A week-long cycle tour to the Normandy beaches || St Malo to Caen

This June I headed to Normandy on the ferry from Portsmouth, for a linear cycle tour from St Malo to Caen alongside the Normandy beaches during D-Day week. This route is mostly the Eurovelo 4 – La Vélomaritime – and vast swathes of it is traffic-free cycle paths. Way flatter than my usual cycle touring ground of Brittany (or Devon), this route was an absolute blast.

Komoot route: https://www.komoot.com/collection/2652194

Related videos you might find useful for cycle touring:
How I find cycle touring campsites in France: https://youtu.be/84K8Z-vAQsg
10 tips for first-time cycle tourers: https://youtu.be/5UxB7L6tGHs
How I plan cycle touring adventures: https://youtu.be/nFTZ631rW5s

Stuff I use for cycle touring:
Panniers: https://www.cyclestore.co.uk/ortlieb_back_roller_classic_waterproof_panniers_40_litres-ID_66199
Jetboil Flash: https://amzn.to/3RwhXH1
Jetboil French Press: https://amzn.to/3z9Ubdr
Topeak Top Tube Bag: https://amzn.to/3xl2wur
Sea-to-Summit TR2 Alto: https://www.ellis-brigham.com/sea-to-summit-alto-tr2-tent-253604

//FIND ME AT:
Website: https://kitiarapascoe.com/
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//BOOKS:
In Bed with the Atlantic: https://amzn.to/33406kq
A Bear in November: https://amzn.to/3f3Dx1P
Little Book of Zen: https://bit.ly/3n2WWoa

//MUSIC:
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Music track: One Day In Paradise by Eric Lund
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Music track: Africa by Milky Wayvers
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Music track: Long Way Home by Kashia
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Music track: Inspiring People by Aylex
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DISCLAIMER: The links included in this description are sometimes affiliate links. This means that if you buy a product or service with the links that I provide I might receive a small commission. This doesn’t mean you pay any more! Thank you for helping to support my channel. I also use komoot in this route – FYI I also work for them although not in a youtube capacity.

Every cycle tour begins with me sitting on the doorstep for 10 minutes trying to remember what it is I’ve forgotten [Music] we are ready to cycle to the ferry [Music] port so [Music] [Applause] exciting we are on the Portsmouth to St Malo [Music] ferry so we’ll be sailing from here down to here, cycling here and then sailing back from here. So this is Portsmouth Harbour which is a major Naval port and obviously a commercial ferry port and a freight ferry port what like a tankers. [Music] So it is 8:30 in the morning I think we’ve just we were first off the ferry, cyclists are always first off the ferry because they put you right at the front and there were so many cyclists so like our bikes were on top of everybody else’s but we rolled straight off so we were first people to passport control so that was really quick and now we are in St Malo ready to start our adventure. St Malo is so pretty it’s like this walled town, it’s really [Music] nice we’re just going to spend a little bit peddling around the middle of St Malo because it looks so beautiful [Music] literally it’s like about 2 km in a circle because it’s so beautiful just want to see it all haven’t even left like the town yet [Music] So we stopped in Cancale for coffee and a crepe because apparently crepes are from Normandy so it’d be rude not to. Today we’re following the EuroVelo 4 which just goes along the northern coastline of France I think, we’re following it most of the way actually on this whole trip but we are deviating off a bit to follow the coast more than it does it sort of goes inland quite a lot to cross the Cherbourg peninsula when we’re going up that coastline a bit but mainly we’re following it, it’s not sign posted though. In Brittany it’s signposted really really well the but here I have seen one sign in 26 km [Music] just riding along the beach basically it’s beaut [Music] Day two, slept pretty badly because it’s very uncomfortable sleeping in a tent but it’s another beautiful day and today we’re going to cycle to Mont St Michel which is a fortified village you’ll see it it’s amazing and then we’re going to cycle around the coastline which is going to be super beaut and then up and finish on the coastline as well actually but around the corner a bit on the bottom bit of the Cherbourg [Music] peninsula we’re back on this wicked gravel path that goes through the polders just before Mont St Michel. Polders are, how do I describe them, they’re like irrigation channels, this huge patch of land is all like irrigation channels and dead flat maybe it’s reclaimed I don’t [Music] know so there are way more year signposts [Music] today. This will take us all the way to Mont st Michel. [Music] I had put in a supermarket to stop at but I missed the turning by like 5 miles um so we come to a different one in or I don’t know how you said um and it’s but honestly we’ve all we’ve been doing is cycling on these incredible flat cycle paths and then the the road to get up here is literally like this random hill in the middle of nowhere and it’s massive and we just had to cycle up a switch back I say cycle up, cycled up the first switch back and then pushed my bike up the second switch back it was so steep even though the cars were going really slowly but now at the supermarket, supermarche of dreams. Ee are 48 km, 48 km into this I don’t know 55 km day um going to buy all the food including dinner then cycle down hill, downhill down the Steep Hill to the campsite which is I don’t think very far less than 10 km almost at the end of day two uh 65 km day it’s turned into just climbing the final 300 metres to the campsite and yes that is climbing finally found some hilly it’s not even hilly this landscape is not hilly but this is a long slog of a hill we just stopped on a little coastal hill uh there’s a coffee van there very unusual for France. We were coincidentally perfectly in time to watch some military aircraft drop like a 100 parachutists for 7th of June commemorations day after D-Day lot’s going [Music] on, we arrived at camping les cognets in a town I can’t pronounce it’s taken a long while not because of cycling but because of a lot of pauses um 6 hours and 20 minutes have been since we left we’ve probably stopped for an hour and a half um pretty severe headwind towards the end and it got hillier so a headwind and hills do not a great combination make but it was fine and it’s fun and it’s still a beautiful day perfect temperature quite cold wind but beautiful sunshine so you don’t get too hot um so today what’s most exciting about today is that we’re not camping we’re staying in this little hiking hut which I’ve spoken about in other videos and we’ve stayed in them once before we’ve seen them quite a few times but stayed in them once and they’re like almost always exactly the same design I guess they come from the same place but they’re so cool they’re €32 for the night which is obviously more expensive than camping but last night’s camping was €22 so considering you don’t have to put up a tent and you get to stay in this really cool cabin a lot of the time they don’t come with bedding or anything like that although this one I’ve just noticed does so you still have to bring your own like they’ll have a mattress but you bring your own sleeping bag normally but theoretically if you could find the loads of campsites have these in France so if you could find campsites to have these you wouldn’t even need to bring a tent it’s such a great option they’re not very expensive at all and you still get that real campsite kind of Vibe without having to have a tent and crawl in and out there [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Beachside camping at its finest, today was the it was 45 km with um I think about 280 metres of elevation so it was less distance than the previous couple of days felt so much hillier it must have been more than 280 metres of elevation because it was like hilly a lot there was no real it was mainly like just undulating really like not really really hilly it wasn’t like Dartmoor hilly it wasn’t like Hill Country hilly it was undulating but like constantly undulating but now we’re here we’re on this amazing estery in this lovely little municipal campsite it’s got a a little shelter with a with books and tables and a fridge and that kind of stuff in there for campers. Normandy so far has been really flat until today and even today isn’t it’s not brutally hilly but it does really remind me that even though 45 km isn’t that far the addition of the extra hills like it really felt like there were a lot of hills today it really slows you down I’m carrying 11 kilos and then my handlebar bag must be another kilo 1.5 and then obviously 1.5 kilos of water so that’s a lot of weight on top of a I don’t know 12 kg bike day four [Music] it is such beautiful weather in fact it’s just the same weather it’s been the whole time the only downside is that it’s also a really strong headwind uh we’re going north at the moment and it’s northwesterly so that’s pretty tiring but it’s still good there’s loads of planes overhead like Spitfires things like that just like trundling around between airports I guess between like different commemorations so it was D-Day 3 days ago now um and there’s still so much going on around here and I guess more so increasingly as we get to the Normandy beaches. Just rode 10, 12 km into 22 mph headwind it was a [Music] brutal. So we have finished day 4 and we’re here in barneville Carteret uh to use the most English pronunciation in the world this is a perfect example of the entire cycle trip so we started in St Malo which is here and then we’ve cycled over the last few days, Mont St Michel is there I around here, up here last night we stayed here today we’ve cycled around here up here up here through Lessay and then this stretch here was absolutely savage, that was just like full on headwind the whole way and then you got Cherbourg up there which also there ferry to Portsmouth there. tomorrow we’re not going to carry on cycling north, we’re going to follow the green way pretty much I think. I just looked at the komoot route that I’m following tomorrow and I’ve just I’ve just seen that we’re actually going to be back on the EuroVelo 4 tomorrow which is massively exciting so we started off on the EuroVelo 4 for the first one and a half days I think and then we left it because the EV 4 goes along here and then it goes it leaves the coastline and it goes up to Cherbourg and then it you can split it and go up here um and we follow the coastline all the way up because I love me coastline but we’ll be actually getting back on it pretty much like here or something and then following the EV4 uh all the way to to here and then I think onwards [Music] [Music] this Trail is absolutely incredible we’ve just done the last 10 km about 5 Seconds you can go so fast [Music] 60 km today we just made it to the place I can’t pronounce I was going to ask a reception how to pronounce it I’ll have to ask later uh an in I don’t know uh we just made it it’s I don’t know what time is it’s sometime maybe 4:00 first thing I do when I get to a campsite is set up the tent mainly because it just gets out of the way it put gives me somewhere to put my stuff if I then want to go explore somewhere else. so immediately get here check in and do all the reception stuff, set the tent up which takes minutes it’s so fast it’s great and then straight away I do my sleeping mat let that self-inflate and then put my sleeping bag out so it can air because it’s down at the end of the day so it doesn’t really like being crumpled up um I put my matt bag into my sleeping bag bag and then use as a pillow which I don’t have I use I stuff that sleeping bag bag with this jumper and my down jacket and a towel whatever else I have to hand and then you can do it up like the compression way and then that is a pillow. French ducks are extremely forthright. [Music] [Music] Good morning day six we’re leaving La Fanal campsite and heading to Bayeux famous for the tapestry via the Eurovelo one along the coastline [Music] now riding along the top of Omaha Beach there’s a lot of obviously memorials around lot of people it’s just it’s crazy [Music] [Music] scale so we just stopped uh just going to eat just on the edge of Omaha Beach we’re now on the other edge of Coleville sur Mer which is where the American cemetery is is probably the classic one that you’ve seen like all the white crosses and it’s just unreal [Music] [Music] this is a hill and a half [Music] [Music] [Music] That’s actually really emotional much more than I thought it would be. [Music] [Music] [Music] We’ve made it to Ouistreham which is Caen, essentially, on the coast which is where the ferry will go from tomorrow and it is a beautiful day it’s just been flat most of today like completely flat after the Memorial just pretty much down to the coast really flat spending a very bougie final night in a hotel because we have to be at the ferry port at 7 tomorrow morning and I don’t want to pack up a tent uh we’re staying in the Ibis which is the cheapest hotel you can pretty much find but also the ferry port is la bas. 7:15 in the morning and we are just cycling across the road to the ferry port. Here we are back where we started one week ago time to head home. [Music]