Day 5

Sablé sur Sarthe – Vibraye

80 miles 2953 ft climbed

We had a couple of unusual incidents today. The first was after lunch when Nick said to me “I see your hitchhiker has finally left , he’s been on your back for the last 5 miles”. Apparently a large bumble bee had sat just behind my shoulder for sometime without me noticing. Above, just a bit later this grasshopper joined Nick on his bike but didn’t hang around for that long.

The other Nickism first, was chasing clouds. Now you may ask how can cyclists chase clouds? As we had a following breeze we found on one stretch that we remained in cloud with a sunny patch constantly 200 metres ahead. Nick loves chasing so was determined to get into the sun. We had been running at around 20 mph and to get into the sun we had to increase our pace to 24 mph. Sadly just after we got back into the sun we entered a village so dropped back into the shadow meaning an acceleration to return to sun. A final uphill stretch again dropped us into shade before the downhill helped us return to sunshine! A good game toward the end of the day.

The day started bright but cooler as we got away as usual at 8 ish and entered the busy town of Sablé sur Sarthe crossing the river on our way to our first stop at Le Mans.

Thankfully the traffic calmed down as we got away from the town before getting to the very pretty village of Asnières sur Vègre where we were able to get over the ancient pack bridge and look into the waters below.

This morning was cooler and became overcast although any threat of rain did not arrive. We stayed on the road for most of the morning and kept switching back and forth over the TGV line so saw a few speeding by.

Making good time I popped into the Patisserie in Arnage before our coffee stop outside the Le Mans museum. The boys then went for a visit which included a McLaren exhibition as well as the Le Mans sports cars. The F1 McLaren is so big and ugly, no wonder they can’t overtake.

Nigel did not then take much persuading to join Nick and myself in having a cycle round a lap of the Le Mans circuit as near as we could. I have been to the 24 heures many times since my first visit in 1982 and was there only a week ago for the latest edition so it was a special ride for us all.

A lap of Le Mans is over 8 miles and includes the 3 mile Mulsanne straight As the race had only been a week ago they had yet to put up all the no go areas and on our bikes we were able to take one of the Mulsanne chicanes as well as the Indianapolis and Arnage corners properly. We took rather longer than the 3min 29 seconds the cars took last week but enjoyed the spin round.

Getting back to Broomey with Nigel still intact we then had lunch. There was just under 50 miles to go so one more stop would be fine.

We left the circuit and headed into Le Mans city centre. The roads were busy and tramways made navigation difficult so we decided to leave before a proper explore. Leaving the city we shortly hit the Abbaye Royale de l’epau which was closed but then had our only off road section of the day through its nearby forest. It was here we saw a black squirrel run across in front of us.

The final stop was a brief ice cream and water top up with only 10 miles to go as we had made good time chasing clouds during this leg.

After a reasonable hill we then had a lovely two mile downhill stretch into our overnight stop at Vibraye. This town was on the route of the very first Grand Prix de France in 1906. They even had to construct a wooden road around the town as they did not want cars going down the Main Street.

The campsite tonight was again a small municipal site run by the council, but still had a pool, crazy golf and access to sports facilities. When paying, Nigel was convinced they had undercharged us so questioned the bill. He was told no that’s correct. €13.88. ( that less than £12 or £3 a head) Unbelievable value.

Nigel was concerned the solar panels were not efficient and needed a clean so we gave him a leg up so he could get to work on the roof of Broomey!

All going well, a hotter day is promised again tomorrow.

Until then. Good night.

Breaking- Monica was declared the Shed winner of the evening!