A delayed start this morning due to problems with our GPS.
Basically today’s route wasn’t programmed into the GPS, so we had to get Patrick, our friendly local representative – whose English is getting far more of a workout than he ever dreamed – to email us an update, which Simon could then upload. Spoiler alert: we had trouble with it all day.
We then set out across fields of brassicas and corn towards the coast. We saw the occasional livestock – mostly cows with the occasional goat – so I’m not sure why there was a strong smell of ordure that permeated the entire day?
The drivers generally hurtle along at a great pace, although thankfully they seem to give cyclists a wide berth. Many of the country road crossings have a statue of Jesus on a crucifix, not sure why? Is he the patron Saint of intersections? I guess at those speeds it’s a life and death venture.
We had lunch at a cute little place looking out over a marina in the estuary at Lézardrieux, where I managed to lose my cycling gloves, not sure how.
From there we went East to the seaside town of Paimpol, where the sun came out to fry us and worsen the misery of cycling round and round in circles, getting horribly lost. Eventually we broke free of the gravitational pull that the harbour seemed to have on our Garmin, and headed West. Our navigational troubles were unfortunately not yet over, though, and after several more missteps we abandoned the GPS for the comfort of Google maps on a phone. If we’d made the move sooner we might have avoided the cloudburst that soaked us within view of home, but that’s just life’s rich tapestry I guess. Although I may not have felt so philosophical if Simon had ended up under the wheels of the big truck that was right behind us on the bridge in the rain when his bicycle brakes jammed and he tipped over into the road.
On the plus side, no jet lag or COVID, so that’s great.