Portsmouth to St Malo to Normandy

Road trip started finally headed out of Alton to Portsmouth through beautiful English countryside, hedgerows, spring flowers and manicured fields.

Had just rained so had to be extra careful with new tyres. Felt so good to be underway. Straight to ferry terminal but no cabins left for Caen sailing that night. One available to St Malo so grabbed that booking for 8.30pm 10hr crossing then went off to find a map of where that might be going to land us.

Portsmouth is a surprise from the sea, fascinating and a bit scary seeing about 10 gigantic naval vessels in dock, aircraft carrier included. After being amongst boys and motorbikes for days this was all about the real big boys toys (photos on camera and still trying to move to mobile device...hmmm frustrating!)

From then on it has all been bonjour and 'THINK RIGHT'!
Set the GPS for the Normandy coast via Cancale (oysters) for breakfast, best laid plans went awry when gendarmes kept barring us from our route due to a two day cycle race all the way around the Normandy coast. felt like we were the motorcycle press following them but saw heaps of tiny villages and farms as we got diverted. GPS earned its keep big time! Cycling is huge here and very respected, seem to have priority no matter what your cycle is. its common to see the baguette across the handlebars of some ancient bike. eventually ventured on to the autoroute to get to Grandcamp-Maisy, about 300kms.

Radar zones on autoroutes well signposted and no-one speeds at all! must be huge fines. radar detectors illegal. it seems that is working well here to keep speeds down. 110kph but down to 90 off the autoroutes.

Enjoyed our history lesson through Normandy...it is strange for us to see another country so close across the sea and the war stories are sobering. we even had the sea fog rolling in but managed a photo of a floating pontoon which they built huge numbers of out of ship

junk in just 2weeks to drive the landing craft off the ships, 25,000 men landed..