One More Croissant for the Road

Once on the open sea, having realised Matt knows an awful lot about the Royal Navy and its various aircraft carriers for a man who allegedly works in another department entirely (definite spy), the cider and the excitement soon catch up with me, and I spend much of the rest of the voyage passed out in a reclining chair, waking up only once when my companion brings a microwaved boeuf bourguignon back from the café, and then, apparently only seconds later, finding myself staring at the foggy harbour walls of Cherbourg in puzzled stupefaction.

‘Why does it say port militaire in English?’ I ask Matt, discreetly wiping the dribble from my cheek.

‘I think you may need a coffee,’ comes the polite reply.

If cycling onto a ferry is a joy, disembarking is the reverse: there’s nothing like a boatful of Brits eager to get to their chateaux in the Dordogne to put the wind up you when you’re not quite sure which side of the road to choose. Special as we may have felt among the cars in Portsmouth, turns out we aren’t the only cyclists to have made the crossing, just the tardiest, and as we wait in line for passport control we discreetly size each other up. Only one woman has more luggage than me, and, sensing the chance for some friendly one-upmanship, I try to get close enough to ask her what she’s up to, but on seeing her American papers, the gendarme whisks her to one side to fill in various forms and we stream past, casually flapping our maroon passports. ‘Wonder what it’ll be like next summer,’ I hear a man behind me say.

The rumbles of continental geopolitics come a distant second to those of our stomachs, however; having not eaten more than a few peanuts since that avo toast back in King’s Cross, I’m ravenously hungry – which is, of course, the very best way to arrive in France. After only a few angry honks, we lose the stream of ferry traffic to the autoroute and find ourselves in a prosperous-looking little port, the quayside thronged with people strolling in the evening sunshine, boats bobbing in the breeze. I check Eddy into the luxury of the hotel’s laundry room, where I suspect he’s gearing up to leak chain grease onto the stacks of clean sheets, hang up my Lycra ready for tomorrow (spoiler: this is the last time it will be thus honoured until my mum gets hold of it in the Alps), and go downstairs to find Matt already halfway through a bottle of La Cotentine Blanche, named after the Norman peninsula we’ll be tackling over the next few days.

First beer polished off at appropriately British speed, we repair next door to the Café de Paris, recommended as ‘a true seafood brasserie – invigorating!’ by the Michelin Guide. The dining room is full to bursting with tables of merry French eating seafood.

‘Well, this looks good!’ said Matt cheerfully as we’re led to the back of the dining room … and then up some curved stairs to an empty room decorated in the height of 1980s ferry chic, all pale pine and frosted lights and napkin fans on the tables.

‘Do you think this is where they put the British people?’ he whispers, his voice echoing around the space.

We laugh and order kirs (because one celebratory drink is never enough), and are halfway down them when another party is ushered in, men and women alike clad in faded chino shorts, pressed polo shirts and expensive waterproof sailing jackets. Before they even begin to speak, Matt winks. We are indeed in the Anglo-Saxon ghetto.

The food, happily, is pure French, and proves a distraction from their disappointingly dull boat-related conversation. Star of the show is a magnificent platter of fruits de mer bedecked with fat oysters and tiny crunchy little prawns barely bigger than Morecambe Bay shrimps, and just small enough to pop in whole in all their whiskery glory. Below sit bigger prawns, firm and salty-sweet, the best winkles I’ve ever had (too much information?) and a selection of curiously round clams I later discover are known as dog cockles in English, and more poetically in French as almonds of the sea. On the side, half a baguette and a bowl of piquant yellow mayonnaise.

The punchy Calvados sorbet that follows, melting into granular fruity sweetness on the tongue, is pure delight – the first in a long line of shots of local firewater masquerading as desserts that make me wonder why we don’t make more of the digestif tradition in the UK. I, for one, would certainly order a sloe gin slushy if I saw it on the menu.

Strong liquor it may be, but excited to be off at last, I spring eagerly from bed the next morning as the chilly light of morning brightens the eaves (happily ignorant of the fact that this will be the last such springing for several weeks) and pull at the curtains to reveal … a misty grey world of damp slate rooftops. Oh well, I think cheerfully, yanking on the Lycra, at least this will give me the chance to make a pretentious joke about the Parapluies de Cherbourg when I see Matt. Every cloud and all that.

Clearly, it’s important to start as I mean to go on, so, joke dispensed to only moderate acclaim, the second item on the day’s itinerary is to find a croissant. After politely rejecting the hotel breakfast, I don’t feel brave enough to solicit a recommendation from Madame, so we wander the backstreets in search of something, anything open. Cherbourg looks rather more down-at-heel than in the honeymoon glow of last night, though among the boarded-up businesses we do stumble upon a rather spectacular basilica: as one TripAdvisor review notes, ‘inside is calm and smells of history – so does the entrance that reeks of urine’.

Following an old lady with a large wicker shopping bag, we finally hit what passes for a jackpot in my world: a Saturday market full of spider crabs imprisoned in lobster pots, trays of cockles and mussels, wheels of cheese and a big terracotta dish of something with a burnt orange, wrinkly skin that I bookmark for further investigation once we’ve fulfilled a more immediate need.

Having located a boulangerie with an impressive display of patisserie, which often augurs well for the general standard of baking, I secure the first croissant of the trip, along with a douillons aux poires – unseasonal in May, perhaps, but we are in Normandy, apple and pear country, famous for its cider-based sauces, often gilded with lashings of cream, and fruity patisserie. It’s also the home of the aforementioned apple brandy, christened for the region of the same name, which is so punchy the local apple crop was apparently requisitioned during the Great War to make explosives for armaments. (As I said, it’s good stuff.)

Once money has changed hands, I can finally draw breath and explain the art of the petit déjeuner to a slightly twitchy Matt. I will also share this wisdom – accrued through much trial and error, disappointment and pastry-based joy – with you, gentle reader, in case you find it helpful.

PAUSE-CAFÉ – Breakfast in France: A Beginner’s Guide

In general, the best breakfasts in France are bread based – yes, you might well enjoy a bowl of sun-warmed figs and sheep yoghurt at your villa in Provence, but just so you know, most people around you would regard this as an eccentric way to start the day. God gave us the boulangerie for a reason, and that reason is breakfast. (The sensible French householder also keeps a stock of pain grillé, or toast crackers, which can be purchased in the biscuit aisle of supermarkets, to guard against the terrible eventuality of ever running out of bread.)

Baguette with butter and jam is a lovely thing, but on the move, it’s handier to go for something with the butter already baked in. I never deviate from the plain croissant, the apotheosis of the baker’s art, but you could also go with the child-friendly pain au chocolat, the sugary almond croissant (which, according to my friend Caroline, who worked for a spell in a Parisian bakery, is yesterday’s leftovers drenched in syrup and rebaked) or any number of regional specialities. Indeed, the benefit of cycling long distances is you can usually justify several items: I even have a Paris–Brest for breakfast one day, though I’m not sure I’d recommend it unless you want to feel slightly queasy for the first few kilometres.

If you’re in a hurry, or simply wish to take your bounty for a scenic picnic, then you may get lucky and find the boulangerie has a coffee machine as well. The coffee is usually mediocre (see here, Pause-Café – Coffee Break), but certainly no worse than the average British stuff, and this does cut out the next step, which is trying to find somewhere to provide the liquid element of proceedings. Note that in my experience, boulangeries in the south and east seem more clued into the coffee wheeze – I didn’t find many in Normandy or Brittany – and not all have milk.

If you want to sit down and enjoy your breakfast like a civilised person, then head straight to the nearest bar, which isn’t just a place to booze – though you are likely to see a surprising number of respectable-looking people sipping beers or glasses of pastis first thing – but a place to drink coffee, read the paper and catch up with friends. Kind of like a pub, if the British were made differently. (Because of this you won’t see many dedicated coffee shops in France, or at least I didn’t, though there’s the odd Starbucks in Paris.)

As long as they don’t serve breakfast themselves, it’s perfectly acceptable to sit down, order a coffee, and bring out the stuff you bought round the corner to enjoy with it: no need for snatching furtive bites under the table while the waiter’s back is turned, though you might want to take the empty bags with you, especially if you hope to repeat the experience tomorrow.

A suitable café is located, overlooking the market, and business concluded fairly satisfactorily, though the croissant itself proves a mere 7/10 – rather soft and bland by French standards. Still, brushing the crumbs from my lips and tucking the petite galette that accompanied my café crème in my pocket for later, it feels like a good start.

Douillons aux Poires, or Pears in Pyjamas

This buttery, lightly spiced Norman classic, which can be made with apples or pears, is usually served warm, rather than scoffed straight from the boulangerie bag as we did, and is lovely with a glass of sweet cider or perry.

Makes 6

6 small, hard pears

500ml cider or perry

100g sugar

1 egg, beaten

Crème fraîche, to serve

For the pastry (or use 500g bought puff)

250g plain flour, plus a little extra to roll out

¼ tsp fine salt

85g caster sugar

150g well-chilled butter

1 Put the flour, salt and sugar into a mixing bowl and grate the butter into it. Stir with a table knife to coat the butter, then drizzle over 2 tablespoons of cold water and keep stirring, gradually adding more (probably about 3 tablespoons more) until it starts to come together. At this point you can use your hands. Wrap and chill for at least 30 minutes.

2 Meanwhile, peel the pears and core from the bottom, leaving the stalks on. Bring 500ml of water, the cider or perry and sugar to the boil in a pan just large enough to hold all the pears, then add the fruit. Poach until just tender, but not soft; how long will depend on the ripeness of your pears. Drain and dry well with kitchen paper.

3 Preheat the oven to 200°C/180°C fan/gas 6. Roll the pastry out on a lightly floured surface to about 3mm thick. Cut into thick strips, long enough to wrap round the base of each pear, then roll up to encase it, leaving the stalk sticking out at the top. Pinch together with damp fingers to seal. Brush with beaten egg.

4 Bake for about 35–40 minutes, until deep golden. Serve warm, with crème fraîche.

Km: 7.3

STAGE 2

Cherbourg to Avranches

Moules Marinières

Moules marinières is not an exclusively Norman dish – you’ll find it all over northern France and Belgium – but Normandy has been exporting mussels to the discerning diners of Paris since at least the 16th century, so they probably know what they’re doing by now.

Aptly, the first 30 minutes of my epic journey are in the wrong direction. A route that looked simple on the map proves easily lost once the signs, so assiduous for the first couple of kilometres through central Cherbourg, stop abruptly, as if the person responsible knocked off for lunch and never came back. All options are thrillingly open as we circumnavigate a busy roundabout searching in vain for clues, eventually ending up in a grim retail park inadvertently following signs for Oncle Scott’s ‘1er restaurant franco-américain aux ambiances country de la longue liste des restaurants en France’ rather than Bricquebec, the town I’ve earmarked for lunch.

My falsely breezy claim that getting out of cities is always the worst part of any ride doesn’t make either of us feel any better, especially after a promising-looking cycle path down the side of a fast dual carriageway is belatedly revealed to be a works entrance when several pieces of heavy machinery overtake us at speed, horns blaring. Thank God, then, for the kind fellow cyclist who, seeing my face contorted with rage over my phone, stops and points us in the right direction: through a housing estate and a dark, dank tunnel under the road, from which we emerge, blinking, into the countryside.

And what countryside! Normandy has turned on a full charm offensive, as if in a belated attempt to erase this morning’s carwashes and tile showrooms from our minds – we pedal past sleepy cottages with chickens pecking away placidly in their shadow, through banks of tall rhododendrons in full flower and, very soon, behind iron railings and a placid lake, hit the bullseye: a real-life chateau, all pointy turrets and grim stone. I insist on stopping to get a picture, and promptly fall off my bike, as I yet again fail to remember that I have 25kg strapped onto the back wheel.

It’s all bucolic as hell: Normandy is a soft, lush landscape of culinary riches – salt-marsh lamb, seafood, dairy, and dry cider. In fact, in terms of raw ingredients, it’s not a million miles away from the milder regions of our own South-West. More than one source I consult mentions the ‘gargantuan appetites’ of the heartily sized locals, which may be attributing too long a reach to Vikings who settled here in the 10th century, but if I lived in this land of Camembert and Calvados, I’d probably blame my corpulence on genetics, too.

The sun finally comes out as we bowl along hedge-fringed country lanes, attracting barking dogs to their gates like Pied Pipers with pockets full of sausages. I’m particularly taken with one tiny Yorkshire terrier whose warning sign declares it to be ‘en psychoanalyse’. At one o’clock precisely, we hit Bricquebec, a prosperous town with a 12th-century castle that feels like it ought to be full of restaurants, but oddly enough isn’t, with the exception of a forbidding medieval cellar with definite pretensions to grandeur that don’t quite feel appropriate to our clothing or general odour. Mindful of the five weeks of dining out ahead of me, I push for a picnic, but Matt is a man who likes to eat properly, and he tells me so, albeit in such incredibly diplomatic language that it takes me a while to get the hint.

Needless to say, he wins and we end up at a bar that sells pizzas and smells promisingly of toasting Emmental. Thin and crisp, they come laden with unapologetically French toppings. I choose one with Camembert, potatoes, smoked ham and cream, which arrives with a glossy egg yolk goggling at me from the centre. Throw in a cold Orangina and a big bottle of Badoit, and the disastrous start is all but forgotten.

To Matt’s considerable relief, given the strength of the sun and the fact that he’s packed so light he hasn’t even brought suncream, the route climbs on to an old railway line after lunch – ‘They’re always flat!’ – and shepherds us in shaded comfort almost all the way to the coast, with just a brief break for a drink in Saint-Saveur-le-Vicomte. I say a drink – Matt appears from the bakery with the requested Perrier, plus a surprise box of cakes: lemon for him, rhubarb for me, both crammed into our mouths standing up as if we’d just climbed Mont Ventoux rather than slow-pedalled 25km across a pancake.

We’re staying in a chambre d’hôte this evening; the French equivalent of a bed and breakfast, in the tiny marshy village of Saint-Germain-sur-Ay. Unfortunately, neither of us has even a whisper of signal out here, and though I insist it’s likely to be signed, it really isn’t, forcing me to duck into the only shop in sight to ask for help. The place is totally empty apart from a startled child stacking shelves who points mutely through a doorway to the village pub. At the bar, nursing drinks, sit the international standard measure of grumpy old men.

They perk up as I explain our situation, arguing among themselves as to where this place could be, until one of them has the bright idea that I can come and stay with him instead, a suggestion that makes the rest of them laugh so hard they can’t speak. The landlord takes advantage of the brief wheezy silence to tell me it’s the second right, out over the salt marshes, down a road which we later discover spends much of its time underwater. I make a hasty exit, thanking them all for their kindness over my shoulder.

It feels a bit like we’re riding into a dream as we cross the lonely marshes, grasses whipping in the breeze, the only sound the mournful call of birds settling down to roost, and I’m relieved to finally see a sturdy-looking building on the horizon, though owner Nathalie tells us it’s taken a lot of work to get the old barn that way. ‘The first year was all mud,’ she says, showing us a series of traumatic photos straight out of the Grand Designs living-in-a-caravan-on-a-building-site-with-a-small-child playbook, ‘but I like … how do you say …? The wildness here.’

It is indeed a lovely spot if you haven’t read The Woman in Black, and fortunately not so lonely that there isn’t a fancy hotel restaurant a 15-minute pitch-black walk away, neatly saving us from a cosy night in the village with my helpful knights in shining armour. On a fine Saturday in May, it seems we’re lucky to score a table at La Ferme des Mares with its immaculately gravelled courtyard and spotlit wisteria: thank God we’ve decided not to cycle, or we might have been forced to hide the bikes behind the row of shiny Range Rovers to avoid embarrassing ourselves.

The series of low-beamed dining rooms, with windows set in massive stone walls, are politely full, the tables spaced discreetly across a thick carpet, which contributes to the general hush. It all feels expensive (it is), and I’m firmly of the irresponsible mindset that if you’re going to blow your budget, you may as well do so in style, which is why I immediately order the house aperitif, an amber flute of apple syrup, apple cider, apple brandy and a shot of apple and green walnut liqueur for good measure. As a statement of decadent intent, it’s perfect: simultaneously sweet and tannic, fruity and a little bit nutty, and so very delicious with a bowl of papery-skinned roasted almonds that I almost forget about the menu, despite the fact that this hardback tome takes up half the table.

It kicks off with a list of suppliers and their distance from the restaurant, culminating in the jaunty humblebrag: ‘not forgetting the slightly weird-looking vegetables from our vegetable garden – 0km!’

These, and others from further afield, are, I’m pleased to see, unusually abundant in the dishes that follow: my rabbit comes with two different preparations of the (locally) famous carottes des sables, grown in sand and fertilised with seaweed, which, along with a scattering of tiny green leaves, almost qualifies it as a salad in this part of the world. It’s light, elegant and very tasty indeed: modern French cooking at its finest.

Light is all very well, of course, but being in Normandy, we can’t bypass the cheese trolley – and what a feast of softly stinking delights glides over the plush in our direction, crowned by … it isn’t, could it be …? ‘Oui, c’est CheDDAR!’ our waiter announces proudly. I express surprise at finding this black-waxed interloper in one of France’s great cheese-producing regions. ‘Ah, mais monsieur le chef, il est anglais!’ he explains.

Certainly, the Cheddar has been hacked away at energetically for other diners this evening, but nevertheless, I stick to local boys Livarot, a sticky, spicy washed-rind cheese, creamy salty Neufchâtel and an exceptionally powerful Camembert (my general tactic with a cheese trolley is to keep going until the curator starts to look anxious), all of which come in squidgy slabs, rather than slices. Not that I’m complaining.

A lesser person would have regretted also ordering dessert in advance, but not me: and I see away the presqu’îles flottantes, a big wobbly pile of beer-flavoured custard and caramel topped with snowy meringue, without even breaking a sweat. That said, the walk home, moon hanging high above huddled sheep, is silent. Both of us, perhaps, have reached our elastic limits.

Fortunately, we bounce back quickly, because the next morning Nathalie presents us with a breakfast of raw-milk Camembert from the next village (‘It’s the best around here’), toasted on nubbly brown homemade bread with a few slices of apple: I’ll give it to the French, they really get behind their regional specialities.

Powered by cheese, it’s a fast run down to Créances, home of all those sandy carrots (and a few leeks, too, if the enormous mosaic of them on a roundabout is to be believed), where we join the coast road, looking out over vast empty beaches and seas of wind-blown grass that remind me strongly of North Norfolk. There, the rush is to get a good spot outside the pub for a few pints of Wherry and some whitebait; here, I’m quietly nudging the pace to taste what it’s claimed are the best moules frites in France. Not only is it a sunny Sunday, but it’s slowly dawned on me through the drip feed of roadside advertising that it’s Mothers’ Day here, and if I were a Norman maman, I’d be dropping hints about this place from Boxing Day onwards.

The road narrows as we approach the spit of land on which La Cale perches, and suddenly every car that overtakes us feels like a potential rival. At 11.15 a.m., a time when I’d barely be thinking about a mid-morning coffee at home, the beach car park is almost full. I wonder how many of those loitering I could see off should it come to fisticuffs over the last table: a lot of them look quite old, and there’s a fair smattering of infants, so I’m fairly confident of our chances. Perhaps, I think, if it comes to pleading our case, I could pretend to be Matt’s mother.

The restaurant itself, still firmly shuttered, is a utilitarian shed of a place with a rickety collection of mismatched and largely unstable furniture outside. We retire to the café next door for a tense cup of coffee, interrupted when I spot someone emerge from La Cale with a cigarette. The veteran of a hundred ‘no-reservations’ London restaurant queues, I spring into action like a greased whippet, leaving Matt to pay up. Bursting through the doors, I ask one of the young men leaning casually against the counter if they’re open, fumbling with the unfamiliar words in my nervousness. He looks startled. ‘Oui, bien sûr, Madame!’