A Recollection of the First Day of a Long Trip.

Truth be told it wasn't really the first day of the trip at all. The day prior we had cycled a rapid 60km from the ferry terminal at Caen to our first planned campsite at Blangy-le-Chateau, a remarkable place with a large chateau situated in the centre of the site. We arrived late and the reception was closed, we eventually found a member of staff and were told to pay in the morning. Tents were pitched, cous-cous was cooked and I was out like a light

Le Brevedent.

I was awoken at 6am by Jamie in what was to be the first in a long sequence of early wake up calls that left me with a desire to kill him if only I could be bothered to get out of my sleeping bag. I eventually clambered out of the tent and skulked off for a shower which was cold, not the best start to the day. We cooked a breakfast of eggs, packed all of our belongings and slid €20 and an apology note under the door of the still closed reception hoping that it would be enough. 

The first thing I did upon leaving the campsite was to get on the left (wrong) side of the road, it takes some getting used to at first. Anyway this first day really wasn't very eventful, it was more the distance covered in relation to our lack of fitness that caused the issue. For some reason I had decided to wear a pair of jean shorts and a vest, I must have looked like an idiot. It was beautiful cycling weather, not too hot and the Normandy countryside is reasonably flat. We were surrounded by fields of crops the majority of the day, life was just dandy. We stopped for lunch in the town of Gisors, made famous by the Chateau de Gisors a large castle positioned on top of a hill.

It was outside the Carrefour in Gisors that we met one of the characters of the trip, we still speak of him now in fact. He was some sort of meth-head rave enthusiast who seemed to have boarded the wrong train from Paris and ended up out in the sticks. He was smoking something that didn't smell much like tobacco and he engaged us in a 'conversation' regarding dance music, we appeased him with half a left over camembert and made our escape. It was soon after that Jamie made a fool of himself by falling off twice in quick succesion due to his inexperience with clipless pedals and cycling shoes, It wasn't to be the last time either.

According to our plans this day was supposed to be no longer than 180km which sounded reasonable to us, however by the time we arrived in Meru the situation was looking dire as it was clear to us that it was going to be a lot longer than the original estimate. I cannot think of one good thing to say about Meru, it really is a toilet. I was getting a little shaky so we visited a McDonalds for the first and only time of the trip. One Big Mac later and we were back on the road, rather unsure of where we would spend the night.

The sun was starting to dwindle and I was confident we would have to rough it in a field somewhere. It was at this point that we sighted some kind of saint, an elderly Frenchman getting into an ancient campervan. We managed to explain to him in our broken French that we were looking for a campsite and to our joy he told us that there was one only a few kilometers down the road. We made it to Campix campsite at St Leu d'Esserent (near Chantilly) as it was starting to get dark, we gladly paid the receptionist and set up camp. I ate beans, it turns out the French haven't grasped the idea of baked beans as they had nothing on Heinz. Jamie drank a bottle of wine to improve his sleep, I didn't need any. We had cycled 226km which equates to just over 140 miles and I know I felt like I had in the morning.

Campix.