ACE (Atalantic Coast Expedition)

Hugh Clothes

Chain repair link

and for this trip we had to take the following as we were require dto pack our bikes for the coach trip from Santander to Irun.

Bike Bag (we bought 2 new mattress bags - but the CTC bike bag would have done as well)

Parcel tape 

Pedal removing tool

Body glide

Zeros (Electrolyte sports drink tablets - 3 per person per day)

It looks quite a lot, but it all packs up nicely in Eagle Creek Pack-Lite bags and fits easily into my two 20L Ortleib bags, and comes in at around 12kg.  Its certainly not a minimal set-up, but it does mean we have all we need to keep the bikes on the road, the technology working and to be presentable at hotel restaurants in the evenings!

Here's our bikes in the van

And here we are getting on the ferry.

We had an excellent meal in the restaurant this evening.

Su and other cyclists leaving ferry at Santander.

The next bit of the journey is by coach along the hilly north coast of Spain. We have booked on to the 1700, and have been told we need to pack our bikes. Checked our luggage into Left Luggage and time for a Pinchos lunch and a walk round town.

Here we are about to board our coach

And putting our bikes together at the other end!

We stayed the night in an AirBnB where Sandra, who spoke no English looked after us well using a voice driven translator program on her phone.  Three course meal, a bottle and a half of wine, two bottles of mineral water and coffees - €25.  

Rather bad picture of Su riding across the border into France.

The route today took us through St Jean du Luz, Biarritz ( for lunch), Bayonne, then into Cap Breton and onto Hosegor, where we are staying in the Relais du Lac hotel tonight - on the edge of the eponymous lac. 

It was thundery at lunchtime today and we got a bit wet - but it's still very warm.

Day 1 track

77.05 km

Average speed 16.86 km/ hr

539 m assent
 GPX of actual route taken

The route from Irun to Biarritz was up and down quite a bit - down to sea level, up onto cliffs. Often the road was quite busy and there was no cycle path. Biarritz itself has all the signs of a city council that doesn't give a toss about cyclists. You could not have taken an inexperienced cyclist on this. Through Bayonne the route quickly became excellent dedicated cycle path, and after Bayonne the now level dedicated path went off on its own through the forest. In Capbretton and Hossegor there are proper two way cycle paths parallel to all main roads - could be Holland! The only issue here was the main shopping area where there was not enough pavement for the pedestrians so they all spilled over the cycle path.

Nearly all day today we were on dedicated cycle paths through the forest. Pleasing lunch at Bicarosse-Plage - this salad as started followed by salmon and Panna cotta. Pleasing trancy music in background.

On through the woods all day -this was our first day it did not rain all day and it was in the low 30's. Lovely smell of hot pines, and they provide much appreciated dappled shade.

We were in the Yatt Hotel on the main beachside

- and our room had an enormous bath with which we were pleased after a hot day!

Supper tonight in an upmarket white table cloth restaurant on the beach

I had the shellfish platter

And I have rarely seen Su so excited as she was by her starter of coddled egg in truffled cream and smoked salmon.

We enjoyed Arcachon Plage - although we went quite early to bed the party went in all night in that happy way that the French (and UK festival goers) seem to do so much better than UK towns.

Not many photos of today. Lunch in Montalivet, and when we were 8km out Su remembered that she had left her bag in the resto - so back to collect it.  Added a few km to what was supposed to be quite a short day.

In Soulac we stayed at L'Ėcume du Jour, a pretty little sea side themed hotel, with a worthy Restaurant - La Table Corto. We ate well - although I was cautious - still recovering from my bug yesterday.  Madame, on receiving us in to the resto, did not recognise us us the two cyclists she had given a room two hours earlier and demanded our reservation!

The ferry from le Verdun in the extreme North of the Medoc to Royan in the Vendėe is rather like a 1980's IOW ferry.  We followed the train track from Soulac and thought we would be on a 1025, and arrived at 1000 - just caught the 1005 ferry - clearly wrong timetable!
The train!
After this the paths were far less good - partly right at side of main road, partly gravel track and partly seriously potholed roads.  We cut the corner at the end - but this gave us the added delight of discovering our first flying bridge!  I am quite familiar with floating bridges, but this bridge is suspended from above and the platform flies across the river! Fantastic way to enter Rochfort!

Today's Route was 89km at an average speed of 18.2 kph and we ascended 276m
GPX of Actual Route

Easy day today. Meteo  fair morning but rain in afternoon. Most of today's ride was along the coast - much of which was well occupied beaches and coves. We made it to La Rochelle for a Latish lunch when we first arrived at the enormous Port de Plaisance - then it started raining as promised and we scooted on into the old town where our hotel was the Jean d'Acre. Fine hotel - much better than expected for the price and completely at the centre of things!

We had a bit of time for some tourism and urgent needs shopping - and then a cocktail at a South American styled Rhum bar, before eating at a recommended resto.

Distance today 44.2km

Average speed 17.92kph

Ascended 556m
GPX of Actual Route

To start with the route followed a canal inland for some distance from the coast. 

La Rochelle is where we pick up the new route "the Francette" of V43 which goes from La Rochelle to the ferry at Caen.  But for this first bit of the route the V43 followed the route of EV1.  It was quite sad to leave the EV1 ("Velodycée") after following it seven and a bit days of riding. At the end I'll add a blog on these French long distance routes. They are fantastic :-)

And the parting of the ways - from now on its the V43 - which only officially opened this summer. Interestingly I cached all my open cycle maps in April, and it turns out that Su's which were cached much more recently are quite different.

Later parts of today's route involved quite a lot of unmade surface, but it was surprisingly good. Most of the second part of the route was alongside rivers and was picturesque - but there was no pubs or cafés or anything, We ended up leaving the route to go to a small town (Maillé) - and even that had no eating place- but there was a shop/café, and Madame allowed us to buy some food and some beer and eat on her pavement. Actually quite surreal!

The late afternoon ride along the river into Niort was pleasing, although Su a little saddle sore. Then up the hill and out of the city to LaGrange spa hotel, where we are staying for a rest day.

The LaGrange was odd. It has a sauna (2 seater?) and a jacuzzi both in the middle of the exercise room. It had a lovely pool and a pretty garden and was itself a fine conversion of an old manor into a modern hotel. But it didn't have a resto - out in the sticks in the middle of nowhere! And it didn't seem to have any staff.  It took us ages to find anyone and we had believed we were getting a room with access to the garden, but the room the offered us was pokey. The young woman however sorted us - changing our room so we had a garden room, finding a safe place for our bikes, and tussling up a very acceptable tray of food which we ate at a table poolside, washed down with plenty of cocktails and wine.

The bath was big though!

Distance 94km

Average speed 17.52kph

Ascent 290m
GPX of Actual Route

Our room

Thursday was a rest day, and luckily the forecast was quite good. We got plenty of sun, book reading, and discovered that the somewhat seedy looking Bar des Jeux that we had seen on the main road on the way in actually had a quite acceptable resto, where we walked for lunch and supper.