Final Cycling Stats
Final Cycled Route
Travelogue
We got up earlier than we needed to and when the bakeries had opened, walked around the corner to one of the nearest ones. We had pain aux amandes and coffee for breakfast, sat at a table in the boulangerie. I also bought 4 chouquettes, small pastries perhaps described best as "sugar puffs". At 30 cents each it seemed wrong not to give them a try.
With a 7 - 8 hour ferry crossing ahead of us, we decided to buy provisions for the crossing as well and on the way out bought two salmon and leak quiches (our favourite), two more pain aux amandes, a cheese baguette, and ten...yes, ten chouquettes ! That'll do, we thought.
After the nightmare of getting the two bikes up the tightly winding staircase yesterday, I decided to take the front wheels off before carrying each bike, held almost vertically, back down the stairs. This worked well.
The ride to the port was only about 1 km and so we were there in no time and joined the queue of cars, vans, motorcycles and bicycles. Check-in and passport control was very slow overall but when it came to our turn, we sped through. Who knows what it is that makes things so slow for other travellers.
On board, we settled in for the tedium of the crossing, Kindles, music and french food at the ready.
And it was tedious. But the supplies we so thoughtfully bought in France helped :-)
We finally docked in Portsmouth at 18:20. Cyclists were last to be allowed out of the parking deck unfortunately but once off the ferry and through passport control, we cycled mostly on cycle paths from the ferry port to Portsmouth Harbour railway station.
We'd bought rail tickets in advance but yesterday been informed by email that our train was cancelled. In fact it looked as though all trains on that line had been cancelled so we had to replan. Initially we determined we could get home using a total of three or four trains depending on which of two options we decided to jump on. We spotted a train in the station that would get us close to home with two changes i.e. three trains in total, and so got ourselves and the bikes onboard.
We arrived in Guildford. Not the station we'd planned to change at. But from information displayed on the train and announced as we came into Guildford, we realised we had another option. One more train and we'd be an easy, 20 minute bike ride from home. We made a snap decision and got off this train, pushed the bikes to Platform 1 and boarded a train that would take us to Epsom.
We were looking forward to getting home now. It felt like it had been a long day already.
The train did its job and got us to Epsom. We had to explain to the staff member that we didn't have a ticket for this journey but had simply been trying to get home after the train we'd pre-booked was cancelled. He smiled and opened the gate to let us through without even looking at our original tickets. Hooray!
We dropped into the small supermarket by the station for essentials.... like crisps... switched on the lights on our bikes and with M2 leading, cycled the final 5 km home.
That's it! Another enjoyable trip on our bikes :-)
Photos
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