2009 Euro Tour -- Ride Day 21 — 16 July 2009 — 14100 Lisieux to 76230 Isneauville (Rouen) CLONED FROM ROUTE 1682067

Unexpectedly, this was a great and challenging ride through some very varied terrain. In addition to beautiful weather throughout the day, Helen found back roads just north of Rouen (a very large city) so that our approach to our destination, while painful from some serious climbing after 60 miles of riding, was painless from the standpoint of the expected, but non-existent, city traffic.

The first of several forested climbs we did today was particularly nice. That was on D97, just east of D22 and St-Jean-d’Asnières. Another interesting feature of the day was that we unexpectedly crossed the Seine River via a small ferry. As neither of us has great eyes at this stage in life, we missed the fact on the map that there was a gap in the road at Duclair, the city on the north side of the river. Upon examining the map closer the next morning, we saw a symbol of a small box with a “B” inside. It stands for “par bac”, which means “by ferry”. Terribly inconvenient compared to a bridge, but very nicely quaint…and also without any charge.

All week we’d been seeing weather reports on how bad the weather would be on Friday 17th July. At about 9:00 or 10:00 PM on the 16th we looked out our Etap window and saw some serious looking dark clouds approaching. By about 10:30 or so, the rain was pelting down and with the outside lights of the Etap it was like looking up into a shower head that moved as the strong winds shifted. We were definitely happy to be inside.

During the day, we passed from the Calvados Department, which is in the Basse-Normandie Region, back into the Eure Department in the Haute-Normandie Region before ending up the day in the Seine-Maritime Department, which is also in the Haute-Normandie Region.

Background:

My wife and I have been doing self-supported tours in Western Europe (a majority in France) since 1993.  This series of rides covers our 2009 4.5 month route through parts of France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and then back to France.  Our beginning and ending point is near Chadurie (south of Angouleme) where our friends have a farm with Gites and Chambres d'Hotes.

We rode our Dawes touring bicycles purchased in 1993 heavily loaded with 700Cx32 tires.  All of our riding was on paved roads, mostly with very little traffic.  Pretty much the only unpaved sections were some bicycle paths in Germany and Austria. Sadly, that wasn't so great as Helen fell a number of times on the unpaved paths.  Fortunately, though, no serious injury.

If any questions, feel free to email me at jeffkadet@netdiving.com

Jeff