France - St Malo to Thouars

Day 4 - The First Day's Touring in France

The ferry docked promptly at 8am in St Malo and we managed to get through passport control fairly quickly. We had a quick regroup and decided to do an hour or so on the motorway in order to blat through the boring bits of Normandy. It was a damn good job that Badger and Eddy were leading the way as I immediately forgot I had to drive on the right - luckily no-one was harmed. I felt a quick burst of elation at riding a bike on foreign soil for the first time, but quickly struggled to keep up with the other two, who seemed to drive incredibly quickly fast especially round high speed curves. My memories of Badger were all of him just pottering along at a very gentle pace - had he speeded up in the intervening years or had I slowed down? Could I cut it or had my bottle completely gone. Eddy in particular seemed to pick his way past the traffic with consumate ease and I seemed to be forever catching up on the straight sections. Good job the Pan zips along so well.

I was the first to call a halt - my rucksack was just too heavy and awkward and was a guenuine pain in the neck. I decided just to bungee it on to the bike and feeling much more comfortable we set off again. We got off the motorway around Laval and headed off down much more interesting D and unclassified roads. I quickly realised that if motorway bends were bad, then these tiny little roads were terrifying - I had more than one brown-trouser moments where I got in a right pickle and only just made it round the bend. What was I doing wrong? - all was to be revealed later...

We got to a small town called La Fleche by about 1pm and headed off to a bar / restaurant in the centre of town and had a light lunch of stuffed tomatoes and rice - delicieux :-). Time for a quick team photo then off towards the Saumur. The sky had clouded over during lunch and it started to chuck it down - so time for another stop and Eddy and Badger helped me into my huge one-piece rain-suit with the inevitable Michelin Man results.

Lunch in La Fleche

Eddy

The Team

get those Waterproofs On!

Riding in the Wet

We had planned to stop at Parthenay for our first night in France, but by 4pm we were still a few miles short so stopped at a little place called Thouars. I spotted a hotel as we entered the town, but we pressed on into the centre of town and went round and round and round trying to find the Tourist Office, which was signposted but not apparently visible. A local told us there was a hotel at the station - it was closed. We found another hotel, but that was also closed. After a very frustrating and somewaht miserable hour or so so we stumbled upon the tourist office by accident. Eddy went off to do his thing - the only hotel was the one I had clocked coming into town - so off we went.

Whilst not exactly what we were looking for, the Relais was fine and we were just relieved to get in, get showered and changed into dry clothes. Luckily the room Badger and I were sharing contained radiators that we used for drying our gear - our gloves in particular were soaked. Eddy passed on a great tip: he used summer gloves and heated handle-bar grips. His gloves got wet, but with no linings were easy to get on and off when wet and the heated grips kept his hands warm. My Pan had heated grips, which I'd not used for fear of exacerbating my battery problems, I wondered if they worked?

As we were on the edge of town next to a huge Le Clerc and a mushroom factory we just walked to the nearest brasserie, which didn't look that good, but was handy. Our instincts were right, it was a case of "Never mind the quality, feel the width". I had a salade de Gésiers, which was enormous both in size and disappointment. Over dinner Eddy, who amongst other talents, numbers being an advanced motorcycle training instructor got out his pen and - on the back of a paper napkin - explained the rudiments of cornering on a bike. Years of trying to eke out the most miles from a tank of diesel had left me with the habit of "rolling" cars round bends on just a whiff of jas in top gear. Whilst very relaxing and economical in a car this was about the worst thing I could do on a bike - no wonder I was have brown-trouser moments I wasn't giving the bike or tyres a chance to work. All points were duly noted. No wonder I was getting 50 miles per gallon! We headed off for an early night.

Day Summary

Day	4
Miles Covered in Day	200 approx.
Miles Covered in Trip	700 approx.

Health

My hips were fine although my right hip joint ached a bit. My left arm was very sore - I'd damaged it with overuse when using an electric planer on some old planks when making raised flower beds a month or so before and had not recovered. I had to rest in on my knee whenever we slowed down to go through a town. The main problem though was my neck, which was getting sore from holding on to the bars all day - all in all not too bad and much better than anticipated.