Le Tour - Jour quatre à six

After the previous day I was expecting to wake up relishing my day off. Instead I decided that I shouldn't completely waste a whole day and should at least cycle a few towns north. After 20 minutes on the bike I realised that my legs weren't in too much pain and more importantly neither was my ass and so I called off the rest day. 

It ended up being a good decision as after the first few kilometres the roads flattened off and stayed that way all day. As I got near to the end of the day I picked a town on my map to stay in, Patay. Now, I cannot stress this enough, FUCK PATAY. It was marked on my map which means it is a relatively large town but when I arrived I couldn't see signs for a campsite, quite unusual in France. I was told that the nearest campsite was probably about 25 km back the way I had come... at this point I had done over 150km and didn't really feel like going another 25 in the wrong direction. Instead of doing that I went in search of a hotel. The town had 2 buildings that looked like hotels and in both I was told "non, l'hôtel est fini". Brilliant. So the nearest open hotel... 30km in the wrong direction.

Eventually I found out that there was a hotel in a town about 10km away and thankfully it was actually still a hotel and had a room free. In the end I rode just over 100 miles (random switch from metric to imperial for no reason) that day and had never been so grateful to have a bath and a real bed! The hotel was actually well priced considering that it was quite a fancy place with beamed ceilings and strange textile padded walls. In the end I got carried away in the restaurant (I hadn't eaten much other than pasta and baguettes up to this point) and spent nearly as much as the cost of the room in food and drink. 

After the previous day I woke up feeling surprisingly good again and so decided that I would rather get home quicker than bother with any rest days. The next day was thankfully uneventful and took me to about 100 miles from the coast, unfortunately back in the tent again. I planned to do two nice easy days up to Dieppe to take the ferry. 

Typical breakfast

Of course with all my plans I changed my mind and for a really quite stupid reason. About 10km into the day it started to absolutely hammer down with rain. Instead of sticking to the plan and doing a short day in the rain I decided to push on and ride all the way to Dieppe in one day through the rain. This didn't go so well. I managed to get lost several times, and got my second puncture. The puncture conveniently happened as I was riding down a small section of motorway  to avoid a 10km detour whilst trying to hide from the police. Luckily I didn't have to sit in sight as I repaired it as I could slip into a nearby wood to shelter and do the repair. 

My Korean mask (courtesy of Katie) protecting me from the
polluted French countryside but unfortunately not from the rain

By the time I finally reached Dieppe it was about half past 7 and as I went to get something out of my bags I realised that the manufacturer's idea of waterproof was obviously very different to mine. All of my stuff was soaked and dyed red from my shirts so I decided I would stop in a hotel for the night again. When I got into the room I wasn't the happiest person so I filled the bin with wet stuff and anything heavy that I could do without.


So that was the French bit done, nearly 800km in 6 days. Here are the statistics for the second lot of 3 days.


Day 4 - Châtillon-sur-Indre to Tournoisis
Distance: 161.26km       Time: 6:57                Average Speed: 23.19kmph


Day 5 - Tournoisis to Anet
Distance: 135.59km       Time: 5:28                Average Speed: 24.80kmph


Day 6 - Anet to Deippe
Distance: 161.43km       Time: 6:55                Average Speed: 23.31kmph