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First thing after breakfast, Team Grumpy rode the training circuit once more, slightly faster this time. (15.5 miles).

After second breakfast, Carol and I rode the tandem over to the coast.  We took unmarked roads from the house, and eventually ended up at Hautville Plage as we did last year.  And again, as last yeat we had moules and frites and a beer, in the same restaurant.  We then rode over to Regneville to visit a castle.  Very much in ruins, to the point that it seemed pretty improbable that they could actually stay up.  Nevertheless, the ruins were spectacular.  After a map consultation, we saw direction signs to a set of limekilns.  We'd seen these on one of the Cicuit Thierry Marie placards near our house, and had thought they were fortifications.  These turned out to be four huge furnaces for making lime for agricultural use.  There was a big exhibition, though mostly in french, after which we wandered around the kilns.  There were audio tour points around the site, all with a English option.

From there it was a fairly straightforward ride back to house, despite the usual idiosyncratic signposting on the minor roads.  The was  quite hard due to the continued strong wind, and we had one brief shower near St Martin de Cenilly
40.78 miles

Photo gallery:

{gallery}2009-normandy/day02{/gallery}

Very windy and wet, so we drove over to the coast.  We had intended to go to northernmost point of Normandy, but in the end made it as far as Portbail, where we walked on the beach then wandered along the causewy, stopping to look at a wrecked boat and then into Portbail itself for a galette for lunch.  After this we had heavy rain, so we went back to the house again.  Rather worried about the weekend's weather, looks grim in the online weather forecasts.

Photo gallery:

{gallery}2009-normandy/day03{/gallery}

We woke to very threatening skies, and even stronger winds.  It looked a bit better to the north, so we loaded the tandem on the car and drove over to the Utah beach museum carpark, with the intention of going for a ride along the coast to St Vaast le Hougue.  In the end, we sat in the car looking at the flagpoles bending in wind and rain, so we drove back to the house.  Later on we went for a walk down to Notre Dame de Cenilly.  

Still a bit depressed about the weather, so we checked forecast which now predicted better weather for Thursday and Friday, but poor over the weekend (i.e. for the race).

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}