Vassonville to La Grimpette commune de Warlincourt-lès-Pas

Monday October 18, 2010

My campsite for the night, beside the beach behind a hedge in Saint-Martin Plage

The coast at Saint-Martin Plage

Saint-Martin Plage

Saint-Martin Plage

Again I didn't have any milk, so I couldn't have breakfast first thing as I like to. I packed up and set off into what turned out to be a very frustrating morning. How hard do you think it would be to find a bottle of milk on a Monday morning in northern France? Well I can tell you from experience it's much more difficult than you might expect. I couldn't believe it, I rode through about five different towns, over 2 hours and 30 km, and I just could not find a shop selling milk. It was absolutely ridiculous! One shop did have a few bottles, but it was light milk, and I wasn't going to settle for light milk.
Eventually I got to a fairly major town called Eu, and went to the biggest supermarket there, the Intermache, and finally found some milk! But even in this massive supermarket, there was only a small selection of normal milk.

The entire fresh milk section in a large super-market in the commune of Eu, northern France. The UHT milk, on the other hand, took up half an isle.

The French apparently aren't big on their fresh milk, hey? Although they do have quite a bit of UHT milk.
I ate breakfast at McDonalds, so that I could use their free Wi-Fi. Then I was so busting to go to the toilet for a number two that I had to rush off and find one, which I did in a pizza restaurant. I couldn't use the one at McDonalds because they were doing renovations so there was no access to their toilet.
Then I continued on, there was a long climb out of town, I was about three kilmetres out of the town when I stopped for a drink, and I realised I'd left my sleeping bag, sleeping mat and tent behind at the McDonalds. "Oh shit!" I thought. How could I get so far without realising I'd left so much behind. If I lost my tent, sleeping bag and sleeping mat I'd be stuffed. I rode hard back down the hill and back to McDonalds, and thankfully the bags were still there sitting on the table right where I'd left them. Phew!

My sleeping bag, sleeping mat and tent which I left behind at the McDonalds in Eu and had to back-track to collect.

Back up the hill I went. There was some good scenery in places, other places were just paddocks. I've noticed there are a lot of wind turbines spotted throughout the countryside, which I always like to see. They are actually useful because they show you the direction of the wind. Fortunately today they indicated I had mostly a tail-wind, so I was making good progress.

Abbey Church in Saint-Riquier, Northern France.

I wished I had a French escort with me, or someone who could at least speak French, because I had plenty of time to learn French along the way. They could explain what the signs meant, what was written on menus, etc. See most of the time I don't even realise when people are talking to me, just making a comment or trying to make small talk, and I accidentally ignore them, they must think I'm just being rude.
For example, I got to a town called Doullens at about nightfall, and I stopped at a Maccas for their Wi-Fi. A bloke with a dog was outside and started talking to me when I didn't initially realise he was talking to me. He could actually speak a bit of English though, so we had a bit of a chat. He was impressed that I was from Australia riding around Europe.
Anyway, I needed some Wi-Fi to make a phone call using Skype, since I didn't have a SIM card for France, nor any credit on my UK SIM card.
I signed into Skype and Rosanna was online so I had a chat to her for a while. It was the first time I'd spoken English normally and freely in about a week, and it felt strange at first.
Then I called Erich and Sylvie's friend from Belgium, Florence, to let her know that I would make it to their place tomorrow night if they could have me. I tried to start with French, and her husband Hugo answered. I had the phrase written down in front of me, and had gone over it a few times in my head so that I was ready. Unfortunately I read out the wrong phrase and said the phrase for "can I help you Florence?", instead of "Can I please speak to Florence?" I hope my pronunciation was so bad that Hugo couldn't understand my mistake anyway, but I dunno. It was quite embarrassing nonetheless. He put Florence on the phone anyway, and she asked in English if I was the Australian. So that was good, she was expecting me to call at some stage, and I could converse with her in English, and I told her I'd get to their place before 7 pm.
It was after 9 o'clock when I left McDonalds, but I wanted to cover some more kilometres, so that I didn't have to ride as many the next day to get to Hugo and Florence's house.
I was on the main road, and I expected the roads to be fairly quite because it was getting late on a Monday night. Unfortunately all the truck drivers had the same idea as me though, and there were heaps of trucks out on the road. I rode for another hour or so, then thought I'd better try and find a camping spot. I spontaneously turned in on a small road which had a sign for a camping ground. Not far down, I found a grassed bike trail, which was much better than I was expecting to be able to find for tonight. The temperature was also quite warm, unlike the last two nights which have been fairly cold.
Looks like I forgot to record my ride on the MotionX-GPS app today so I can't include a map of my route.

Ride stats:
Distance: 130.33 km
Average: 21.7 km/h
Maximum: 54.2 km/h
Time: 5:59:38