We finally considered ourselves in good enough condition to continue on today; regardless, given that we're trying to make it to Brighton for the World Naked Bike Ride on the 13th, I don't think we would have had the luxury of remaining for another day! There's nudity to be had.
Upon setting out, we were immediately greeted by another flat courtesy of Valkyrie's rear tire; upon inspection, the cause was an improperly applied patch from our first repair job back in Danmark. Lesson learned: apply the patch when the tube is inflated. Otherwise, it will warp when you inflate the tube again. We went through the usual routine - pull all the gear off, detach the rear wheel, pry one side of the tire out with a tire boot (or two, or three), take out the tube, find the hole, inflate, patch, deflate, put tube back in, put tire back into place, re-inflate, ride. By this time, it was roughly noon; to add to things, it had started to rain with gradually increasing ferocity. We climbed the hill out of Saint-Lô and headed on the road towards Mont-Saint-Michel.
Disaster! The patch didn't take; we had just left Saint-Lô when her tire flattened out again. We knew at this point that the inner tube was irrecoverably damaged, but it was still about 2 km to the nearest town. We started walking it, but the going was too slow; as a stopgap measure, we inflated the tire and hoped this would be enough to reach town without significant damage to the wheel. (Thankfully, it was.)
We stopped in a nearby café. The patrons - all locals, from the looks of it - watched in amusement as we set a previously punctured tube on the table; we had never found the hole in that one, and were hoping to find it now. It took some searching, but we did succeed. A few minutes later, we finally had a working tube; this one held for the day.
The rain continued to get more and more miserable, drenching us so completely that we had to pull out extra layers from our bags to keep warm as it got later. Nevertheless, we reached the Baie du Mont-Saint-Michel, putting us within a long but doable 100 km of the ferry from Saint-Malo. Let's hope we can reach it tomorrow!