Day 2, Normandy 313KM

After just a handful of hours sleep in some useless reclining chair, I rode off the ferry in the morning mist with some other cyclists who I met on the ferry. We had breakfast and coffee in Caen, then I set off on the way to, well, Italy. I hadn't planned on staying anywhere in particular that evening, just going on the assumption that any place larger than a small village in France normally has a campsite.

Breakfast in Caen, 213km



I reached a place called Gace that evening- a strange, quiet village, hidden in the Normandy hills, where I could get nothing to eat. France closes down on Sundays, and the backwaters of rural Normandy are even more closed. I was saved by an english couple who kindly sorted me out with a can of lentils and sausages at the campsite, that being the only meal I had eaten since leaving Cirencester the day before (pringles on the ferry don't count)