Join us as we bikepack and ride some gravel tracks around St Malo in France for this years Tour de France 2025. Extream heat melting tarmac along with free TDF swag and tat. We cycle stage 8 in this one.
#gravel #gravelbike #cycling #cyclinglife #touring #tourdefrance
Day two, some some mean lag. So, we had a good night’s sleep at the uh Airbnb last night. Uh bit strange. The toilet was under the stairs. Bit Harry Potter-ish, but uh lovely host Sylvine. Uh sat outside until about 9:00. It was just so hot. Trish show. Um so this morning we’ve just left. It’s just gone half past 8 coming into St. Main Lrand. Get atmosphere of the start. It’s just decorated everywhere. So the roads are closed. It’s really quiet. So it’s going to be a great morning, I think. So let’s hope for some more swag. Jeem’s Jem’s new bike’s over there. She got a penny faring carbon penny far she said. Yeah. Right. Catch you in a bit. [Music] Come on, buddy. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] LCL. Yeah. We could That could have been [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Did you Heat. Heat. [Music] to be sure. Whack whack. Sure. Going to get deeper. [Music] [Music] So, we’re walking kind of back up the uh start line. because everywhere is just packed. Absolutely packed. There’s obviously a big party going on here tonight cuz over there they’re lining up big tables like picnic tables and everything else. So, I’ve got all the press press vehicles. So, no sign of the um the riders yet. [Music] [Music] I’m good at that today. Oh, there we go. [Music] [Applause] [Applause] It’s late. Church is not on time. [Music] Yeah, definitely 5 years late. [Music] French time. timing. It’s good enough. [Music] [Applause] Heat up here. Heat. [Applause] Heat. [Music] [Music] That’s it. That’s the end of uh stage today. Packing up the street parties. We’ll carry on now. Dean is about 30 km that way. Uh we’ll try and make our way through the town. busy down by the um park fair. Catch you in a bit. So that’s it. We’ve just left uh some mean lag grand tour done home of Lawrence Bobbit done. I’ll put some info about him, but he was a famous he he won the tour three times I think in the 40s. Uh but that was his hometown back there. There is a museum, but it was uh closed today obviously and we couldn’t stay later cuz we got to get to Dino. First thing to uh notice though is soon as you’re not on a tour road, it gets bumpy. Pumpoli, it’s not a word. It has more pots and holes than uh the actual tour route. Anyway, put Adventure Gems back there somewhere. She had a bit of a bad day because of the heat yesterday, but today because we uh sat in the shade watching the tour under a tree, we bagged a spot about 8:30 to get to see the caravan. Uh didn’t do so well on the old swag side today. Only managed to bag two cans which of Orangeina. Yeah, two cans of orange cuz they don’t throw those. So people with long arms and tall bodies, alam me could reach out and they pass them into your hand. So but that was it. No more swag this year. See what they do with the tour next year. [Music] Very very hot. But uh lovely at the same time. Uh-oh. Straight on. [Music] Straight on. Corn’s looking good. Or barley or wheat or something or nothing. [Music] So I think this is called Svenyak. [Music] So, let’s recap on day two. Um, just checking the stats here. So, we stayed just outside Sam Lrand last night. Uh, and then cycled probably about 4k into the center of Sam Grand this morning to get in there about half past 9, 10:00 before all of the road closures were in place. Um, and it was great. It was a fantastic place. Um, not not too busy at first thing, but the caravan was due at about 11:15ish, 11:20ish, so from about half 10, it was getting getting crazy and it was obviously crazy hot as well. Luckily, we’d um kind of anchored the the bikes to a tree uh which kind of blocked our bit of the barricade so we could get a good view of uh the action. So, that did help. And obviously under the tree it was uh much much needed kind of shade. So, that was a double bonus that we didn’t think about at the time. We’re just trying to find somewhere to kind of store the bikes. So, yeah. Yeah. So then we went off um walked around uh the town of Samine uh and you could walk down through and then you could get to the area where all of the the activities happening. So where the the media base was um and they were interviewing you know celebrities you know people from high up in the towns and stuff like that. But also it was the paddock was there where the the the buses um were parked up. We didn’t get to see anybody unfortunately. Uh I think it was just far too hot. So they were all in their buses cooling down until the start at about 1:15. So, um yeah, so we we stayed out uh and luckily again that there was a little supermare just behind us so we could go and get water and juice and uh they’d run out of baguettes so we had to buy some some weird French white bread. Um which uh I mean everything everything went um I bought some gummy bears and they just melted into a single blob of of gummy bear during the day. Uh the bread I think just turned to toast. Water in the water bottles was literally becoming hot. Not warm, hot uh within an hour of you putting it in your water bottles. It was like, you know, um tea, you know, cold, not cold, warm to hot tea. Um that’s the kind of temperature that the bottles were getting to. And today was just about cycling into a headwind um all the way back because we were kind of heading due north and the um the wind picked up in the afternoon. So it just became like cycling in a into you know a haird dryer a haird dryer in front of you all all afternoon which was fine no problem. I mean it was only uh as I said you know it was um about 40 miles so 50 odd odd kilometers um and the the the route the Kimoot picked was slightly wrong. Uh so when we got to what was our destination we were still probably half an hour away. So we put that back into Google cuz we were staying in this this Airbnb. It’s just a lovely little flat. Nobody here. brand new kind of estate and um it kind of took us a weird way. It was a bit grally but it we ended up going through like a gypsy caravan uh encampment. There must have been like a hundred caravans there. So luckily the route wasn’t all the way through and we had to kind of detour around the edge of it. But then you come into um Don Airfield and you can just cycle through Don Airfield. Uh it’s just like you know small little Cessna planes and stuff like that. It’s not like Gatwick or you know even Bristol or Nuki. It’s not like that. So but strange that you’re cycling up through uh hangers and there’s just pl little baby planes everywhere. So finally we got to the outskirts of Don uh at about uh about half 54 to 6 and then we could have a have a lovely shower. So had that shower and then walked walked into Dino through it’s lovely historic town um you know really old old buildings uh and just had some uh bret on cider some pizza and uh then walked back and we’re now back ready to kind of cycle the last 30k tomorrow from here to Samalo before we sail at about 10:15. So that’s our plan for tomorrow. So we’ll say uh bonui good night and uh catch you in the morning. Well, day three, start of day three and it’s glorious, but it is just coming up to 7:00 in the morning now and it is chilly. Well, I say chilly. It is really, really comfortable to ride. Uh, glorious from yesterday’s heat. The only thing is is the only thing it was missing up my main glasses, so I couldn’t see the garment, so I’ve had to swap to my dailies. But, uh, brilliant. So, we’re heading now out of Danon. This is Don Park. bits of the thing may scene yesterday, but then we’re heading back to Sallallow to board the ferry at about 9:30. So catch up at the port probably. So, we’re just uh outside Denon now, probably couple of miles, 4K or so. And Kimoot keeps finding us kind of old railway line that have been turned into fellow paths. Beautifully flat, beautiful gravel, which is not what I was expecting today. Early morning hot air balloon over Dino. So, I don’t know when they abandoned these uh railway stations, but uh they’re everywhere around here. There must be some sort of regional railway lines, but they’re all built the same. All of these little um station houses, I assume. There’s some original train track there. But we’ve been, you know, 5k that way. There’s a fair way that way by the count. Anyway, onward that way. I’m filming you on the road to nowhere. Yeah. [Music] It’s funny, but uh Adventure Gem’s surname previously before she married me was Richard’s. So, he’s found the Richard A’s French place. [Applause] Yeah, this is it. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. [Applause] Heat. animals. All right. That’s 10. Hey, where? Oh, yeah. Yeah, we’re here. on the ferry getting up to 8 [Music] and we can have a shower. Lovely. Yeah. Oh, I know where I’m coming the other way now. Yeah, is the bar. Get a beer later. So, this is in our cabin at the end of uh the ride to Samalo. And look at this lovely view we have from our cabin window. Oh no, it’s just a light.
1 Comment
That was good, I liked the fruit cars! Reminiscent of brands hatch with all the back ups etc. And what great weather you had x