50...Cycling in Calvados. Day 3, Honfleur to Le Havre

Honfleur

Honfleur is such a georgeous place that we decided to have most of a day here with just a short cycle ride to Le Havre later on. Saturday they have a market here so we were able to stock up on food for the next couple of days when we knew a lot of the shops would be shut (15th Aug is a big bank hol in France and most things are shut on mondays anyway). Mark and Hamish being boat people looked around the Maritime museum and H and I checked out more galleries...I wanted to see which ones were selling ceramics. Honfleur is one of three places which have the most galleries in France and there was a lot of contemporary work around at reassuringly high prices. I found one small shop which was ceramics only but it was the owners work and she told me the french didn't really understand ceramics yet...gosh. I must say most of the sculptural work was bronze, fibre glass or papier mache but there were one or two with ceramic sculpture that I may approach. I usually sell my work in Britain, it is just easier on all sorts of levels, but Honfleur is temptingly close to where I live.

Childrens wooden tiles

We had lunch in a park before setting off for Le Havre, and I discovered these sets of tiles made by local school children. There were 4 sets arranged in colours, these being the green ones. I thought they looked lovely.

Pont de Normandie from Honfleur

From the park we could see across to the Pont de Normandie which we were going to be crossing, and as the weather was closing in we decided to set off.

Going over

It is not a cyclists dream to go over a bridge like this, but we particulaly wanted to see it up close and get a feel of how big it is. It is a beautifully elegant structure, and would have lovely views on a clear day. Luckily the French are great with cyclists, and there is a cycling lane at the side of this and we actually got over quicker that a lot of the cars....and it was free for us (this is a toll road)

After the bridge there is a route for cyclists all the way into Le Havre which takes you across a nature reserve and docks. This was a really interesting route, nothing here is human size. It is difficult to show the scale here, but this ship was immense and was slowly being loaded with huge crates.

Luckily this boat had been cut in two so Hamish won't be able to tow it back to Shoreham!

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