Biking Day 20

• Length ridden: 70 km
• Ascent: 420 meters
• Rating: 8.5 out of 10 - not so long, but quite scenic
• Highlights: Honfleur, Beaumont and the People´s hostel in Caen
• Lowlight: I will be buying self-cleaning clothes in the future
• Map of the day

I slept fairly well and was happy to see the sun in the sky again. It has been a roughly 8 days prior to this that I had washed my clothes, so I decided to take it easy that morning, get my tent to dry and relax a bit.

At 11 am, I was finally done, and I had Honfleur to discover. This is what the Normandy tourist office has to say about the town and it is very much true: "Ports don’t come any prettier than Honfleur on the Seine estuary. Colorful half-timbered houses jostle for position on the quays, along with art galleries and restaurants. Packed with things to see and do, it’s not for nothing that Honfleur is one of the most popular places to visit in France." The term "not for nothing" sounds like a Google translation, but we get the point. 

This town is so popular there is even a song about it, by Jacques Brel. And, yet again, I had this feeling of wanting to stay in town for longer, much longer, but also to ride on and to make progress. I allocated two hours for wandering about and then started riding towards the west, actually, the southwest. At the Office de Tourisme, I got a tip of tricking the secret agents following me. They probably all thought I would continue on the coast, not me. I got directions to a beautiful village, tucked into the hills behind the coast.

It was quite steep at the beginning, offering views of the port. Someone else was going to take the spot where I had photographed from, I told him it would cost him €5 for me to move. He laughed, pointing me to the house with a large window behind, telling me he was spending his whole vacation there. Wrong client.

Alone the ride was worth taking this hilly road it - I was amazed at the fairy-tale-like architecture.

The village that was recommended is called Beaumont-en-Auge and was really worth the trouble getting there (on one rare occasion, a car honked, honked and honked at me riding uphill, not sure why, he had plenty of space on the road). To quote the site, the village is "located on a hill, it has a lot of charm with its half-timbered houses and its beautiful panoramas on the surrounding countryside and the Touques valley." Yes, I do agree.

I struck up a conversation with an elderly French couple, we talked about traveling, the gentleman was a manger of drilling platforms, therefore was well travelled, he had also worked in Vietnam, where I had biked in 2018 (as mentioned earlier, but repetition is the mother of knowledge, here is the link).

Next came the remains of Troarn Abbey, with a thousand year history.

Remember, we are in Normandy, where exactly 80 years ago, fierce battles took place, after the D-Day landing. In Banneville-La-Campagne was a large war cemetary, with over 2,175 graves.

In the evening, I got to the town of Caen. How many times have I told you about wanting to spend a longer time in a place - well, this city is a candidate that makes the top of the list. One more reason for me saying this is that I had reached town in the evening and some of the sites were already closed.

In town, I was able to visit the castle, the Men's Abbey (where William the Conqueror is buried), but not the Woman's Abbey, as the ladies had already retired.

Even though it was still a lot of sunlight in the evening and I had covered only 70 kilometers that day, I thought it would be a good idea to take a rest for the night. I found a hostel, called The People. For just €35 or so, I got a place in a six-person (or 4?...do not recall) room where, to my surprise, I ended up by myself. It was really nice of the check-in lady, as there was another tourist coming to the same floor, he probably was assigned another bunk-bed room by himself. The hostel was so sparkling clean one could eat from the floor and the bathroom had fittings of a 4-star hotel (similar to the camping on my very first night). There was even a roof-top bar with beautiful views of the town and the setting sun.

When I closed my eyes, pictures of fairy-tale houses swirled around.