There I was, sprawled out flat on the road, having collided with a fellow biker, just five minutes after guides Barbara and Ryan told our group of 21 not to follow too closely to fellow road warriors.
The result was a crash and a bloody knee–fortunately, Scott, the other biker, wasn’t hurt. Not exactly the way I wanted to start my much anticipated six-day bike trip last June in Brittany.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to the beginning of my year in travel.
That would be Dec. 31, 1999, when the clock struck midnight. This was not just any clock. It was Big Ben, and there I was in London on the banks of the Thames River with thousands of other revelers screaming our lungs out to welcome in the millennium. Fireworks lit up the sky for about 20 minutes, making it hard to hear all 12 of Ben’s bongs.
Did we care that it wasn’t the real millennium? I doubt it. I didn’t. I was in one of my favorite cities with Scott and special friends Susan and Harvey. If we felt pangs of nostalgia for New Year’s in the States, we knew we could set the alarm for 5 a.m. (London is 5 hours ahead of New York) and watch the ball drop in Times Square. (At 3:30 a.m., Champagne in hands–compliments of our hotel, Dukes–we called it quits and opted for reruns.)
In the hours leading up to the Big Event, central London became a kind of surreal place. Policemen were everywhere. Anticipating huge crowds and lots of congestion, they closed off streets to cars and taxis, and shut down a number of subway stations that were feeder routes to areas where crowds were likely to gather for New Year’s Eve celebrations.
This made for one weird sight: Streets filled with people instead of the normal crush of speeding cars and taxis, particularly in the areas around St. James’s Palace and Buckingham Palace.
At about 10:30 p.m., and after a celebratory dinner at Quaglino’s (one of the few restaurants open that night near the hotel), we put on warmer clothes and joined the masses walking toward the river for a fireworks display that was being touted as beyond spectacular. The Thames was supposed to be turned into a river of fire. Due to technical glitches, it wasn’t.
River of fire or not, it will take some kind of New Year’s Eve celebration to top this one.
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In June, Scott and I were off to Normandy–so much to see, so little time–before meeting the bike group in Nantes. From Paris, we took the train to Rouen, where Joan of Arc met her fate, and where Claude Monet, obsessed with the effect of light on the Cathedral, created dozens of paintings. Our visit was not conducive to painting or even taking pictures–it rained all day and night. And, the hotel room was the size of a closet, so we weren’t sorry to pick up the rental car and head west to Honfleur.
Ah, the picturesque seaport town of Honfleur. Delightful. Lunch at one of the charming harborside cafes. Two nights of luxury at La Ferme Saint-Simon, a Relais & Chateaux hotel with a one-star restaurant (excellent food, but not-so-excellent service) and the start of my obsession, following dinner with a glass of a Norman specialty, Calvados, apple brandy. Before La Ferme morphed into a hotel, it was a farm and a favorite retreat of painters Monet, Sisley and Courbet. Easy to see why.
Knowing our next destination, Mont St. Michel, drew big crowds, we got an early start. (Outside of Paris, it’s the most popular tourist attraction in France.) We arrived mid-morning to find parking lots already filled with buses and cars. Early June and hordes of people jammed the narrow streets of the village, filled with souvenir shops, restaurants (crepes are popular) and a few hotels.
We followed the masses to the abbey, founded in the 10th Century by Benedictine monks. After climbing many, many, many steps, we reached the top and paused briefly for a view of the bay, known for its famous tides. We walked into the abbey church where the Romanesque nave was completed in the 12th Century. After a look at the Cloisters, we headed back into the village as more buses were unloading streams of people.
We were headed to Cancale, and what turned out to be a heavenly one-night stay at Le Chateau Richeaux, owned by the highly regarded Olivier Roellinger. The hotel’s excellent seafood bistro, Le Coquillage, eased the pain of not being able to get into the nearby Maison de Bricourt, chef Roellinger’s two-star Michelin restaurant. The setting was magical: a view overlooking the bay of Mont St. Michel with the Mont faintly visible in the distance.
From Cancale we passed through St. Malo (saving for another visit) on the way to Caen. We wanted to visit the Peace Museum before heading to the Normandy beaches. Even though friends hadtold us how moved they were to see the films about the D-Day invasion at the museum and then visit the cemeteries, their impressions didn’t prepare us for what we saw, especially at the American Cemetery, which sits on a bluff above Omaha Beach. We were there June 7, the day after the anniversary of the 1944 landing, and ceremonies honoring those who fought and died were taking place among the endless rows of crosses and Stars of David. The images will stay with me for some time.
Back in the car we drove in silence to Bayeux, home to the famous Bayeux Tapestry (all 231 feet of it), made by English nuns in the 11th Century, and its 58 scenes depicting the Norman Conquest of England. A pretty incredible piece of art.
Last stop before meeting the bike group was an overnight in the tiny Breton town of Pont-Aven, made famous by Paul Gauguin, who arrived in the 1860s. Just a few of his works remain in the Musee de Pont-Aven, but there are paintings by other members of his group. Pont-Aven has just a few hotels, but we booked ahead (with help from our Honfleur hotel) at Moulin de Rosmadec. The tiny hotel and restaurant (elegantly rustic and with one Michelin star) straddle the Aven River. Tres charmant….and dinner was superb.
Next morning, with tins of a local delicacy, galettes de Pont-Aven (butter cookies), packed in the car, we headed to Quimper for one last shopping spree. Quimper is mecca for lovers of faienceware. As one, I can tell you the stores did not disappoint.
Then it was full speed ahead to the bike trip, and what outfitters Butterfield & Robinson described as a 1-a (easiest) trip along the south coast of Brittany.
“We bike for the first half of this trip on small country roads through forests and gently rolling meadows and fields,” said the brochure. “On the second half, we bike through flat coastal marshes and pristine farmland. Average daily distance: 48-56 kilometers.”
Translation: 30 to 35 miles…a day. What? That’s enough for a week! Sure, there was The Van. Each day one of the guides drove the route (the other was on a bike), picking up anyone who needed a rest…or crutches. Better stake a claim, I thought, before hitting the road.
The group, made up mainly of Chicago area people, more or less settled into several groups:
– The Big Guys. (“Bring on the hills!”)
– The Wannabe Big Guys. (“I can’t take another hill!”)
– And the Van Guys. (“Where’s the van?”)
The trip went like this: buffet breakfast at the hotel (we stayed in three different ones); get sheets of instructions with routes of various distance (either to a designated lunch spot or a site for a special event); set off and proceed at your own speed (or make up your own route), but get back to the hotel for dinner. In one piece.
Most days there was a designated spot for lunch and a “special event.” Before week’s end, we would visit an oyster farm for a fantastic lunch (after all, we were in oyster country) and presentation of trip T-shirts (as a gag, they were buried in the oyster pond); have a surprise picnic after visiting a salt marsh; tour the megaliths at Carnac and the Citadel at Port Louis. A stop in the medieval, walled town of Guerande meant a chance to load up on gifts of fleur de sel (sea salt), another Breton delicacy.
Hotels were topnotch (two were Relais & Chateaux–Chateau de Longueville in Hennebont and Castel Marie-Louise in La Baule), and true to its reputation for pampering guests, B&R moved luggage not only from hotel to hotel, but into the room. Dinners were often in Michelin-starred restaurants (each hotel restaurant had one star). Some of us indulged in spa services (“Phoenician table” massages were popular) at our third hotel, Domaine de Rochevilaine, in Billiers.
One night before heading off to dinner at a nearby two-star Michelin restaurant (L’Auberge Bretonne), biker Bill entertained the group with his clarinet. The group gave the restaurant mixed reviews, but 4 stars for his serenade.
My Cannondale bike and I were just getting warmed up, when the trip ended all too soon in La Baule on Brittany’s Riviera.
Would I take another bike trip? Only if The Big Guys, The Wannabes and The Van Guys are on the same trip. And they know who they are.
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Carolyn McGuire aspires to be one of The Big Guys and is in training for the next bike trip (destination unknown at presstime). Her e-mail address is [email protected].