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Tuesday 9th June 2015 Boulogne to Abbeville It started a bit cloudy today and a cool wind meant I had on three layers at one point but things cleared up and by afternoon a cycle shirt was fine enough. It was very easy terrain with smooth roads and the gentle gradients made for fairly effortless riding, aided all the more by a favourable wind pushing us along. About an hour after leaving Boulogne I had an unexpected phone call - it was from Jaswant Golan, my old work colleague and fellow walker, from whom I'd not heard for about three years. He wanted to know if I could take someone's place on a Ben Nevis trip, all expenses paid (according to him). I couldn't, of course, as I was going to be in France for another couple of weeks yet but we had a brief chat and then said our goodbyes… probably for another three years.
Carrying on Andrew and I then passed a war cemetery at Etaples and we stopped to look around and pay our respects - there are over 11000 people buried there in neat, well-tended rows of identical gravestones. This is the area around the River Somme and the poppies were in bloom along the edge of the fields evoking poignant feelings of loss and tragedy. An hour later we stopped at Rang du Fliers and bought something to eat at a Boulangerie, eating it whilst sitting on a wall in the sunshine then following it with a coffee in a nearby café.
After pressing on I began to outdistance Andrew and it was near Quend when I looked round and found he was no longer there. I waited for a full ten minutes but he still didn't turn up so I rode back 1½ miles - and there was still no sign of him. I then found a text message on my phone saying he'd gone to Quend and I had just replied to this when the young scamp suddenly turned up again out of nowhere. A bit exasperating and probably an additional three miles on my day's tally but all was well in the end. A bit further on I then missed the route completely by following Abbeville road-signs, signs probably more suited to those in cars, and we ended up on a very busy road which was made even more dangerous by the brisk, gusting wind. The wind made it difficult to ride straight and true without doing the odd correcting wobble and Andrew didn't like this at all. I wasn't very keen on it myself. He suggested that we should get off the road as soon as possible and find an alternative route. Happily we managed to do this and it was a real relief to be back on quiet country back-roads.
Further on though we once again ended up on a busy stretch, this time with only about eight miles to go to Abbeville. Fortunately a man and woman on bikes were cycling just in front of us and when they turned off we followed them and came to the River Somme beside which was an excellent cycle path. We got on this and had a very pleasant ride along it, taking us all the way into Abbeville town centre.
In Abbeville we added another mile or so to the day's total whilst trying to find a hotel but got so far out of town that we gave up, went back and found a seedy 'Relais Vauban' one quite near to the centre. Cheap but sufficient.
In the evening we went out looking for food and ended up in 'Chez Mel', a creperie where I ordered a 'Galette Vegetarienne' - a pancake with vegetables in it. Not overly large but quite nice and a bit different so fair enough. We complimented it with a 50 cl pitcher of vin rosé and finished off with a 'La Choco-co', which turned out to be ice-cream, chocolate sauce, banana, coconut, grilled almonds and a pancake base. So rather a lot of pancake all told but it all went down ok. Very nice. We returned to the vicinity of the hotel and stopped at a bar where we sampled a glass or two of Leffe, a blonde beer. That too was very nice. Bonne nuit. Bike computer: 62.11 miles GPS: 62.3 miles 10.7 mph avg 30.2 mph max 2037 ft ascent | |||||||
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