Paris to Cherbourg

It took a week of riding to get from Paris to Cherbourg via the WWII D-Day landing beaches.

It was quite a ride out of Paris- I was pretty glad I had my GPS to navigate the streets and get out of town. I eventually got out of town and was riding through the countryside. I found myself on what seemed to be main roads, but it wasn’t too busy and didn’t cause any problems.
I ran into a Romanian cyclist called Tony who had a whole heap of gear! He had as many panniers as I do plus a trailer on the back. He even has a couple of little solar-powered lanterns sticking out the back of the panniers!

Of course it started to rain about half an hour before I got to my WarmShowers host for the evening- Francois in Evreux. Francois did a big ride back in the mid-80’s to NZ and has done several rides in Iceland. He also makes his own bike-frames, which was pretty impressive. This summer he’s doing a motorbike trip to Iceland (turns out there’s a ferry you can take!). He has a website with some great photos here.
Here’s the Evreux Cathedral.

The next day was a wet ride towards the coast on a nice cycle path following an old railway line and then over rolling hills through the French countryside. No photos that day, even once I reached the coast. It was a steep climb at the end of the day up to the campsite, but I was rewarded by a nice campground who gave me free wifi which was handy.

My third day out of Paris saw me riding along the coast past the D-Day landing beaches Sword, Juno and Gold. There were a few tanks along the way such as this one:

These beaches seemed to be a lot more tourist focussed than the WWI Western Front regions, but it didn’t seem to have a real focus. I’m not sure why it was so touristy, but I did notice quite a few American tourists, especially further along at the beaches that the US forces landed at- Omaha and Utah.
At one point I came across the remains of the old Mulberry harbour at Arromanches. This was a man-made harbour to allow the landing of large numbers of men and equipment after the coast had been secured.

That night I stayed at a campground right above the Omaha landing beach. There was a steep walkway down to the beach, and it was interesting to again see this really nice place that was once the scene of such bloodshed.

And here’s a nice photo of my tent set up with the English Channel in the background over the cliffs.

Riding on the next day, the sky threatened (and delivered) rain. It was more riding past wheat fields..

After riding through Carentan I was heading towards Utah beach, and stopped at the monument in the statue below. I met a nice young American family there, the Dad had just finished serving in the US Air Force in the UK. They were really interested in my trip and offered to take the photo below which was nice!

I stayed at a basic (and cheap) campsite right beside the sea. Here’s a photo of the town of Barfleur about 1km from the campground.

I’d booked my ferry ticket from Cherbourg to Poole when I was in Paris, and I arrived in Cherbourg about 25hrs before I needed to. When I’ve got a set time like a ferry that I’ve got to attend, I like to get there with heaps of time to spare. So it had only been a 30km ride to Cherbourg, and as I say, I got there the day before the ferry. The campground that was only a few kilometres from the ferry terminal was closed for a music festival, so I had to ride back the way I’d come, and found an even better campground in an old fort overlooking the sea. I spent the day sitting hanging out in my tent sheltering from the rain.
Here’s a photo from later in the day when it cleared up a little bit.

All that remained then was to cruise along to the ferry terminal in the morning. Waiting to board I was in the line with all the motorbikes who were impressed that I had more gear than they did! It was a 2-3 hour crossing to Poole on a fast ferry that got up to around 60km/h. It’s strange using these different forms of transport- I’m so used to all my movement being controlled by me- either biking or walking, that the varying motion of the boat was pretty different.

So that’s my time in Continental Europe done for this trip. I’m now in the UK, back amongst native English speakers (not that you’d think it sometimes!), and riding on the left-hand side of the road (which took some getting used to).

In case you missed it, I’ve posted my Summary Post of Northern France here.