without a car in the world

France

'Easy' may not mean
What you expect. France hates peo-
Ple who feel lucky.

France hates us.

Today we woke up in Gravelines after our night of camping on the beach, excited that today would be a short day to Calais by bike and then a train ride to Caen. The train ride would be long (5-6 hours, we guessed), but it should be fun. It would also be a good chance to, for example, catch up on blog posts.

We didn't count on how hot it would be. Even the 30km haul to Calais was murderous, and it was only 27 degrees or so. Spain will be interesting, we mused.

We also didn't count on France hating cyclists. After tolerating honks from drivers passing us all the way to Calais, we stepped into the train station to get some train tickets. Oh, shoot, it looks like the only way to take a train from Calais to Caen is via the Paris main station. Oh, and it looks like we have to transfer across town in Paris. Well, that kind of sucks, but okay.

But, wait! Evan stepped up to order our tickets, and we were informed that we couldn't get as far as Caen, or even Paris, with our bicycles. There was no train that would carry bicycles beyond a town called Amies, which was a mere 60km away. Caen is about 600km away.

Uh, okay, so what now? We step across the street into a bar with wifi and do our research. It looks like renting a car is going to be the best option, and, although it sucks, we really want to see the landing beaches for D-Day, so whatever. Oh, and Hertz is having deals renting cars from 27€ per day! Where are they located? The port, okay, we can find that.

We hop on our bicycles and head to the port, which is pretty poorly signed, and wind up getting lost in a freight area with some Polish truck drivers. After fishtailing our heavily-weighted bicycles through some rather large piles of sand, we managed to escape that area and head towards the car port, which was a non-neglible distance away through some not-apparently-navegable fence complexes.

Anyway, we made it! It was about 12h30 at the time, and we discovered that the car rental desks didn't open until 14h. Apparently, everyone in France takes a lunch break from 12h to 14h. Everyone.

After we wasted an hour and a half doing photo curation, etc., we stepped up to the Hertz desk to be informed that they didn't have any cars left to rent. Well, okay, we'll try Europcar. They do have cars to rent, but it's going to be... 260€ plus gas. ARGH. FINE WE'LL GET THE CAR.

Bicycles in tow, we walk out to the lot to examine our newly-rented car. It is... small. You may note in the photos that through some creative packing and strategic disassembly we managed to get bikes and bags and panniers and racks and cables and us all inside, though, and got on the road to Caen.

Driving is so much more stressful than bicycling. Once you're moving too quickly to properly see the countryside, and once you're closed in a box that prevents you from feeling the wind in your hair, and especially once you're paying 7€ tolls to go a few dozen kilometres, you're simply not relaxing very much. We paid 5€ to cross a bridge once. One bridge.

We soon realised that to preserve our sanity we would need to seek some coastal routes. We headed off the motorway to Dieppe, where there had been some Canadian battles fought during the first Great War. It helped a lot to get out of the car and stroll along the beach for a bit.

From Dieppe, we headed on to Caen, at which we arrived around 22h. Predictably, most hotel desks were closed at this time, and those that were not closed informed us, also predictably, that they were full. Well, fine. We headed out of town again towards Lion sur Mer, where we found a farm-camping place to set up our tent for the night. Around 1 in the morning, we collapsed into our sleeping bag, defeated by France.

Ugh.