In which Sid and Doris have an early morning start, endure an enormous thunder and lightning storm (sheltering on an old railway line and in the Hotel Soleil D’Or) to reach L’Aigle after many rolling hills.
At 5.00 a.m. breakfast Sid finds many citizens wearing unconvincing camo and unsoldierly mullets. Have you brought military vehicles? Mostly Jeeps but also a Morris C4 light truck (not a C8 Quad that you Airfix kids made) and a Dodge weapons carrier. Good effort. Some of the cyclists aboard are also off to Arromanches.
S and D head off down the Canal de Caen towpath where there are blue tarp tents with people waiting their turn to try a small boat Channel crossing.
It is a fine morning along the canal and soon there is the Benouville lifting bridge. This is the site of the original Pegasus Bridge taken by the Allies in 1944, the identical original is now a monument at Ranville.
We pass a plaque commemorating a village’s liberation on the night of the 5th June 1944. Further down the route we find similar plaques with notably later dates. It took a while to get through Normandy with L’Aigle, only a cycle ride away, not liberated until 22nd August ‘44.
Sid and Doris have chosen to make a long day to L’Aigle. Having been put off the Mont St Michel very early there is plenty of time and the first few miles pass easily under the wheels. The routing system has selected some voies vertes as a good way to get down to Vimoutiers. (Doris is going to make you some maps to make sense of the journey.) Some of them are smooth gravel or even Tarmac, and others are not.
Here you see Doris cautiously getting down off a voie verte, a disused railway track that was more suitable for motocross bikes. This stuff is frustratingly time Hoovering.
We spend some time along small roads parallel before going back onto the ex-railway. Conditions under-wheel were OK and tall trees gave shelter from the wind under the cloud. Then the storm came with tree canopy busting rain plus thunder and lightning so close that we are certainly at the centre. It took about twenty minutes to agree that it was ‘easing off’. For non English speakers this means ‘only raining’. Another wet bottomed half hour to Vimoutiers.
At about mid day the story brightens up a lot, thanks to the Hotel Soleil D’Or. It is a traditional, modest, small hotel with restaurant and rooms. Sid presents as two damp cyclists who would like to book for lunch and a room for a few hours to dry out. The place is run by two busy women, one front of house and the other in the kitchen. S and D go to their kindly priced bedroom, change out of cycling kit (pictures have been redacted), wash some of it and hand it to Madame for the tumble dryer. What a great offer.
The restaurant is abuzz with locals. S and D do not generally take photos of meals. Here is an exception.
In each pot is an egg poached in cream and, in successive pots, Camembert, Livarot and Pont L’Eveque. A little rest in our room and off again.
Two minutes after leaving for the final 44 hilly kilometres a new storm came through. S and D stand under the canopy of the local supermarket for twenty minutes.
We look down one more VV, but for S and D from now on it will be proper roads all the way into L’Aigle. Here is a picture to remind you how pretty Normandy houses are.
There are no markers for the fallen Germans though there is a Tiger tank on a hill outside Vimoutiers. It was apparently abandoned with empty tanks in August ‘44 on its way to a fuel depot in nearby Ticheville. King Tigers went about 350 yards per gallon of petrol with a range of maybe 60 miles, so logistically a bit of a nuisance.
Nearly home, so conveyances of the day: a moss covered Peugeot 309 driving in Ouistreham, a yellow Renault 4 or (four times as good) a tidy Renault 16. The Tiger is no longer a runner, so the award goes to the Morris C4.
The final stretch into L’Aigle is only 25 miles (125 gallons of petrol in a Tiger tank) but it has many valleys to down and up. The Hotel du Dauphin a most welcome sight.