Days 31 & 32... I made it to France!

Hi everyone,

It's been a while since a normal post, but I am safely now across the Channel & back on dry land! I'm also a further 20km inland than I thought as I missed writing in a day in my records! I wanted to drop in a thank you for the response to my last blog - it's been lovely to receive messages saying how interesting people found it. I hope it's increased awareness a bit more about what's involved with Crohn's & Colitis! :)

Anyway, my ferry took me to Dieppe and I hopped off and into France. Now I need to remember that they drive on the other side of the road!!

First sights of France!

I headed through Dieppe, along a road called D1. It's going to take a while to get used to different road names and place names. Shortly outside of Dieppe, I came across plains of water - it was beautiful! There was a centre that ran water-sports and ooh, I was tempted but I thought I'd better not throw myself in at the deep end with activities too soon!

It was SO PRETTY!

It was here that I stumbled across my first French cycle path! It ran between the busy D1 road and the river, and it took me straight to my next stop-over - a small town called Saint-Vaast-d'Équiqueville. I really had to start remembering my French when it came for something to eat! I found a bar - Le Relais de l'Avenue Verte. Me, in a bar - I KNOW. I got too distracted by the photo of a huge hot chocolate with marshmallows on their website. It drew me in. Ha!

I continued along the cycle path for basically of yesterday - it's called Avenue Verte! It was a nice and easy ride. It began to dawn on me just how long this cycle path seemed to be, so I thought I'd do some research! It turns out the Avenue Verte was an Anglo-French initiative to develop a largely traffic free route between Paris and London, ahead of the 2012 Olympic Games! I am very much appreciating it (although really not from a blog writing perspective)! As I was heading through Neufchâtel-en-Bray, I saw McDonalds and I could not resist. Not long after this, I stopped for the night.

A glimpse of the cycle path!

Right, today! The cycle path continued all the way to just shy of Serqueux, which is where I was back on the roads!

It finally came to an end!

It took me through Forges-Les-Eaux following the D915, which continued for the rest of my journey today. It was very much country roads with beautiful views of fields as far as the eye could see. I stopped in a little place called Saumont-la-Poterie and it did feel like the middle of nowhere!

This now takes me 668km into my journey, with only 112km left to go! I can't believe how quickly the time has gone. Onward bound, I'll be in Paris before I know it!

Stay home & stay safe,

Katherine
xxx