Some pictures of Ouistreham - and a bit of etymology

I have already put on various blogs some of pics I took last summer of the voie verte de Caen à Ouistreham. I've now dug out some more of the Ouistreham end. These were taken coming from Caen (top to bottom): interpretation board "The Ports of Ouistreham"; interpretation Board "Caen to Ouistreham Greenway"; police patrolling the greenway; cyclists leaving Ouistreham; coming into Ouistreham; ditto, with cyclists; boarding the Portsmouth ferry now; close-up of ferry; the greenway continues westwards along the coast.

How well-known is Westerham in Kent? It's not far from Croydon where I grew up. The placename is Anglo-Saxon and means 'western farm or homestead'. Interestingly, Ouistreham is cognate (comes from the same Germanic roots) and means exactly the same thing. It was a Saxon settlement, older than the Vikings who settled in Normandy in the 9th century and gave the duchy its name; the inhabitants of this farm were among those who didn't make it to Britain with Hengist and Horsa (no ferry in them days).

I am glad to see the snow did not put you off going out on your bike Clyde. As you are probably aware we have had a tad more snow here and I have left my bike tucked up in the shed. A few pics I have taken around Kings Mill Reservoir and a snow covered Robin Hood line.

I have a Michelin Atlas of France which I could photocopy the relevant pages of the route for the meeting. It could useful to look at the route in detail and checkout stopover locations. If anyone else as already done this let me know.

See you all on the 4th Feb.

Maldwyn

Eurovelo 6

The piece of greenway that we shall be following on Day 3, between Angers and Saumur, forms part of the 3653 km-long Eurovelo Route 6 which runs from St Nazaire, France on the Atlantic Ocean to Constanta, Romania on the Black Sea. Anybody doing anything in May 2012?
See http://www.eurovelo6.org/ for details.

News from France

By the way, a bit late perhaps, but welcome to the blog, Maldwyn! Glad the journey through the Time-warp was painless. I've had one or two bruises going through black holes from time to time!
Like in Blighty, we have had quite a bit of snow over here but most of it has disappeared, now that the temperatures have started to rise again. I saw 10 C this afternoon. Much snow was washed away this morning by pouring rain, but later there were blue skies and the sun.
I have done a little training. I even went out yesterday on icy roads - and fell off once, but only once!
I've had email answers from a few - but not all - tourist offices that I wrote to. Mainly they refer me to web addresses which were on their websites anyway. So we will have to start from there. Maybe, if I managed to fix just one night up for all of us (once we have definitely firmed up the dates), we would be able to see how easy (or not) it is, and use the same techniques to fix all the others. I'd rather not wait till we are there: it would be not too bad to be told that we would need to go another 30 km - and in the wrong direction - if we were driving, but on a bike ... !
I also had one reply, from Riberac, telling me how we can get publicity from the local press and radio!
I let the af3v people know about our trip but haven't had a reply yet. Sustrans is not mega-keen on us using up all the good will that they can count on from their contacts abroad, it seems. Perish the thought that I might have been considering scrounging off fellow cyclists in France (in fact, that was precisely what I had in mind), but we mustn't push our luck - I suppose that there must be quite a few people planning similar trips. On the positive side, someone called Jon at photos@sustrans.org would be interested in pics of French greenways being used by ordinary people going about their daily lives.
And now here is something I've only just come across in the last few minutes: the 25th Festival of Bicycle Travel at St Denis this coming weekend. I think it might be under canvas! Anyone game for this? See http://www.eurovelo6.org/actualites/25e-festival-du-voyage-a-velo
Back on English soil on Sunday 17 Jan.

Time Stamps on articles and comments

Following Clyde's comment about time stamps (which I had previously been aware of) I have checked the settings and found that this blog was set to "Pacific Time" which is 8 hours behind GMT. It is now set, as it should be, on GMT so Clyde wont appear as if he is a night owl any longer. My clock says about 11:42 on 10th January as I post this.
It was my fault!!

What a co-incidence!

Readers will be aware of my minor travel restriction due to a long term commitment to look after our Grand daughter on a Wednesday. My wife is unable to cope single handed with the bundle of energy that she now is due to hip problems. It was with some delight, therefore, that I discovered today that we shall not be needed on Wed 19th May as our daughter and family will be on holiday in Devon. Hurrah!! By way of a change from cyclists and cycling related piccies here is our Grand daughter in her Christmas outfit, looking as if butter would not melt in the proverbial mouth.

Surfaced at last

Hi! all, flu gone and keen to get into the ' Parcours Mystere ' 2010. Superb organisation already in

swing and with the same enthusiam, its beginning to effect me at last. I particularly like the 17/05/2010 date as me/Carmel are hoping to go to Seoul, S Korea to stay with our Gareth/Rachel and family in mid June. No dates firmed-up but if its possible to book our bike ride early all the better.

I will be at the meeting ' Flowerpot ' 4/02/2010 and do something to earn my corn, as you have set it up for me, thank you !

Please tell me if I need to pay anybody - now.

The ride through France will be terrific and all the better for a greener route than my Lourdes trip, I kept to the 'D' roads, through Bagnoles, Sable-sur-Sarthe, Vihiers, Niort, St.Sauvant, Libourne and on to Lourdes. I really enjoyed-it and hopefully with goodish weather and certainly good company an even better ride.

Keith

My Schedule

At present I am planning to be away from 13 May to 18 May, so could not realistically start a new journey until 20 May. However,
with an early start, it does seem possible to get from Derby to most railway stations in France on the same day; so I could catch you later in the week. The meeting on 4 Feb is OK for me.

Clyde: I tried to add a comment about posting .doc but have lost track of which user name to use. Anyway, I think this blog likes .jpg but not .doc so I "photographed" the document. My printer options seem willing to turn a .doc into a .jpg.

Martin

Hi Folks,

Just trying out my first blog - It didn't hurt at all - in fact a totally painless experience!!

The dates and times for transport look pretty good to me. Hopefully we can firm everything up on the 4th Feb.

Maldwyn