Biking Day 22

• Length ridden: 115 km
• Ascent: 600 meters
• Highlights: Cité de la Mer and the tiny villages
• Lowlight: The bike roads markings are not up to the standard
• Map of the day

The reception opened only at 8 am and I did not think of leaving before paying for the night. I was hopeful the charger would show up, I went back two or three times to see if it would be returned - in vain. The friendly receptions mentioned they had never received any reports of stolen items and that she was genuinely sorry that I had this negative experience. In 1526, there was a single battle in a city in today`s southern Hungary called Mohács, where the Hungarians were defeated by the Ottomans and then the road was open to occupy the majority of the country and this occupation lasted not less than 150 years. When something is stolen or is broken, we in Hungary say "There was even a lot more lost at Mohács", which is true. Ha! I am listening to Hungarian radio as I am writing this blog and by pure coincidence, they are just talking about this epoch. (I am writing quite a bit about this, so it did [and does] go on my nerves).

Now I was at the eastern edge of the Cotentin (also called Cherbourg) Peninsula and I know I wanted to continue towards the west and contemplated a while whether to ride along the coast towards the northwest to Cherbourg and then back southwest to the western edge or to just cut through it. A friendly (yeah, she was French, what else?) lady at an Office de Tourisme made me promise to visit Cherbourg, as it was her city, so I decided to live up to my promise.

A small road started westward and it merged into a larger one. I must have misunderstood something, as suddenly I was on a motorway, with two lanes of cars whizzing by. It was too late to turn around and on the edge, there was a fence, so I could not even exit. Luckily, a bit later, the inner lane was closed due to construction, so I crossed over and rode on there, with some drivers honking at me, showing they did not quite agree with me riding there. After a while, I was able to exit, all safe.

When I was on safe roads, I stopped at an Intermarché hypermarket in the outskirts of Carentan, where I managed to buy a charger double the strength of the stolen one (20,000mA vs. 10,000), a cord and a plug. I noticed only after paying that Faith compensated me partially, as the lady at the check-out forgot to charge me for the cord, when I noticed this, I was 30 kilometers away, I did not return.

The town itself was pretty, with a nice church and main square with arcades. There I spotted a Jeep, with people doing Disneyland-like sightseeing.

I was now on purely agricultural roads and saw a cattle car with 5-day old calfs. They were quite happy to see me, trying to lick my camera.

In this area, almost every settlement, larger building, bridge or church contained the story of D-Day, where the landings took place, when the village was liberated, the site where parachuters landed. For example, there was a sign remembering Sargent Thomas M. Rice, who jumped on D-Day - and lived to become 101 years old. He celebrated his 100th birthday by sky-diving...

There was an impressive church in Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, where fierce battles took place on the night of June 6th, the ownership of the church changing multiple times.

I reached Utah Beach half an hour or so later, here the casualties were smaller than in other places.

For a while, I followed the coast, but realized following the coast would take a long time to reach Cherbourg. It was as if I were at the left ear of Mickey Mouse and if I wanted to reach the top of his head, Cherbourg, I could follow the outline of the ear, or go straight though his face. I chose the latter.

The road through Mickey`s face led me through small villages, such as the very pretty - and very quiet - Saint-Martin-d'Audouville. I will never be able to remember such long names, why not stick to short ones such as Paris, Nantes, Cherbourg, Brest?

Now, yet again, I heard some cracking noise from the pedals and there were no bike shops on my route. I did stop at a car garage, I believer it was called Eddy`s garage in Teurthéville-Bocage, there was a guy the size of Obelix. I asked his manager, a lady, who was a bit unhappy, as they had a lot of work to do and were about to go on vacation, but she did allow Obelix, who himself was a passionate mountain biker, to take a look at my bike. He loosened the pedal, took it off, tightened a screw, peal back - noise gone. Merci, Obelix!

It was around 5 in the afternoon when I reached Cherbourg - and my first trip led me to the ferry terminal, a bit outside the center. I was still playing with the idea of crossing over the Ireland and here I was in for quite a surprise. Yes, there was a ferry leaving even that evening, but it was already booked out and the next one would only be in two days, costing €150. Now I checked the weather and while it was quite rosy for France, it got even worse than I last checked in Caen. So I put off the final decision for Roscoff, towards the west in Brittany.

Unlike many other cities I had visited earlier, my encounter with Cherbourg was not love at first sight (my apologies to the young lady at the Office de Tourisme). I was looking for the historic, medieval center, there was none. I later learned the town was pretty much destroyed during WWII, so not much was left. A bit of compensation was a very nice basilica, with a painted entrance and in front of which a large Napoleon statue was standing.

I asked some locals whether there was something I had missed in town and looked at me a bit confused, asking me if I had visited Cité de la Mer. I recalled the lady yesterday mentioning something about it and I just thought she was referring to her home town as the city on the sea. Wrong. I rode in the vicinity of this building, but did not pay too much attention to it, as it was somewhat far from the center. Cité de la Mer is huge art deco structure, which served as transatlantic terminal building, where ocean liner passengers embarked and disembarked. Even the Titanic stopped here, well, just once, as she sank on her maiden voyage - and this was the very last port she had visited. Now it is an ocean museum, there are parts dedicated to underwater exploration, aquariums full of sea creatures, and an exhibition devoted to the Titanic.

It was past closing time that I arrived, there was an automatic glass door, which opened up when some visitors exited the building, and in I went. While the aquarium and the Titanic exhibition were long closed, I was amazed at the architectural ingenuity of the structure - it housed a number of submarines (I believe some were life-size models), including an atomic submersile.

Leaving town, I stopped at a nice bakery in the outskirts - the French pastries are world class.

I decided to cut off Mickey´s right ear as well and headed in southwestern direction, till I reached the coast. Google Timeline tells me I stayed at a campground called Camping Clairefontaine de Siouville-Hague, just a few blocks from the sea. There were lot of surfers running around, so for there must be great waves on the western part of the Cotentin Peninsula.

I rode about 115 kilometers that day.