September 11, 2018 Evreux to Banville

Today was billed as the hardest day on the tour and it certainly lived up to that.  We were all down in the breakfast room of the hotel at opening bell and the riders were on the road at 7:40.  Juerg, Ken and myself pushed off together and Earnie was close behind. The Garmin took us through more than a dozen turns just getting out Evreux.  We then started down this bike trail which was to take us about 35 kms to the next town. 

Unfortunately the bike trail took us into a golf course. We could see the route on the Garmin’s but there was no bike path. I knew there was a bike path up ahead as I had seen it on Google maps street view where it crossed the highway.  So we rode across the golf course until we got to the far end.  When the Golf course ended we thought we could see the bike path through some bush so we dragged our bikes through the bush for about 150 meters. It wasn’t a bike path we could see but a ploughed field.  We could see a transformer site across the field so we pushed our bikes across the field. About a 1kms later we got to the transformer site and took the road down to the highway and got onto the bike path.  This little adventure took about an hour and was kind of LEJOG story. 

The bike path was super and we cruised along making good time.  We then turned almost due east and were struck by a fierce head wind. I don’t know what the wind speed was but leaves were blowing down the road towards us.  We finally came to this little town which had a bake shop so we went in to get a something to eat.  I was totally shocked when I looked at my watch as it was noon and we had covered only 63 kms. 

After lunch we were headed due east down a very busy highway with no shoulder, straight into this wind. I wasn’t enjoying this one little bit.  This went on for about 30 kms and took close to 90 minutes.

I was so glad when I turned off onto this little back lane.  It was so quiet and peaceful.  The road was dappled sun and quite twisted.  It took me through a lot of tiny villages with no shops.   The road had some great views of the valleys on either side which were lined with apple orchards.   At one point I passed the group of people having a picnic in the orchard.  They had a beautiful table set with a blue and white table cloth.  They had driven out in their antique Jaguar.  Some people just know how to live.

As the road rolled on the joy of being on this fun little lane wore off.  As the miles worn on I was getting more and more exhausted.  The only thing that kept me going at this point was that I had only 14 kms to get to this bike path.  From the bike path it was only 16 kms to Banville. 

As I was coming into Banville I came to the Beny-Sur-Mer Reviers war cemetery.  This was the cemetery where the Canadian soldiers who were killed in the D-Day invasion were buried.  As tried as I was I had to stop and visit.  The grounds are immaculately maintained and it was an honor to visit.  There are 2380 Canadians buried there.

I rolled in with Ken and Juerg after 9hr and 50 minutes on the bike.  We covered 152 kms with a climb of 900 meters.  We were surprised that there was no van in the yard.   Agnes and Betsy had gone to get Earnie as he had phoned Agnes to get a ride.  I was so exhausted I could not even eat supper even though a wonderful chicken dinner had been prepared for us by Agnes, Betsy and Sally. 

We are in a very quaint French country house for our tour days in Normandy. 

Terry