The first day

I have booked rooms at the Hotel Oasis for the night 18/19 May: 3 twin rooms for a total of 180 euros. I make the distance for the first day now 126 km - pah, not even 80 miles! I will be sending out the spreadsheet with corrections in due course, but briefly the route on the first day will be the same as originally planned as far as Javron, and then we take the N12 eastwards for just 3 km (I hope that's not too scary) to La Gare (so called because the old station is there), marking the start of the greenway (which used to be a railway line). Thus we take this greenway on our first day - as far as the outskirts of Villaines. Leaving the GW after 8 km, the D119 takes us in about 2.5 km straight to the hamlet La Sourderie, where our hotel is. You can see all this on the IGN map above. The GW is the dark red line. The hotel offers either a 'full continental breakfast' or a 'full English breakfast' for 7 euros.
Martin, there is some advice on the AF3V website on how to get to this GW from various SNCF stations. It mentions Briouze, trains to which from Paris-Montparnasse carry bikes, and which we pass through - so we could meet you en route.

Good meeting

Conventus bonus heri vespero habuimus! Vectiones gratae in viis viridibus velocipedibus nostris Maio prospicio!

Plans for Thursdays Meeting

Hi all

Is everyone prepared for Thursdays meeting?
What time are we meeting at The Flowerpot .. 7.30pm?
I will bring my newly traced Michelin route map as will others no doubt!

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.