48...Cycling in Calvados. Day 1, Caen to Cabourg

Hamish, Mark and Henry starting off

 We have just arrived back after a cycling tour of Calvados in Bas Normande. Normandy is a huge county compared to the counties in England, and it is divided into two, Haute Normande where I live and Bas Normande which is the other side of Le Havre. Calvados is a part of Bas Normande and is named after a Spanish ship which sunk off the coast here hundreds of years ago.
We have never really explored this part of Normandy and to really get an idea of a place you need to walk or cycle it and come upon unexpected places and people, the sort of thing you might whizz by and miss in a car. So, with a couple of hardy boat people we set out last week.
The prevailing wind here is a south westerly so we decided to catch a train to Caen and cycle with the wind at our back. It's really exciting setting out for somewhere on a train, the journey itself becomes part of the adventure and gets you away somewhere else quickly and, around here, with pretty, changing scenery through green, lush countryside (must be something to do with the rain).

One man, seven animals

When we arrived in Caen we seemed to head naturally towards the Chateau as it is the centre of the town and one can look out all across the surrounding lands from the turrets. The Musee des Beaux Arts is also here. The first thing we saw when we arrived was this amazing set of sculptures by a Chinese artist called Huang Yong Ping. They are half man, half beast and are representational of mythical animals from a book called Shanhai Jing, a book which is more than 2300 years old.

Cock with mans head

These animals are said to presage the coming of floods, wars, epidemics....all the usual fun things, and they are installed on 12 metre high posts.

Serpent man with 9 heads and 9 tails

I thought they were amazing, especially in the location of William the Conquerors castle, where they could be seen from below, above and on the same level.

Monkey with mans head

This one for some reason I found particulaly disturbing. At night they are all lit up and I would have loved to have seen that.....however we were off and cycling out of Caen towards Cabourg.
 As we left the town we came across some arresting graffiti over the walls of some derelict houses.

The houses didn't look all that old and it wasn't obvious why they were being pulled down but around the other side we found an explanation of the graffiti:

It turned out to be a fortuative thing that we had stopped because just there was a (badly) marked cycle path to Ouistreham which was the way that we wanted to go, and it went alongside a canal...brillliant!

Mark and Hamish in canal just north of Pegasus bridge

Of course it wasn't long before the lads had jumped in...I left them to it. The area all around here is full of the history of the 2nd WW, and Mark who had had a bit of a pash for this subject when he was but a boy was able to fill us in on the details as we went. The Pegasus bridge was an important strategic point captured at the beginning of the invasion of Normandy, and the name of it was changed from the Benouville bridge to Pegasus after the emblem worn on the shoulders of the British airbourne forces.
We crossed the bridge and cycled on into Cabourg, circuling it 3 times before we could find our hotel (realising that if you ask too many people for directions, you get too many conflicting answers)...and then we were able to have our first meal out and the best Calvados ever which sent me at least to bed with a spinning head.
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