Day 40 — Thursday 9 June 2011

Anet – Louviers

I crossed the river and rode through Ivry-la-Bataille. As I came out of the town there was the only stretch of bicycle track that I found on the whole journey. I followed it to Garenne-sur-Eure, where it disappeared. From there I stayed on the D71 all the way to Louviers, riding along the west bank of the Eure towards its confluence with the Seine. The by-road through river-side villages had a pretty rotten surface with constant badly filled potholes and trenches with road metalwork making for a rough ride.

A couple of kilometres before Neuilly I came to a Route Barrée sign that would have meant a detour of several kilometres, so I ignored it. A little way up the road there was a big hole across the whole carriageway. The only way through was to walk into a field and struggle round the barrier. My shoes became so clogged with soil that I had to take them off and pick it out of the cleats with a small stick before I could carry on. I sat on the grassy bank beside the hole while the French work team had a break sitting their van and I think laughing at me. I stopped in a handy bus shelter a little later to have another go with a more effective screw driver.

I had a delightful lunch at Pacy-sur-Eure where a restaurant had a sign outside saying Complet. Not deterred I marched in, and being alone I got away with it. They put me in a marquee at the back while they waited for a coach party due in an hour. All the tables were laid out for a festive occasion. I had just about finished when the party arrived and I was courteously but firmly ushered out. Riding in the afternoon was effortlessly flat along the river. Houses became less rural and at one particularly attractive one I stopped to take a photograph of a man mowing his lawn. I might have been in Worcestershire alongside the River Severn. Even the ‘STOP’ sign was in English.

I rode into the attractive town of Louviers squeezed in between the River Eure and the Forêt de Chêne Louviers. I asked around and was directed to the Office de Tourisme where a helpful lady gave me a map of the town and pointed out where the campsite was. I climbed out of the Eure valley through the Forêt up a steep road with hairpins. From their map I thought I could see a short cut up a lane between the hairpins, but it turned out to be a steep and almost impassible footpath. I had to drag my bicycle through the undergrowth and rejoined the road in a lather, picking thorns out of my beard. The campsite Le Bel-Air came to meet me along the Route de la Haye Malherbe and was really welcome after my exertions.

I checked with the lady in the site office and confirmed that there was a campsite at Pont-Audemer where I wanted to be the following night. There were several other people at the site but no campers, only campervans. A couple from Nottingham who had retired early and bought a £50,000 motorhome in which they were pottering around France brought out some bottles of beer and we sat chatting in the warm but thinly overcast conditions. There was no text message from Liz but I sent one to her, and put out my washing to drip on my washing line tied to the bushes surrounding my pitch. Gone were the evenings when it would dry in the sun, so it had to do as well as it could during the night before being hung from my panniers in the morning. I notice from the photograph of my pitch that I’d propped up my solar panel on the foot of the tent, so there must have been enough sunshine filtering through to give a weak charge. There was only one more full day’s cycling, and I was feeling ready for the end.