On our last day of riding we covered nearly as many miles as the previous one (about 40), but the riding was much easier due to the mostly flat coastal profile and the blessed lack of headwind. Mont Saint-Michel accompanied us for much of the day, growing more distant until we finally lost him around the headland at Cancale. The Vélo Maritime wound on sandy tracks past farms and fields, through small woods, and along long stretches of coastal march and beach. We stopped for a snack at the pretty coastal town of Saint-Benoit-des-Ondes and watched a group of high-school students wrangle their rented chars-au-vent (wind carts) down a broad swath of low-tide beach. A little further on, I swerved us to a stop to taste the local Cancale oysters at one of the many beachside shacks run by fishermen.
We lost the coast when we mounted the Cancale peninsula headland, but the riding was still very pleasant, winding through golden wheatfields edged with poppies past craggy stands of cypress and rustic stone farmhouses. We swung back to the coast a few bays before Saint-Malo at Rocheneuf and enjoyed the sight of sailboats skimming across the waves in the distance as well as the wide bikelane that led us to our stay at Hôtel Le Beaufort at Sillon Beach. I had splurged on a beachside terrace room for our last night, and we toasted our successful tour with our last bottle of cider from M. le Girard on the terrace under the watchful eye of a young seagull we nicknamed Vern.
For the evening we strolled back down the digue (dike or bulwark boulevard) to the old city where we stopped first in the Cathedral Saint Vincent, which had been closed for a funeral the last time we had been in the Intra-Muros. Built starting in the 13th century and then bombed during WWII, it had just recently been restored with the addition of some fitting and tasteful modern artworks—including new windows and a bronze altar featuring Ezekiel’s four heavenly creatures. We shopped for some souvenirs before dining at Crêpes Lutins, a charming little boite with a wood-sprite-themed menu and delicious galettes. Then, we bid farewell to the old city for the final time and strolled back along the beach to our hotel in the long twilight.
In the morning we enjoyed a beautiful breakfast in the hotel’s beachfront tearoom and one last stroll out to the waves’ edge before packing up for our return trip. I had reorganized our trains to give us more time for our connection in Paris, but alas, we still missed our connection in Rennes due to a wickedly short layover and trouble finding the platform entrance; we were coming down the escalator to the platform as the conductor waved it clear, and after that there was no getting on the train even though it sat for nearly another minute…. We managed to catch the next train, which we had originally been booked on, which allowed us to empirically test whether we would have been able to make our original connection in Paris between Gare Montparnasse and Gare de L’Est. Definitive answer: Mais non. As we stood panting and sweating in Gare de L’Est, watching our train to Frankfurt disappear from the schedule board, it dawned on us that we were spending an unplanned night in Paris. Cheryl let her friend Katja—whom we were going to visit in Giessen on our way back to Berlin—know we’d be arriving in the morning. Then, we gritted our teeth and booked new, very expensive train tickets (holiday weekend, last minute) and a hotel near the station.
After we cooled down with a shower, we further drowned our sorrows in a stroll through the Marais in the glorious Parisian golden hour, where I showed Cheryl the sixteenth-century townhouses at Place des Vosges, one of which was Victor Hugo’s for a while. Who knew that our bike tour would turn into a Victor Hugo tour? (I know now about 100% more about the author and his life than I did before. And this is one of the lovely serendipities of independent bike touring: for instance, I had a previous tour spontaneously turn into a re-tracing of part of the San Diego de Compostela pilgrimage route, wending us past the distinctive medieval shell-carved pillars into abbeys, museums, and old taverns.) We also stopped by my favorite Parisian food market at Les Enfants Rouges and then for Chocolate at Bênoit. After some people-watching over Tunisian food, we strolled back to our hotel past all the lively cafés and bars lining the Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis, a section of Paris I hadn’t visited before and would like to return to sometime.
In the morning we caught our trains with no problem (thank God!) and spent a peaceful day and a half with Katja and her son Lukas, strolling in the woods near her place and taking a turn through the oldest botanical garden in Germany in the city center of Giessen, admiring its early arrangements of specimens by ecotone and the gothic-lettered ceramic labels for the plants. Then, on Sunday we caught our train back to Berlin for the end of our tour.
If I had to sum up the experience of this tour, how it enriched my life (because bike tours always do), I would say it reminded me in a concrete way that the key to happiness—not only in touring, but in life in general—lies substantially in the ability to stay open to the change that comes my way: not only because this change is the only thing I can really bet on in life but also because it brings with it the twin joys of serendipity and discovery, which in itself is my only true chance to learn anything about the world. As I tell my students (and obviously need to take better to heart myself): if we only ever learn what we expected to, we’re not really learning anything at all.
The Rookery 