49...Cycling in Calvados..Day 2, Cabourg-Pont L'Eveque-Honfleur

Camel by roadside

Up and off early from Cabourg on day 2. On the whole we decided not to do breakfasts at the hotels as they tend to be carb rich and not really the best start to a days cycling. Besides, it is good to look at a map and plan the morning tea stop, breakfast stop, coffee stop, lunch stop and maybe another tea stop before finally stopping for dinner.
Outside our hotel were a Camel, Horse and Llama having breakfast so Mark stopped to have a quick word. There are still loads of small circuses around France and all summer long you can see strange animals grazing the grasslands beside campsides and in seaside towns.

Lunch at Pont L'Eveque

To keep costs down and because it was nicer anyway, we made our own breakfasts and lunches. This is the easiest thing in the world in Normandy where there is always a market every day of the week in a town somewhere near you. We bought ready roasted chickens or tins of mackeral and made sauces for them from creme fraiche and lemons. The artisan bakeries always have Pain au Levain (sourdough) and add to that unpasterised butter with little grains of sea salt and it makes for a fab lunch. Apricots with some more creme fraiche kept our energy levels high.
Riding into Pont L'Eveque we found a great Quincaillerie (hardware shop) with all sorts of things that you have to have for the kitchen or fireplace. Luckily for my overdraught I could only fit one cake tin and a few cutters into the panniers, but the cake tins had to be seen to be believed. I may have to come back here! This is a really lovely town, and the cheese they make isn't bad either.
The church behind us had some unusual abstract stained glass windows:

and loads of gardens and the towns flower beds used wooden poles to make trellis's and supports,

this gave the town a really friendly feel and looked much nicer than the usual bought supports and arches.
By mid afternoon we were literally working our way across country towards Honfleur. Hamish who has an unerring sense of direction, found us a back way out of the town and up through a forest, which involved lifting bikes over gates and cycling along tracks used mainly by tree cutting machinery...quiet though.
The micro climate around this area is very special and as we came into Honfleur,

we saw this Banana tree with an honest to God Banana flower on it!
We found our hotel a little easier this time, and would thouroughly recommend it. It is called the Motel les Bluets, has a really friendly owner and a spa....what more could four saddle sore cyclists need. We sat for an hour in the Hamman before venturing out into the town.

The area we stayed in was just outside Honfleur on a curious sort of industrual estate, but with old factories like the one above. There were timber yards and little bungalows, one step up from mobile homes, with little gardens around them. The cycle into Honfleur was only five minutes, and again down the side of a river.........

and it really is the most spectacular town to come upon.
There are restaurants and art galleries everywhere, and amazingly we found one of the best restaurants any of us had ever eaten in with a menu at 19 euros! I hesitate to give away this secret as the place filled up soon after we had got a table, but I'll tell you anyway, it is L'Auberge du Vieux Clocher. We talked about the meal we had here for days after, and Creme Brulees will always be measured against the one we ate here.

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