Day 5 - Thursday - Abbaye d'Hambye, Brehal

Today it was still windy, but rather than rain we had broken cloud and sunshine.  We cycled down to Hambye on the tandem and then on to the the ruined Abbey.  The abbey lies in gorgeous surroundings in a wooded valley.  Unfortunately, only 25 mins remained before it closed for the lengthy French lunchbreak, so we pressed on through beautiful wooded lanes to Gavray (twinned with Launton!).  At this point we debated what to do next, and ended up riding on to the coast.  We headed first of all to Brehal, and then carried on across saltmarshes to Les Salines, in the hope of finding some seafood for lunch.  While we saw loads of bouchots on the beach, there wasn't anything near the beach in the way of eating (just a large car park, and many people either hanging around on the car park or traipsing around the beach looking for shellfish.

Faced with this disappointment, we rode over to St Martin de Brehal, but only found pizza cafes.  So back we went via Les Salines, from where we headed home via Ligneville (everything shut) and Quettreville (where we finally had sandwich and pains au chocolat from small supermarket).

Approx 53 miles

In the evening, Team Grumpy rode the main part of the Duo course. It was pretty windy on causeway, but we didn't have trouble controlling the bikes.  We also tested the video camera with which Gerry intended to film our progress in the race.

Photo gallery:

{gallery}2009-normandy/day05{/gallery}