Summer is here

Now that I've reached the coast, things are busy and all the beach towns are hitting high gear. The campgrounds are filling up, with people who may base themselves there for a month or more. Aparently all hell breaks loose on 14 July, as France's national holiday means the start of the exodus of Parisians to the beach. I'm counting on going against the traffic. I plan to be in Paris on July 16. Hopefully all the museums will be open, plenty of restaurants as well, and that my accomodation is air conditioned. A/C is not standard in smaller hotels and museums around here. Thank goodness for "French windows" that you can throw open to catch the breeze, and a few mosquitoes as well. Still open windows means you can hear the turtledoves, the frogs and the churchbells that ring in every town. It's a lovely sound.

I am enroute to Honfleur, which everyone tells me is gorgeous. Let's hope the circulation (traffic) isn't too crazy. My Michelin map doesn't show a lot of smaller roads as alternates, and there's a lot of RED road here. Hmm. Pushing a major road through Norman towns often means the road cuts through a feudal enclave, of church, chateau and tithe barn, all in stone, all ancient, and many still working as farms, not simply as chambre d'hotes.

This morning I chatted with a local photographer in Courseulles-s-Mer who has a show both on the beach boardwalk and at the OT, opening today:Frederic Vignolles. Fred.vignolles@orange.fr. He's on Facebook he tells me. I haven't had time to facebook myself properly. Too busy riding and figuring things out. Check out Fred's photos. They're good and all taken of the local sites.

Had rain in the AM 2 days ago which made riding easier, but today's it's gonna be a scorcher. There is a circus in town, and a small car with a big loudspeaker is driving up and down the one street outside, telling everyone to come to the show tonight. You have to go, folks, I think I understood the word "camel" as part of the pitch.

And tomorrow the Grand Guignol (French Punch and Judy) is in Courseulles for one night only, an all new 45 minute show. Unfortunately, I have to miss it. Also, likely I wouldn't understand about 95 percent of what they say anyway. But I really am in traditional seaside resort land right now.

Yesterday spent the day in Bayeux, first visiting the Cathedral; which is very rich in art and sculpture, and later at the Tapisserie de Bayeux museum. 70 meters of embroidered history, or propaganda from Wm the Conqueror's POV. It is amazing, sewn by English nuns (likely) in the C11th century, and full of vitality and gore and humor. There's Halley's Comet foretelling bad things, warriors using their shields as a table, the Norman navy storming the beaches, pillage and house burning, the horses leaping into battle, Harold being killed with an arrow in the eye, dead bodies on the battlefield being stripped of chain mail. If you really want you can buy embroidery kits for about 60 euros and sew a piece of the history yourself. Me, I settled for several 1 euro postcards. It's a terrific comic strip version of history. Wm had a rough time once he'd conquered the Anglo-Saxons in England. And it's a miracle the embroidery has survived. Napoleon took it at one point to prove that his proposed invasion of England was also God's will. The nuns used natural dyes and the colors are still beautiful.

After the tapestry, I had my normal 2 hour lunch of fish and dessert then rode into a horrible headwind all the way to Courselles. No wonder my back hurt this morning when I got up.

Allez-y!