Category: Travel
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A short day in wind and rain: St. Michel-Chef-Chef to Les Moutiers-en-Retz
Today’s forecast was for strong wind from the WSW, up to 30MPH steady, accompanied by rain. So, we decided to make it a short day, fighting the headwind in the morning and then enjoying a bit of tailwind in the afternoon but avoiding going too far. We ended up staying in the small town of…
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Into Nantes and out again
Our bikes spent the night in the garbage room in Lorient, and then they (and we) took the train from Lorient to Nantes. We stayed in a place near the train station that was in kind of sketchy area, but it was inexpensive. I guess we are cheap. We had visited Nantes last year, but…
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Bikes and gear across the continents, compared
We’ve been on three chapters of this trip, including the EV6 across Europe to Slovakia, our trip to NZ, Vietnam and Cambodia, and our current trip mostly on the EV45 and EV1 from Brittany to Madrid and beyond. For the first trip across Europe, we took our normal road touring bikes, meant to be ridden…
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Sunscreen?? Non!
It’s been grey, cool and wet since we’ve arrived in Brittany, which was sort of unexpected after being subjected to all the news stories about Europe being in a historic heat wave! We’ve been staying in hotels and AirBnb’s for most of our days in Brittany, avoiding camping in the rain. Yesterday, we left Pont…
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Old friends of old friends, in Pont L’ABBÉ
Last year, when we were in Brittany, an old friend of Chris named Joëlle told us to visit her old friend Youenn when we passed through Pont L’Abbé. Alas, we decided to head to Slovakia instead of completing a circuit around Brittany, but this year we found ourselves going right through Pont L’Abbé and connected…
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Brest to Douarnenez: 55 miles of hilly with sun!
We stayed in a modern apartment in Brest, small but comfortable. While the building had an elevator to take our bikes up to the floor where were staying, we just left them on the ground floor locked to each other in an alcove. They were still there the next morning. In the morning, the forecast…
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While Europe bakes, cool temperatures and rain!
Normally, when we are riding, we want warm, dry weather. But we can’t complain about cool, wet conditions when so much of the world is roasting. I’m sure we’ll get enough hot and dry weather in Spain so we are enjoying our cool wet Brittany weather while we have it. In these past couple days,…
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On our way around Brittany – counter-clockwise this time!
The first few days of bike touring are always a bit of confusion….figuring out which pannier to put what and getting comfortable with the loaded bike again. You haven’t hit your rhythm yet. And so we didn’t do anything too dramatic in terms of distance for Day 1, only 22 miles to a campground just…
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A day in Morlaix
We passed through Morlaix on our first day riding last year, but really didn’t get to see the town. We had a lovely sun-drenched lunch at the harbor and thought the town looked worthy of a visit. This year, we decided to stay in Morlaix the first couple nights and explore. As our train pulled…
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On to Morlaix and the start!
It‘s always a bit of a hassle traveling with bikes, but it’s worth it to have your own steed when you are going on a long trip. In France, there is additionally an issue if you want to take advantage of the fast TGV train network, which requires that your bike be dismantled enough to…