immediately different; the English and Irish paint their houses, in France drab and imposing stonework was the norm, often offset by colorful flowers...





I liked France and I liked the French. I was surprised, based on prior experiences I didn't think I would, but I like the French. Started right off with the pretty and friendly woman serving up breakfast. I was my observation that French women commonly dress just a tad sexier than they really need to, an admirable trait IMHO.

Cold looking buildings, warm looking women!

One mistake I made on this trip was hurrying through Brittany, not enough photos. At the time I was mostly thinking of getting back on track, and putting the 200 miles to Normandy under the tires pretty quick.

The first 15 miles or so went frustratingly slow. Though was I needing to go east, first I had to run 15 miles south to get to the town of Morlaix and around a long estuary. The only direct route was off limits to bicycles, seen here looking towards Morlaix (note again the radical change in climate from just the day before in Ireland )...



I knew I wasn't in Kansas anymore when I passed fields of these things.... this is what artichokes look like.



Morlaix is a pretty little touristy town at the top of a long, narrow estuary, the town framed by a spectacular two-level railway viaduct, a lock holding water in the tiny harbor at low tide. One of those places where I shoulda taken more photos but didn't, and some of those I thought I was taking somehow never made it to the iphone memory. I do have this one.



Turns out Bretons are a different sort of French, with their own language. But even out in the sticks people everywhere in the world got the 'net, and are plugged in. Case in point; in some backwoods village in BF Brittany I came across this: At first I thought it was some sort of moody French artwork. Moody French artwork it may have been, but what it also was was a portrait tribute to the recently deceased David Bowie....



Despite my early start, it was noontime before I got to Morlaix on account of the winding backroads. A long steep climb out of town held me up further so naturally, being so far off-course as I felt I was, I was getting frustrated.

No worries, turns out France as a whole is a whole lot easier to navigate on a bicycle then say, England. Unlike England, the backroads where I went in Brittany and Normandy trended long and straight. I made the next 60 miles to St. Brieuc before dark.

Crossing backroads West Texas you drive from water tower to water tower, crossing backroads Brittany you drive from steeple to steeple.

Breton church steeples are both ornate and pierced.



That long first day is that it was a Sunday, and rural Brittany is closed on Sundays, I'd ride through village after village and everything would be shuttered. It was about 90F and even getting water was a problem.

Late in the day I did come across this town (Bell-Isle-En-Terre?) where there was some kind of small festival going on, and one restaurant sort of open.



France is full of crucifixes, leastways Brittany and Normandy are, set up at crossroads, mostly from the 19th Century and earlier, apparently by private individuals and families as memorials.

The older ones in Brittany followed the same form; tall post, stubby cross, crucified Jesus on the front, and what might be a saint on the back.






When the Allies were establishing a beachhead in Normandy things got ugly in occupied France. Calls had gone out to the Resistance across France before and during the landings to impede the German war effort, sabotage became widespread. The Germans applied brutality in an effort to suppress it.

I already posted the photo earlier in this thread outside of Morliax of the roadside monument marking the place where on August 4th 1944, fifteen civilians were shot in reprisal.

Here's another sort of roadside cross, July 15th 1944, seventeen members of the Resistance executed here.

All the cool kids in France drive one of these, a restored 2CV....



Front wheel drive, 600cc air-cooled flat twin loosely copied from BMW's motorcycle engines. I think these things rock..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_2CV#Engines

Brittany in July is sunny and gold...



Dunno which cereal this is, but there was a lot of it...



Seemed like every five minutes heavy-duty harvesting equipment was rolling by....

The coast of Brittany, I passed around behind St. Malo to avoid any crowds in my rush to get to Normandy. So I dunno what St. Malo is like, but east of there the coast is quiet. Le-Mont-Saint-Michel from twenty miles out is a point on the horizon....







Two Cops with hardware on the access road to Mont St. Michel.they seen this odd-looking guy approaching on a loaded-up bicycle. "Are you a terrorist?" they asked me. "No, I'm an American." I replied. "We like Americans." they said.



Mont St Michel sits way out on the tidal flats in the middle of nowhere, it would have been an architectural achievement even if it wasn't beautiful.

Then, right after Mont St. Michel, much to my surprise, time for something completely different.





11,956 sets of German remains, an ossuary, round inside, each set of remains in its own alcove.








I know that most of us, had we been born in Germany in that period, would have ended up in their army, fighting for a Germany ruled by Adolph Hitler. So I ain't gonna condemn these dead men, but these were not the honored men. To me the place looked like something the Nazis themselves might construct and there was no peace there.

“No dumb bastard ever won a war by going out and dying for his country. He won it by making some other dumb bastard die for his country.” G. Patton 1943

Just my $0.02 and worth every penny.

Avranches, unlike most towns, was built on top of a hill rather than down in a valley and it was a hellacious and hot climb at the end of a long day to get up there. Before that tho I crossed the strategically important bridge over the La Rivier Selune.

They love Patton in Avranches,and a whole crapload of Shermans in a hurry rolled into history across this bridge in August of '44....





...and up in town, a repeat of my earlier pic of the Patton Monument in Patton Square, Avranches, Normandy, France.



I dunno how many other American Generals have their own monument, especially overseas.


I was whupped and beginning to run out of daylight by the time I got to Patton Square. I thought about staying in the Patton Hotel right there on the square, but hotels add up on a long trip and were a last resort/

I have this tremendous British campground app on my iphone and here the "Campgrounds close to your location" option brung me to Fred's Place, the best and most laid-back campground of the whole trip.

Electrical outlets, showers, sinks and good wifi, for which Fred charged me the princely sum of 5 Euro, I think because he felt obliged to charge me something.

The now-elderly Fred is retired British Military, and runs a laid-back establishment out in the green Normandy countryside. Not much to look at but just a great vibe, in a setting where good dogs are not only allowed but appreciated.











Many folks who've been, from all walks of life, go back year after year, as would I next time I'm in Normandy. I heard there is a tremendous gathering there every August.

Just down the road from Fred's, the house that, as Fred told me, served as Patton's headquarters for a spell. Quiet now, no sign of what had been.



St. Lo, focus of so much bitter fighting, is all gone to suburbs now, in fact I stopped at a McDonald's on the ridge above town, the same one go, upon which, 72 years aso much blood was shed. Martinsville, further down that same ridge, still retains a rural character.

http://www.history.army.mil/books/wwii/100-13/st-lo_4.htm



The Martinsville area today, a few old stone houses and barns still hidden behind tall hedgerows...







...and bocage, and endless series of enclosed rectangles, perfect for defense....

Its been a busy summer and some how I missed this thread that I was looking forward to reading. Just spent the last hour catching up. Looks like I need to visit Scotland sometime. Great thread Mike good pics and like all your threads it makes me do some research on things. Looks like you had a good time. Good Luck and Sorry It took me so long to find this thread.

Charles

Birdy
I have read through the whole post at one sitting enjoying every minute of it. My wife grew up in the Dublin area and talks about some of the places you mention. As for me my family ( one young lad) came from England in 1740. It is claimed that our name is part of the border clans, but when I did my DNA I am more western Europe than English, I have alway thought we came in with William in 1066 and the DNA tends to confirm this but I digress. Thank you Sir I very much appreciate every thing so far and look forward to any and all future posting on your travels of this trip.
Cheers NC

Tks all, back to the Martinville photos in my previous post, another passage from the link....



As can be seen in my photos, I saw no evidence of those excavations on my visit.

One thing notable about the Normandy battlefields (heck, almost the whole area was a battlefield at one point or another) is the lack of craters and trenches evident today, at least from the roads. Surprising considering the many intense areas of shelling by the big guns of battleships, the regular field artillery of both sides, and carpet bombing by the RAF and USAAF. You don't see any of that, perhaps they were all filled in during the decades following to restore these productive agricultural fields.

Point of comparison; one area where the cratering does survive is around the shattered artillery bunkers up on Point-du-Hoc. Beneath the long grass the terrain is pockmarked by craters 10 or 15 feet deep and maybe thirty feet across. So many that there is no unscarred terrain remaining, and the footpaths weave around the edges of the shell craters.





There exists limited access below ground at these bunkers, drab and ugly inside...



Sorta related, this steel thimble was on display at a roadside museum above Omaha Beach. Not sure what it was. The little white sign said "Armour Cloche of German 60 Tonnes", observation post maybe?

Suffice to say, if anyone was inside that thing on 6/6/1944, they were prob'ly having a very bad day.



Ironically, that's an EU flag on that pole.

The Cathedral de Notre Dame in Bayeux.

Sited on the site of an old Roman shrine, founded by William the Conqueror's half brother Bishop Odo, a guy who carried a mace in battle as clergy were not allowed to shed blood. The first version was completed in 1077, receiving a considerable facelift in the 1300's.

Apparently this is a second-rate Gothic cathedral as such things go, but I was still awed at the skills of those 14th Century masons, this thing was a symphony in stone.

We tend to think of the Middle Ages of being full of unwashed people with bad teeth wearing strange clothes and living short, filthy and ignorant lives. All of that was part of the truth and yet those same people possessed the collective wherewithal to create....

this.....

Bayeux has come through history amazingly intact, and even now remains a quiet backwater of a place, no suburbs to speak of, no commercial loop road like St. Lo. A blessing it wasn't leveled in the fighting during the summer of '44.

If its a tourist enclave today that's not always a bad thing. It was just a nice place to hang out in a sidewalk cafe, and its only seven miles inland from the D-Day beaches.





The tapestry photos again, the sign said "no photos" but I discretely took a couple of quick shots, no flash.





Ya know, I finally got to watch some of the highly touted "Game of Thrones" HBO series on the nine and a half hour flight from Heathrow to Dallas this past Monday. I found it silly, sorta like a Dark Ages "Star Trek" wherein they could just make stuff up, in this case magic forces as necessary to advance the plot. Worse, it subscribes to the present PC fallacies of women in combat.

But, fans of that series will be familiar with this general scenario: Just north of Bayeux on the Normandy Coast, "La Sente au Batard". "William the Bastard's path", still remembered by that name more'n 900 years after the fact.





1036, William's father Richard (who may have previously poisoned his own brother) died during his return from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. William, the eight year-old presumptive heir, was immediately placed in peril on account of his homicidal uncles and cousins. Somehow he survived the next ten years as a political pawn but matters came to a head when he reached eighteen years of age.

With the help of allies he was able to slip out from amongst his enemies to friendlier ground around Falais. The route he took on that precipitous flight became known as La Sente au Batard.

No worries, 20 years later he would became the last foreign invader to successfully invade England where he is commonly remembered today as William the Conqueror. Eleven years after that, half-brother Bishop Odo commissions the creation of the Bayeux Tapestry, giving the Norman side of the story.

Mont St Michel over by Britanny officially is part of Normandy, anyone guessing would say it lies in Brittany. Normandy starts suddenly when you turn the corner north at Avranches. Suddenly the whole place is greener and wetter as reflected in the vegetation.

It is also reflected in the churches. Travelling backroads France you're basically travelling between church steeples, every town and village has one. Steeples in Brittany run tall, ornate and pierced, Norman church steeples are about like Norman castles; square and stout.

Case in point; the church steeple in St. Mare-Eglise, where in the early hours of June 6th, 1944, American Paratrooper John Steel hung wounded for two hours, playing dead while German troops milled about in the square below. He had been shot while coming down in his chute, most of the rest of his stick had been shot and killed the same way.



The corner of the steeple he actually hung from is the one closest to the camera. St. Mare-Eglise is actually a tourist attraction now because of D-Day, there is a major well-presented Airborne museum there now, right on the town square.

As part of this, a mannequin representing Pvt. Steel is left hanging from a different corner of the steeple facing this museum.



Which brings up the issue of how he got down.

After two hours it was the Germans themselves that noticed Steel was alive and who brought him down from the tower. He was their prisoner for a period of time until the Germans themselves were captured.

Here's some images from the museum, a Waco glider also crash-landed in the town that night.

And now a post on bicycles, interesting to me at least

I'm not a bicycle fanatic, I do not own any lycra or spandex but I am enormously taken with this simple device that lets me, an older guy with an older guy's knees, travel easily across whole continents.

Here's mine on Day 32 at St. Mere-Eglise, in back are two more contemporary-style touring bikes.





Bicycle touring is pretty big in mainland Europe, once I hit the coast I'd see maybe six to ten each day, most often older couples.

What you see there is the hot set-up for touring.

We both have 36 spoke custom wheels. Theirs are 26", mine are 700. Mine are 700 because my 1989 model bike originally came with 27" wheels and the rims gotta be about that diameter to reach the brakes. Seemingly unusual that Euro bikes like theirs would have English-size rims but this is because 26" wheels and tires are the most common size in India and South America and other backwaters around the World. So if you are there you can maybe still get tires, tubes, spokes etc....

Hence, 26" wheels are the mark of an uber serious touring bike and there's a certain cachet attached, even if ya never get to those places. For the same reason they have old-style center-pull rim brakes instead of disk brakes. I have rim brakes because my bike is from 1989.

They are using Schwalbe Marathon tires from Germany, again the uber-serious touring bike tire, practically indestructible. I myself commute on 'em on my mountain bike.

Back in 1989, generators for your lights were clumsy things that were turned by friction against the tires, mine attached underneath the frame behind the pedals and made a noise along with perceptible drag. Nowadays we have LED lights which revolutionized bicycle lights as well as drawing less power, AA or AAA lithium batteries last many hours, old-style generators are gone.

The hot touring bike set-up now is to have a generator incorporated inside a larger front wheel hub that powers things via USB connections, including your smart phone and/or GPS that rides on a bracket on the handlebar. This is the set up these people have.

We are all using Brook's leather saddles from England, old tech that still works better than anything else, even if you have to put covers on 'em when it rains.

Check out their hi-tech seat posts

The handlebars we are using are called "trekking bars", the principle behind 'em is that you have numerous places to put your hands to avert fatigue. I find their chief value is they give you lots of places to hang mirrors and such, I've even tried cup holders.

We both are geared low with triple chainrings up front, I have nine speeds in back, I dunno how may they have, anywhere from eight to ten I'd guess. I use the original friction shift levers on the downtube, they have hi-tech indexing thumb shifters attached to the brake levers.

All of us are using regular platform pedals, these allow normal footwear, no one is racing here, we don't gotta have our shoes attached to the pedals. Plus for me being able to move my feet around on the pedal allows me to mostly avoid knee pain.

Both their bikes and mine can attach three water bottle holders, in Normandy I didn't need all three, in fact I was only carrying two, the bottom one, an MSR fuel bottle inside my San Antonio Spurs coozee, was holding scotch whiskey.

Steel is the most favored material for touring bikes because it flexes, exactly what you don't want on most other bikes. Steel frames are heavier too but far more comfortable when ridden for long hours every day. Mine is an 1989 Schwinn Voyageur frame.

Their frames are probably expensive, maybe custom-made, this is popular in Europe. "Cyclo-randonee" so far as I can tell is the name of a Euro touring bike website, tho' I did not see frames for sale on it.

I dunno who made their bags, I'm using German-made Orleibs. What you see on my bike is $400 worth of bags, expensive and heavy but absolutely waterproof and indestructible. Theirs look to be of like quality.