Got the walking-hills blues

Woke earlier today, bfast at 8:00, we wanted to hit the road by 9:00. We’ve usually been starting around 10-10:30. Sure enough out by 9:00.

It was a cloudy, drizzly, overcast, gray day. Not too cold, in the 60s. We coasted along a beach right outside of Locquirec, then went along a peninsula to avoid the main rode, the D786. But we had to join the 786 for a couple of miles and kicked ass down a huge hill and along the beach, but then as usual we had to climb again away from the beach. Whenever we hit a big downhill we know we’re going to pay with a matching uphill. Sure enough we had a super-steep hill out of St Michel-en-Greve. Alas, we had the walk of shame. Yes, we had to walk our bikes. Sigh. It sort of matches our current state of hotel-only tourers. This was about a 15% grade. How do I know? Because later we hit another “walker” and it was labeled 15%. These are freakin steep, especially with panniers.

So we cruised along on a high plateau, pulled into Locquemeau, dropped and climbed, then found a bakery open on Sunday. Nice reward! Bought a loaf of dark bread and a wonderful flan with apricot top and coconut crumbs to top it off. It was killer. We’re stopping about twice/day for bakery snacks. Hard to lose weight on that program.

From Locquemeau we had to ride 15 KMs inland to reach Lannion before heading only to turn around and head 15KM back out towards the sea. And we can see the other side the whole time. Sucks.

In Lannion we stopped for lunch, almost everything was closed but we found a café that had salds and their menu du jour. Most places offer a menu du jour. It’s an entre (appetizer), and plat (main meal) and a dessert. And you get two out of three also. There’s usually 1-3 choices for each course. April had a great salad (lettuce, beets, corn, bacon, sausage, eggs, potatoes, tomatoes). And I had the menu, but just with the plat and dessert; had a steak/frites and a killer chocolate brownie-cake thing with a cream/custard sauce. The thing is even at low-end café’s here in France you get very good food.

Lannion had some cool old buildings, some really leaning/quite tilted, There was a 13th century church built by the Templar Knights. Killers. In fact there’s a freaking church in every little town we hit. And it’s always the biggest and tallest building. We always aim for them to get to the center of all the town. So much money and so much death! Shits weak.

It was hell getting out of Lannion. This was the first time we had road problems. The direct route was on the busy highways so we had to go way out of our way to get just a few KMs west. Made our way back to the coast on some sweet backroads. Finally hit Trebeurden. Knocked at a Chambre d’Hote but the one room was taken, so we found a hotel that had a sea view room. Plus they had wifi. BTW - It’s pronounced wee-fee, here in France, which explains why when I asked that one women in French if they had wifi- she said I don’t speak English. April loves that story.

We had a nice bath. I sat in the tub and washed clothes while bathing. And since my back hadn’t been scrubbed for awhile, I had April come in and use the wool sock I was washing to scrub my back! She said it was like washing a dog. That’s love?

The beach was right across the road, sun had finally come out but we were cold from riding in the drizzle all day, so we just walked the beach/port and came to another market type of thing. Here they had some local bands, and of course moules-frites and sausages/frites. We had one of each with beers instead of dinner. Great local scene with the music/food. The second band was some Breton chanters. Very nice. Danny O’C would have cried.