Day 1

1.0 mi / 9.0 mph / 10 ft. climbing
Home: Brittany Ferries

Finally it was the day to board our ferry from England to France. It’s the second new country in a row that we will be arriving to by boat, though upon thinking about it, it’s surprising to realize we’ve actually done it three times previously: Maine, USA to Nova Scotia, Canada (and vice-versa), and just recently, Chile to Argentina across Lago O’Higgins.

Though we had a lot of time to burn on land first. Unlike our previous accommodation-transfers within Plymouth, we wouldn’t be able to “check in” to our ferry until 9:15pm. Our AirBNB hosts needed us out by 10am so that they could clean for that day’s new guests, and spending 11 hours on the streets while keeping an eye on our bikes sounded exhausting. At the last minute, they generously offered to let us hang out for the afternoon at another unit of theirs, but by that point we were doubly-covered: Will on WarmShowers had quickly responded yesterday’s request. Storing our bikes in his hallway for the day is much less of an ask than an overnight stay, so we feel more comfortable with the imposition, but in an excellent demonstration of openness to strangers that still exists within people in this country, he insisted on having us up for tea and a good chat before he had to take his daughter out for her first day of school.

Unencumbered, we walked over to a Starbucks in a (surprisingly busy for Monday late-morning) to get Rett a Pumpkin Spice Latte on her 4th different continent (and I even had one this time too). Then it was time for something we’d never do unless we had a secure place for the bikes: a 3-hour movie, “The Odyssey” (on a quite-good IMAX/Liemax screen, meaning that we have now been to movie theaters on 4 different continents as well).

Odysseus was stuck wandering the known world for much longer than us, and under far greater duress, so the message that resonated most was Christopher Nolan’s more-modern interpretation: the crumbling of a civilization begins when its people forget the importance of welcoming strangers. This means that Will wasn’t only keeping our bikes safe for us this afternoon; he (and many others like him) are actively holding the next Dark Age at bay! Traveling by bicycle makes us much more aware than the average person of the open arms that many people around the world still extend to strangers, and I wish more people could be exposed to such acts of generosity and trust. Because as Odysseus laments, the habit of turning away (or doing worse to) strangers is “spreading like a cancer”, and the only way to slow the growth of that cancer is to demonstrate the opposite norm: be open and trusting toward strangers (which yes, is a risk, which is exactly what makes it noble!), and those strangers will be more motivated to do the same when a stranger comes to their own land.

For dinner we went to a small waterfront burger joint near the Plymouth Hoe, now nearly-devoid of people. Again we were welcomed warmly, and a wide-ranging conversation with our host augmented the excellent (and wacky) burgers (one of which was “free”, due to their mix-up, but still generously given). I think we will miss all the conversational opportunities that come from (correct) assumptions that we all speak the same language, but at least we’ve gotten our fill in this month in England.

As darkness fell, we extracted our bikes from Will’s hallway, and made the short ride back down to the water and our waiting ferry. We were selected for a fairly-thorough (but friendly) inspection: pat-downs, inspections of random bags, and several questions (knives? Yes, but normal kitchen is fine. Gasoline? Yes, but a small bottle for our campstove is fine). There were probably 10 other cyclists joining us on the ferry; they were all lightly-loaded for short-duration spins around Brittany, and were very impressed by our long-term and heavily-loaded journey (and apologetic for their Dover/Cornwall hills, which one woman aptly described as “riding inside an egg carton”).

The ferry was more-similar to the Queen Mary 2 ocean liner than any other ferry we’ve been on, and we both laughed when we reached one of the stairwells that exactly mirrored the QM2’s (with significantly-less opulence, of course). There were shops, movie theaters, bars, and, more-importantly than all that, cabins with beds. The last one essentially made all the other amenities pointless, at least for this journey, because it’s explicitly designed as an overnight run during which you should be sleeping the entire time (they actually run the route significantly slower than their daytime runs, to give you enough hours to get a good sleep, and ensure that you aren’t arriving to France at 5am).

We could have saved ourselves a lot of money by choosing the airline/bus-type seats as our accommodation, but the initial expectation that we would get off the boat and spend the day riding, as well as near-universal agreement in the reviews, meant that getting a cabin was a no-brainer. We had to pay a bit extra for our “deluxe” cabin because it was they only type remaining (we took no advantage of the window and in-room coffeemaker), but it was still comparable with hotel room prices. We apparently forgot to pay extra for the “no sewage smell” upgrade, but that resolved itself once the boat got underway.

Days 2-3

1.2 mi / 9.0 mph / 20 ft. climbing
Home: Les Arcades Apartment

With rain chasing us into France, the boat definitely did more rocking overnight across the English Channel than Queen Mary 2 did. It could have been rather unpleasant if we’d been fighting our way through the black hours in chairs, but laying down, it was essentially like being rocked in a cradle.

We had made a relatively last-minute decision to take a train directly to Paris, rather than riding along the hilly Brittany coast that I had originally been planning. The first train where we could take our fully-assembled bikes departed nearby Morlaix two days after our arrival at Roscoff. So we debated (with helpful info from our burger guy) spending two nights in Roscoff, or two nights in Morlaix, and decided on the former. The challenge there would once again be killing time with our bikes until we could get into our accommodation, with the rain upping the degree-of-difficulty.

One of the other couples on bikes seemed quite experienced at doing this crossing, so we were glad to follow their fairly-aggressive lead in getting off the ferry and up to the immigration booth. It was an exceptionally-easy border-crossing into the EU, with just a quick scan of our passports and no other questions (and no action needed in advance under the EES, before the ETIAS system takes over next(?) year).

We missed the turn to the marina building that I had scouted out on StreetView as a public, rain-sheltered place where we could hang out, so Rett decided that we should just ride the mile into the center of town. There she asked at the hotel that runs our separate apartment if they had a place where we could store our bikes; after briefly scoffing that it’s too early for us to check in, then understanding what we were actually asking, he led us over to their secured parking lot across the street and even pointed out a rain-sheltered area.

We’re in France! Country #9 of our nomadacy! In a really cute French coastal village! So the obvious thing was to dive into an open bakery for some coffees and pain au chocolats, which were rather better than ones from US grocery stores! Dallying there in true European style allowed time for the rain to mostly clear out by 11am as scheduled, with some browsing through other shops giving it a chance to fully dry up.

Finally we got the word that we could check into our apartment, and it was even better than I’d hoped. Plenty of modern equipment hid behind the old stone walls, and with the windows open onto a bit of a “town square”, it felt like we were the Duke and Duchess of Roscoff, looking out from our castle. One of Roscoff’s claims-to-fame is their pink onions, so we bought a braided bunch of them and I cooked them into a French Onion Soup, which was as satisfying as it was appropriate.

The next morning we did a little more exploration of the town; a trip to the just-offshore island of Ile de Batz sounded too tiring, so we instead walked halfway there on a long pier. Yesterday, the streets got quite lively with tourists by the afternoon/evening, a substantial difference from their near-empty state in the morning. The same pattern repeating on this sunny morning proved that the quietness wasn’t the result of yesterday’s rain, it apparently just takes a while for the tourist to get going here. But even with that obvious tourist rhythm, it still just felt really satisfying to be “living” in this French village, staying in our apartment again with the windows open all day. Even before we get to Morlaix, it’s pretty clear that spending our two nights in Roscoff was the right choice. But maybe everywhere in France will make us feel the same way?