Blahg

Jet lag is tough, easier on the west bound leg of the journey than on the east but still tough. I have been a little out of sorts since our return, trying to get back to a reasonable sleep schedule and, in fact, a normal sort of life schedule. I have ridden my bicycle most of the days I have been here but after what I am willing to admit is a fairly intense travel blogging schedule, I have felt just a little blahged out.

My first motivation in doing this blog is to entertain myself. I am pleased if anyone else finds it interesting, but if I can't entertain myself I know that I will stop. The last couple of days I couldn't summon the necessary motivation to entertain myself.

Today was another hot day ending what the local weather sources say is the hottest July in this city in my life time. I am a little sheepish about all of that, having missed more than half of July. And it wasn't hot at all where I was except for a couple of days. I wore long pants every single day of the trip and it wasn't a Euro fashion choice, it was too cool for short pants. I wore my jacket at least several days and had a long sleeved tee shirt that saw quite a bit of service. But today was hot here.

So I rode in the morning. The lighting is different in the morning but many of the sights are the same.

It was a mostly north wind but when I was out there last week I discovered that a couple of the roads that I count on to visit Lake Vadnais have that oil and gravel thing going on. I hate that.

So today I started with a slight swing to the south to set up a mostly east west ride. The swing to the south led past those cows and also into the Fairgrounds. The Fair must be very close, the Pronto Pup stands don't come out unless they are going to use them.

I also checked in on that church dining hall that closed shop last fall to see what is up. I cannot tell for sure yet what is going to be at that site except that I am pretty comfortable in reporting that it is a sit down establishment of some sort. With the success of O'Gara's out there last year I am betting that it will be a place where you can get a burger and a beer.

I didn't blog the last couple of days but I did take a couple of pictures while riding. The City of Saint Paul has installed a bunch of rain gardens in the area around Lake Como to filter the rain water before it runs off into the lake. This one has some of those cardinal flowers just coming into bloom.

I rode down to the confluence as well. The river is still high for almost August but is way, way down from what it was earlier in the year.

It was hot that day too.

So July ends with not enough miles on my bicycle but I guess I am plenty OK with that. I loved Dieppe and the Alabaster Coast, I loved Bayeux and the Tapestry, I loved the beaches at Normandy. I wasn't crazy about trying to drive into the city of Rouen on either of the two occasions when I had to do that.

The trains work well, we stayed in an airport hotel which I booked through Delta for just over $100 for our one night stay. When we were standing around the front of the hotel the next morning waiting for the airport shuttle I noticed the hotel rates posted at the front door. The cheapest room in the hotel was advertised as available for 360 euros.

Nice hotel.

Lousy shuttle.

There's no place like home.

Bicycle fitness report

I do love my bicycle.

Bicycle fitness: OK, I guess, especially considering the relatively lengthy lay-off. I felt OK starting out even against a light wind. But eventually those hills out near Lake Vadnais took their toll and I was starting to wind down pretty rapidly by the time I finished.

It was fun to be out there, riding around familiar terrain. I never once came to one of those dreaded "centre ville" sign which so bedeviled us just a couple of days ago, particularly in Duclair.

I did find that quite a bit more water is flowing through the beaver dam than was the last time I was out there. The bit over there on the left looks like someone has been after the dam with a shovel.

Or perhaps the water flow is just a result of successful dam building by the beavers and the water level has built up to a point where it has to go somewhere. I am sure I will have more opportunities in the near future to assess. I know this because the GRider loves her bicycle too and is going to want to venture out in that direction when her schedule clears a little more.

Lake Vadnais looked even more like the north woods than usual today.

I have only seen a boat on Lake Vadnais a couple of times before. This time must be, as it was the times in the past, staff from the water utility conducting some sort of water quality test.

I will say that the lake smells pretty bad, dog days bad, too much stuff in the water bad. A result of this in the past has been aggressive treatment of the water resulting in somewhat unpalatable drinking water.

We shall see, if it gets too bad I suppose I could always seek better drinking water in some other state.

Here is my latest network of the Olympics rant. As I type the opening ceremonies are underway in London. NBC will provide plausibly live coverage beginning at 6:30 local time, which will be 12:30 am London time. Maybe this time I shouldn't complain, the tape delay will allow NBC to edit all the really boring countries out of the parade of athletes.

And finally, getting back on my bicycle today allowed me some time to think about bicycling topics. I wonder how Frank Schleck's search for the individual who "poisoned" him is going. I suspect this search will be about as successful as Contador's search for the source of the contaminated beef.

I can read all of the signs again

The whole stay at an airport hotel because there will be no stress getting to the flight on time turned out to be a false hope but after a few anxious moments we did manage to arrive at the gate only a couple of minutes after boarding began. Once on board it was just wait, wait, wait for 9 hours to pass and then run the airport gauntlet again. On this side of the pond the last guy of three at border entrance/customs that we spoke to gave only the briefest of glances at our documents and said, "You're home."  Which indeed we now are.

Here is a major hero of the last week:

The Michelin road atlas is at a scale of 1cm=2km.  That means that we used only a very few pages of a fairly thick tome but it also means that the pages that we used were at a scale which gave us an immense amount of information.  Not always enough, but an immense amount of information. The driving that we did and the failures and successes that we endured during that driving, well, the successes were made possible by that atlas. The failures? We might still be going around roundabouts somewhere in or near Duclair looking for the D926 (a big red road) without the assistance of Michelin.

There are a couple of things posed on top of the atlas.

The figure is the new boy for the annual nativity scene.  This year we have added the Archangel Saint Michel slaying the dragon.  I purchased the figure at a gift shop on the ramparts at Mont Saint Michel. I think it is important to note that that is not just some Saint, that is an Archangel.

The third bit is a simple enough looking rock.  I picked it up on Omaha Beach.

It is good to be home.

Travel proves to be hard yet again

We tried to get an early start from Bayeux. We had an about 90 minute drive to Rouen if we wanted to take the toll expressway. We needed to turn in the rental car at Rouen and catch the train back to Paris. Then a cab to an airport hotel allowing an airport shuttle in the morning. An early start from Bayeux assured that we could get the whole thing done by mid-afternoon.

Anyone want to guess?

OK, I am going to give a hint. We decided to take the old state highway that parallels the toll expressway rather than the expressway. For most of the way the state highway is within a couple hundred meters of the expressway. It was bound to be a little bit slower but we would have a no stress ride across northern France with a chance to enjoy the slowing down to pass through all of the small towns. I hasten to add we are not talking about the little tiny departement roads passing through really tiny towns as seen on the Tour de France. We are talking about major department highways. If you happen to have a Michelin France road map handy we are not talking about those tiny tiny yellow roads. We are talking about the major red roads, not up to the standard of the yellow and red double line expressway. But the major red roads.

Anyone want to guess?

We were so confident that we decided we could swing slightly to the north to cross the Seine at a major toll bridge on the outskirts of Le Havre and then follow the very major red road D982 down towards Rouen. This would do two things, it would allow us to stop and see the ancient old abbey that we missed on flat tire day and even more importantly during the whole flat tire adventure we had both spotted a gas station on the D982 heading into Rouen. It was a rental car, we needed to gas up. This route let us enter Rouen over a road that we had traveled once previously and along which we could find a gas station.

Any one want to guess?

But first the really amazing old abbey, the Abbaye de Jumièges.  The abbey was founded in 654 by Saint Philibert.  The ruins still on the site are mostly from the 10th and 11th centuries.  This west facade of the abbey church Notre Dame is part of what remains of what was one of the largest churches in Normandy.

The abbey sometimes flouished, sometimes not but after the Revolution the building fell on hard times.  The secular state took ownership of all of the religious buildings and this one was sold to be used as a stone quarry.  Only about one third of what was once on site still remains.  This is what the main church looks like  on the other side of the grand facade.

And another view, this time of the adjacent Eglise Saint Pierre, the church reserved for the monks.

The cloister, this area was enclosed by another building, the refectory which is now completely gone  leaving his area of solitude and reflection open to the eyes of all.

The former hospice with the towers of the main church facade rising in the background.

We must have been stunned by the ruins, we were a bit behind schedule but not totally adrift when somehow or other we completely drove past the gas station without noticing it.

We ended up in Rouen needing gas.  Have you ever tried to locate a gas station in a town which is already overwhelming you with streets that don't go where you need them to go, often ending in an access interdite sign, where you don't speak the language, and where the time of  your planned arrival  at the train station to catch the afternoon train to Paris is rapidly passing?  We have.

But suddenly like an apparition rising from the misty graveyard, there on the right, a Total gas station.  And behold, we were saved.  Well, we were saved as soon as the nice French young man inside the station programmed the pump to allow me to pump some gas at a credit card only pump and then pay inside with my American credit card which totally does not work at French automatic payment gas stations.

No longer any need to  guess, we made the 3 o'clock train, arriving at Gare Saint Lazare in  Paris at about 4:15.  Then we briefly could not locate the taxi stand but that was only a slight delay.  The  rush hour traffic that we plunged into on the way to the airport hotel  complex was the biggest set back from that point on.

But we are here at the airport hotel, we have had dinner, it isn't even dark  yet.  It looks like we will be able to get enough sleep, it looks like we will  be home tomorrow.

We love France, some moments have been trying but we have had a really good time.  A really surprising to me highlight is how good the food was in Bayeux.  Two words:  camembert tartelette.

The tapestry and other delights

Four days in Normandy and not a cloud in the sky.  We were in a souvenir shop this morning and they had an entire rack of joke postcards many of which spoofed Norman weather and what is apparently perceived to be near constant rain.  We had a very similar experience several years ago in Seattle.  Everyone says it rains there but it rained not a drop while we were there.  If it does actually rain in Normandy you couldn't prove it by the experience we have had, not a single cloud in the sky, not a cumulus, not a high cirrus, not anything at all.  Sky blue all day long.  It has been gorgeous.

We are staying in the Hôtel d'Argouges which is a hotel in the American usage of the word. We do not have the spectacular view that we had in the B&B but here the petit dejeuner is included in the price of the room (That's right, we stayed in a BED AND BREAKFAST where the breakfast was extra and we are now in a HOTEL where the breakfast is included). Additionally, when the weather is perfect, as it was today, it is possible to enjoy the petit dejeuner in the hotel garden.

So that kind of makes up for the lack of a window view.

We set out on foot for a day (a relief) to investigate the things in Bayeux that we had only driven and walked briskly past.

The Grand Rue, the main street of this town has been the same street since the very earliest days of the town. We walked down into Old Town where we encountered lots of picturesque old houses.

For example, this is the Hôtel d'Argouges, when hôtel is used in the more usual French usage of the word. This 15th century building was the main residence of Lord Argouges at a time when he was sufficiently wealthy and politically prominent to entertain the king in his home.

The hotel where we are staying was also owned by the family and therefore rates the designation as Hôtel d'Argouges, it just wasn't the family primary residence.

Besides the hotel (American usage) has a lovely garden. Le Hôtel (French usage) just has a plaque saying the king once visited there.

There are lots of other interesting old buildings, this one is an example of a typical 15th century turreted manor house.

All of the floors of the house were accessed from a stairway in the turret. The stairway is capped by the turret which could also be used as a lookout.

This is another example of a half timbered house along the main street, complete with the quite usual overhanging upper stories.  This one is on about a dozen of the non-joke postcards we saw in the souvenir shop.

It was on to the Tapestry.  It is, as advertised, quite extraordinary.  It is 70 meters in length, displayed in a darkened room in a former seminary building.  The Tapestry has quite a checkered past.  Napoleon removed it to Paris, the Germans removed it to Paris, during the Revolution it was used as a tarpaulin to cover a load of weapons bound for Paris only to be rescued by a local.  It has been in the seminary since 1984.

That's the panel where Harald takes the sacred Oath of Bayeux.  Harald had been sent by Edward the Confessor, the King of England to inform William the Bastard that the childless Edward was designating William as his successor.  Harald was shipwrecked and taken prisoner by a local count.  Freed by William, Harald swore on saintly relics to recognize William's right to the throne.  Harald returned to England, found that Edward had died and couldn't resist the opportunity.  He reneged on his oath and had himself installed as King.  William was provoked to fight for his claim to the throne.  It all culminated in 1066 at Hastings and William the Bastard became for all time William the  Conqueror, King of England.

What I like most about the photo is that it once again demonstrates what you can do with a really good modern electronic camera.  No flash is allowed in that darkened room and I used the no flash setting.  The camera gathered the light that was available and produced an excellent exposure.

Try that with film, Luddites.

So I am now going to request a ruling by a French speaking person.  We left the Tapestry.  I was using the green guide at this point and there is a small map of Bayeux in there showing immediately adjacent to the Tapestry an "ancien moulins de l'hopital".  I went looking for the windmill.  Couldn't find one.  I did find this.

It appears to be a water wheel which was used to power most likely some sort of mill, perhaps a grist mill.

We looked around old town some more.  This is a 17th century house known as the Maison du Cadran because of the sundial on the facade.

I am having a little trouble reading the sundial but it was about 1pm when we were there. Maybe someone else can figure it out, I assume it is reasonably accurate but may not be adjusted for daylight savings time.

We did a big bunch of what one guide calls the 2.3 mile river walk.  The green guide gives a strong recommendation to this view from Quai de l'Aure.

The guide says that on turning into this street from rue des Teinturiers, one has a fine view of the river, the water mill in what was once the tanning district, the arched bridge, the old fish market and the towers of the cathedral in the background.

The old fish market has been reconfigured for use in the modern era as the city tourist information office.

Last big excursion

We haven't even seen the Tapestry yet but no one should worry.  As long as the weather in Normandy continues its fantastic run we headed out for one more thing where we knew we would have to be outdoors.

Mont Saint Michel.

The abbey on an island is a victim of its own success.  The causeway that they built to allow tourists access at any stage of tide has caused a change in the current which has reduced the scouring effect of the water.  The silt is building up and the abbey is now very much a peninsula.

But they are working on fixing that.  A bridge is being built and the causeway will be removed.  The project also includes remote parking and a free shuttle from a "village" on the mainland.

Are we all feeling good and Disney yet?

But Disney it isn't, people actually live in the village over there and the nuns walking down the steps outside the abbey are actual persons of faith, not actresses.  People actually live there.

Even if you lived on an island you needed a stone wall to protect your family from the pirates.  Walking along the ramparts is much superior to battling the crowds in the street.

You meet a better class of people.

And you get a better view of the bay.

That's pretty close to high tide.

The guidebook said it was well worth a visit but that a short visit would be sufficient.

We agree on both counts.

This is a view of the crowd in the only street in the village as we prepared to leave town.

Here's today's war content.  This giant cannon just inside the gate is described on that plaque behind the FT as "Bombarde Anglaise, Abandonnes par L'Armee de Thomas Scalles, Le 17 June 1434, Calibre 380-420".

So that's pretty old.

We were on our way just as a giant slew of tour buses began pulling into the "village".  As crowded as it was on the island while we were there it was about to get a whole lot worse.

We made our way back to Bayeux.

We checked out of the B&B this morning and have checked into a real hotel.

We were out walking in town before dinner when today's bicycle content just cruised by in front of us, a group ride.

There is an extremely pretty little river in the old town.  The sun angle wasn't right this evening but it is still very pretty.

After dinner we ended up back inside the Cathedral.  This one is the size of Notre Dame de Paris but in Paris if you are inside the building anytime after about 10am you are in there with a couple of thousand people.  We were inside Notre Dame de Bayeux with maybe a dozen others.

They have some softly playing recorded music and incense burning on the altar.  It is serene and powerful.  The FT discovered that the church crypte was open.  In French churches the crypte is just the basement but sometimes there are amazing things down there.  Wireless and I visited the crypte at Chartres, the FT and I visited the crypte at Bayeux.

It was very dark down there, even with the miraculous light gathering power of a really good modern electronic camera there was a quite obvious and prolonged pause between the sound indicating the "shutter" was open and the sound indicating that the sensor had stopped gathering information.  But the picture is still acceptable.  I must have stood very still.

Today the Tapestry and whatever else is yielded by a walk around town.

Jour deux

We were walking back from dinner and were looking to verify the location of the famous Tapestry when we came upon this opposite side view of the Cathedral.

Bayeux was founded by Gauls, eventually became a Roman center and then was successively conquered by the Bretons, the Saxons and the Vikings.  In the courtyard of the church there is an exhibit of what was discovered during an excavation.  That depression just visible at the bottom of the picture includes a viewing area for a wall section there that has been dated to the late 3rd century and is believed to be part of what was the city wall.

So that's pretty old.

The guidebook says one day should be plenty but I wasn't done yet so we headed back out to the beaches for another day, starting day two in the British sector at Arromanches. Arromanches was the site of Port Winston, one of two huge artificial harbors constructed along the invasion beaches to facilitate the landing of the engines of war that would push the Germans back out of France. There was one at Omaha Beach in the American sector and Port Winston in the British sector. The port at Omaha was destroyed in a huge storm within a couple of weeks of its construction. Port Winston survived that storm and served as the primary harbor for the landing of troops and materials until the liberation of Antwerp and its harbor in November of 1944. This was far beyond its planned life span. In fact, Port Winston hung on so well that vestiges of it can still be found along the beach and off shore at Arromanches.

These are pontoons which in 1944 could be floated and which were extended out towards the make shift breakwater, making a road for the landing of heavy equipment.

This is a section of the famous Mulberry bridges, floating bridges.  At Port Winston there were two of these bridges, useful for the landing of all but the very heaviest of vehicles (tanks).

We climbed first the streets and then eventually a stone and planking stairway to the top of the bluff overlooking the harbor.  There are memorials up there, as expected, one of which is to two French shore batteries who helped a French fleet defeat an English fleet off shore here in 1811.

The tide is coming in, where I stood to take those earlier photos is now under water but you can see the, oh I don't know, harbor furniture? and the vestiges of the outer breakwater fairly well.  Arromanches is yet another spot that is so pretty that it dulls your comprehension of what happened here.

It does not, and it should not, dull the commercial instincts of the local residents.

Here's today's bicycle content.  In the parking lot at the beach at Arromanches three forms of transporation coexist:  two bicycles loaded onto a rack on top of a car parked next to a half-track armored car.

By the way, it cost 1 euro per hour to park in that lot.  I am guessing that the half-track was not a paying guest.  This guess is fortified by the fact that that is a US half-track and the parking lot is in the British sector.  It HAS to be a prop.

Our next stop after Arromanches was at Longues-sur-mer, still  in the British sector.  According to the guidebook after the war about 150,000 tons (300 million pounds) of steel was removed from the beach sectors and melted down to be reused.  The guidebook  says they didn't come anywhere near to getting it all.  One place where they didn't get it all is the only surviving intact German battery, the four bunker complex at Longues-sur-mer.

There are four bunkers arranged in a semi-circle about 300 meters from the crest of the coastal ridge.  These guns could fire with great accuracy at targets up to 12 miles away.

On one of the bunkers it is possible to get up on top.  We got a photo which shows the relative distance from the coast of the place we are sleeping.  You can just make out the three spires of the Bayeux cathedral along the horizon behind  the FT.

To complete the picture, here is the forward observation post at the ridge line.  No guns here, just guys with binoculars checking out the accuracy of your fire.

We had a picnic lunch out there at the ridge line, I have some spectacular photos from out there but those interested will have to arrange more time to take a look at that.  Perhaps it will suffice at this time to say that it is an area of spectacular natural beauty, a high cliff overlooking a beautiful coastline.  Some of it you can already discern in the photos I am publishing here.  Some of it has to be seen to be believed.

Here's today's corn picture.

THEY GROW CORN IN FRANCE.

I don't know if the French have any interest in knee high by the 4th of July or possibly thigh high by Bastille Day but I do know that they are pretty lucky to grow any corn at all  in that soil.  Take a close look and it seems more like rocks with a little dirt, definitely way deficient when compared to Iowa black loam  corn soil.

We headed on to our last stop of the day, the Ranger Monument at Pointe du Hoc.

Pointe du Hoc was the most heavily fortified position along the D-Day beaches.  The Germans considered the position to be impregnable to ground assault as it sits at the top of steep ridges rising directly from the sea with no beach below.

The fortifications were for the purpose of withstanding what was expected to be heavy air bombardment.

The strongpoint had to be taken out because from this spot the Germans would have been able to direct fire at any and all shipping approaching both Omaha and Utah Beaches.  There was no possibility of the American assaults on either of those beaches being successful without the neutralization of Pointe du Hoc.

The allies launched a heavy aerial bombardment which when it came was heavier than the German's imagined could have been possible.  The land at the top of that point of land was turned into a moonscape of broken and shattered rock and soil.  There just isn't any way to adequately describe it.  Clearly photos fail.  This is the best I could do and these photos are weak, weak depictions of what it looks like up there.

No attempt has been made to reclaim the land.  It has been left as it was in June 1944.  The moonscape has revegetated but the craters remain.

A force of 225 American Rangers were assigned the mission of taking the Pointe.  They scaled the cliffs shortly after the completion of the nearly incomprehensibly heavy bombing runs.  The Rangers made their ascent with rope ladders and grappling hooks and eventually reached the top where they were successful in defeating the no doubt disoriented and disheartened survivors of the original German force.  The Ranger memorial is a rough hewn granite dagger thrust down into the heart of the German bunker at the point of the ridgeline.

I really tried to get some photos that show what it looks like up there.  Here is what was a heavy reinforced concrete bunker which suffered a near direct hit.  The concrete reinforcing rods are visible as is the depression next to the bunker which is where the bomb would have actually impacted.

And stepping back about 20 yards here is the same bunker with a view of what remains of the concrete structure immediately next to it, a structure which clearly suffered multiple direct hits.

It was a spectacularly beautiful Sunday afternoon on the coast of Normandy, not a cloud in the sky, temperatures in the low 20s.