This morning’s fatigue isn’t down to mushrooms, but to five steady days in the saddle: 215 miles in total — 41, 41, 45, 46, and 43 miles each day. It’s not quite how I’d like to begin my final and longest stretch, at 57 miles, but it’s all still within my comfortable limit. I note it here as a reminder for planning future tours: effort accumulates quietly, even when the scenery distracts you.
By 10 a.m. I’ve stopped for a quick coffee, and an hour later I’m in Périers, sitting with a small pile of pastries for a second breakfast.
With 26 kilometres behind me and 66 still ahead, it feels like the day is just beginning. The town square has an interesting fountain — I only understand its meaning after reading the nearby plaque. Along the Voie Verte (the old railway line turned cycle path), there are many former station houses still standing, their names intact above the doors. Many are now private homes, so I don’t photograph them, but I like that the display boards tell their stories — tiny windows into the past.
At the halfway point, I stop to take a photo of a sign showing the distance to Cherbourg. I’ll finish about ten kilometres short of the town, so from here on I can count the distance down. The Voie Verte offers a steady, easy rhythm — flat, quiet, and green — and the miles slip by pleasantly. Only a few obstacles break the flow: the occasional fallen tree, or a flash of colour as a small lizard darts across the path. In one of the fields I spot four roe deer; their reddish-brown coats blend perfectly with the freshly turned soil, so I leave the camera in my pocket and simply watch.
I pause in Bricquebec for a picnic lunch — bread, cheese, and fruit bought earlier from a Super U supermarket — and sit within sight of the château and church. They’re worth photographing, but I can’t summon the energy to search for the perfect angle. Sometimes it’s enough just to look.
The Voie Verte ends abruptly, and I rejoin the open road, where the familiar Normandy landscape rolls gently once more. My legs are tired, but still turning well.
Tomorrow I head home, and this marks the end of a very successful tour having covred 900 mikes in three weeks; an average of 43 miles per day. The route may have seemed random when I planned it, but staying within the regional parks proved to be a fine decision — it’s given me great cycling, gorgeous scenery, and countless small pleasures: food, encounters, and moments that remind me why I travel this way.
As I pack up the bike for the journey home, I’m aware of how easily the rhythm of the road seeps into everyday life — the quiet starts, the steady turning of the pedals, the small discoveries that punctuate each mile. Normandy has revealed itself slowly, through its misty mornings, its food, its history, and its people.
Each day has carried its own balance of fatigue and reward, of effort and stillness. What began as a route drawn on a screen became a thread connecting villages, landscapes, and moments that now feel stitched into memory.
The beauty of a cycling tour is its simplicity: movement, observation, rest, repeat. It strips things back to the essentials — a good meal, a quiet road, a bed at the end of the day. And as I think about home, I realise that the satisfaction lies not just in reaching the end, but in the slow, deliberate way of getting there and then the joy of heading home.
