From Brest back to Fougerès#
In the last entry of this log, I told you about how we went all the way from Rambouillet to Brest. Leaving the story just when I finally could close my eyes and fall asleep (at some time between 4:30 and 5:00).
Now, it is time to tell you the next part of the story, how we managed to ride from Brest back to Fougerès, sticking to our initial 3-stage plan. According to that plan, we should arrive in Fougerès early on Tuesday night (22th Aug.), in order to get some good sleep in a hotel on our way of town.
Now, back to my story…
A couple of hours after I fell asleep, our alarms started to sound. It was 7:00, one hour later than what we would have waken up if we had arrived at the scheduled time in the hotel last night.
As quick as our sleepy heads managed, we packed up our belongings (we left some devices charging while we were sleeping) and we left the room, heading downstairs to pick up our bikes.
A different clerk was at the desk, we asked her for access to the room where we left our bikes last night and we headed for the door. We didn’t have breakfast included with our room for the night, and a quick look at how it looked in the cafeteria helped us deciding on having breakfast on our way, maybe in some nice boulangerie somewhere.
We also took a moment to check on the others. Manolo slept in this hotel too, but left one hour earlier than us. We had no news from Luis or Felipe.
On our way out I had the first surprise of the day. Having breakfast in the hotel cafeteria was Manuel, a fellow randonneur I met during the BRM 400 - Braganza a few months ago. He was surprised too, seeing me there. We just greeted each other and wished good luck, he got back to his breakfast and I went out, the guys were waiting for me.
Outside there was sun light already and we were welcomed by a thin mist floating on the air. We left the hotel and, two roundabouts later, we were back on track. On the second roundabout we already found company, a small group of randonneurs (maybe 4-5) was coming from the road we took last night from the control to the hotel.
What a coincidence… they were from Spain too! They came from Pais Vasco (the vasque country) and after hearing them talking, we introduced ourselves.
We rode together for a while, on a nice small road, going mostly down.
Finally I was able to get a glimpse of the Atlantic Ocean, feeling a bit sad we missed it, and the view of the bridge, yesterday.
Note
I have to admit that, before leaving the hotel, I considered telling Dani and Ferreiro about going back a bit, get to the bridge, take a couple of pictures and then resume riding…
But it was just for a moment… ;-D
It was nice to ride with company, but we should stop and have breakfast, riding on empty bellies would do us no good. We started to look for options as we were passing villages and, after a while, we spot a boulangerie that looked nice in Daoulas. There was a bar very close to the boulangerie, which even had tables to sit outside. As we stopped, the owner of the bar came out, telling us he had no food, but that we could get whatever we want from the boulangerie and eat seating there.
And so we did. We bought lots of pastries in the boulangerie and then sat outside the bar. We ordered coffee and orange juice. It was a nice spot, from our table we had a good view of a crossing where randonneurs were passing on their way back to Paris.
In fact, a couple of times we noticed a randonneur taking the wrong turn and we shouted, telling that poor, sleepy soul he/she was going on the wrong direction.
Half an hour later we resumed our ride. We wanted to stick to our initial plan, trying to get back to Fougerès as early as possible to get a bit more time to sleep properly. Apart from that, the idea was to have fun and enjoy the ride, trying to be smart and not loose too much time at the controls.
Personally, I decided I was going to find a nice pace and keep up with it. I wasn’t going to slow down and wait. There would be plenty of time to wait at the controls, if needed.
We had to go back to Carhaix Plouguer, a 90-something km stretch on hilly terrain again. This year they changed the route and instead of returning on the same road we took from Carhaix to Brest, we took a road southwest.
Once more, we were not alone. After passing riders here and there we got into a group again, but this time there was no order to it. Everybody was riding erratically, with a couple here, a trio there and lots of solo riders. I kept myself saying “Bonjour”, “Good morning” and even a few “Buenos días” for quite some time.
We came upon this randonneuse, wearing clothes from the Astana cycling team (I thought it wasn’t allowed to ride wearing professional team clothes?). She was going strong and, after a while, we noticed she was wearing plain, normal, converse all-star sneakers. WT…. You really see strange things during PBP.
It was getting hotter already and I wanted to remove some clothes (vest, arm warmers). There was another hill ahead, which seemed a bit longer, so I pushed it a bit. At the top I stopped and removed the clothes, packing them up, and I waited for Dani to pass by, to get him on camera, shouting “Allez! Allez!” when he was passing by.
As I’ve mentioned already, this part of the route was quite hilly. This seemed specially tough for those who were riding velomobiles. Right, when going down they were way faster than us, but as soon as we arrived at the next hill they slowed down a lot. On longer ones, they usually brought their elbows out of the velomobile outer carcass (I’m still wondering why, maybe it was their version of standing on the pedals?)
They rode on very small roads, with open views on both sides to pastures and farmers’ land. It was all very similar to the roads in the Terra Chá, near my hometown.
At 10:15, we arrived in the village of Pleyben, where we found the next Secret Control. These controls are clearly indicated with a sign and then some benèvoles are there waving hands and arms at you so you don’t miss them.
We parked our bikes near the door and got quickly inside to get one more stamp in our booklets. This time I decided to record the whole thing with the GoPro (everybody seemed ok with it, the woman that stamped by booklet even looked happy about it!)
The lady that took care of stamping my booklet pointed to a door behind us, saying “café? croissants?”. I replied “Oui! Merci beaucoup!” and went through the door with Dani. Outside there were a couple of stands with pastries and drinks and lots of plastic chairs on the grass. Some people were sitting on the chairs, some others directly laying on the grass.
There was also an impressive old church behind an old wall. We grabbed some croissants and coffee, having it all as quick as possible (which was hard, because the coffee was sooooo hot).
We spent a bit more than 15 minutes in this stop. Fast, considering that coffee came directly from the inside of a volcano.
I left the control behind that same Velomobile from the previous pictures and a rider that was wearing a jersey that my daughters would love… a Pokèmon Jersey!.
Pleyben was a really beautiful village. On our way out we passed by the old church, just to find a nice open square where more people was waiting to watch us pass and cheer us up.
A lot of the people gathered in the square was pointing their mobile phones at us, I guess some were taking pictures, some recording video. As I was passing by them, I started to think how cool it would be if the ACP could have something where all this people could upload pictures and recordings. A website, an app, a shared space somewhere. That would be definetely cool.
Anyway, after giving away some more stickers, I left that nice village and was back on smaller roads again.
The more we advanced towards Carhaix, the more everything looks like being riding back home. We started to pass by pastures full of cows, all the time going a little bit up, then a little bit down.
Even this early in the morning (between 10:00 and 11:00) it was already hot, around 23-25 ºC. I was drinking regularly, but with that big 750ml bottle from the ACP and my 600ml CamelBack, I had plenty of water.
Even so, when I noticed a family by the side of the road, to the left, on another hill… I couldn’t help myself and I had to stop. The Kockelkorn family had a huge table set by their small motorhome with crepes, waffles, coffee, chocolate, water, coke… and a lot more things. Mom and 2 teenagers were by the table when I stopped there, then Daddy came out of the motorhome.
I was the first one stopping, but soon a wave of riders came and stopped to pick up things from their table.
This family was so nice, asking every rider what they would like to have, asking questions about the ride… I simply refilled my bottles and gave the teens some stickers. One of them realized what I was giving to them and asked me to wait a minute before leaving. She picked up a small box, opened it, and took a small piece of paper from it, handing it to me. “That’s our mail address, please, send us a postcard!” - I smiled back - “Sure! I will once I’m back home”. And off I went.
I’ve talked already about recumbents and velomobiles, but I think I hadn’t mention yet anything about tandems. There were lots of tandems riding PBP, but I have to admit I hadn’t passed many of them so far (at least compared to the number of recumbents and velomobiles). My guess is that those vehicles are too slow while going up the hills, which make it easier to pass them sooner than the tandems.
That morning, though, I encountered several of them, like this one ridden by a couple from Pennsylvania, USA.
I said hi and they greeted back. “C’mon, this hill is almost over!” - I shouted, and they agreed nodding. And it was true, but we would have a few more short hills until the next control.
Every time I came upon a tandem, I got hypnotized by their coordinated pedaling, both riders moving in perfect synchrony. It has a beauty to it.
I don’t remember exactly when, but at one point we met David again. You may remember him from the start of this story. He was a friend of our friend Juankar and we left Rambouillet together at the start of PBP, riding together until our little group got split in two.
He told us Juankar and Manolo were going too strong for him and at a given point he decided to let them go. He had been riding on his own since then, not really alone, but not with the same people for long.
We agreed to keep riding together, but after a while, Dani and I were faster and left him and Ferreiro a bit behind.
At 12:25 we arrived back in Carhaix. Dani and me arrived first and we found a nice surprise there waiting for us. Jose Luis, the galician randonneur from Coruña, and his wife where there. We parked our bikes and went right away to get our stamps and then we took a moment to talk with them while we waited for Ferreiro and David.
When they finally arrived and got their stamps, Dani and I told them that it would be nice if we skip stopping for food at the control this time. The idea was to make things a bit more efficient at the controls today, trying to arrive a bit earlier in Fougerès and get some more sleep time.
I did remember that going out of the control in Carhaix there was a big supermarket, just on the same road. So Dani and I proposed to do a quick stop at the supermarket, grab something to eat fast (fruit, ice cream?) and keep on riding.
And, with Ferreiro not liking our idea very much, we left the control just a few minutes after arriving there.
The problem was… I was wrong. We found no supermarket on our way out of Carhaix, and the first one we found was 16/18 km later. I felt bad, for a lot of reasons, but mostly because this was my idea to begin with and I dragged the others along with me. Specially Ferreiro, who probably would have preferred to stay and eat something at the control.
And to make me even more guilty/bad, soon Dani and I dropped the other two, who were riding much slower than us.
When we finally found a supermarket open, in the village of Glomel, I went inside to get some fruit and whatever I saw fit, while Dani waited outside to tell the others we were there.
The supermarket was small, but nice, and it had a few big wooden tables outside, where we could sit under the shade of a big umbrella and eat. I was getting some stuff when the others came inside. We got fruit, yogourt and drinks and went outside to eat. Then David came outside with 2 big baguettes and some fromage and poulet and prepared himself some bocadillos.
I could not help myself and went inside, bought a big multigrain baguette and some sliced poulet. I asked the owner of the shop if he could slice the baguette in two, and then open both pieces in half. Outside I prepared two nice bocadillos (I put cheese also in them, as David wasn’t going to eat it all), but not to eat at that moment. I packed one over my apidura saddle bag (strapping it with the bungee cords) and put the other one in one of the pockets on my back. Where it could be cooked slowly ;-)
40 minutes later, we finished eating and resumed our ride.
The next 70 km up to Loudèac were super fun again. Lots of ups and downs with a longer (almost 10km) descent before arriving in Pontivy. As it happened through the whole day, we didn’t find any big group and even if we picked up riders along the way, we didn’t form any big group neither.
Temperature wasn’t really high (around 30) but the sun was hitting us hard. Luckily there were some parts where we could get some good speed and that helped to cool down a bit.
During this part of the ride, we got to know David a bit better. We were able to chat a bit with him, taking turns. Nice guy, another friend I’ve made riding Brevets ;-)
A new small group was formed when we met another randonneuse from USA (whom we first mistakenly thought was from some Asian country) and then we picked up some more riders along the way.
And just like that, we were crossing the town of Pontivy.
Passing by Pontivy was a bit special for me. Almost a couple of decades ago, I did a road trip from Paris to Pontivy with my then girlfriend (now wife) and another friend. We rented a car and came to pick up another friend that was living in Pontivy at the time. Then we spent some time together visiting places like Saint Malo, Le Mont-Saint-Michel and a few other in the Bretagne.
So many good memories coming back… but only for a brief moment, there was still much to do for the day, I had to focus.
It didn’t take long until we finally arrived in Loudèac. It was near 17:00, still hot, and we arrived a bit scaterred.
I was approaching the entry to the control, where lots of people were lined up waiting for the riders to pass, when I heard someone shouting my name - “Vamos borjaaaa!” - I looked at the line of people to my left and I found Jose Luis and his wife there. They had come from Carhaix right here to wait for us!
I smiled, a big broad smile. It felt special to have someone there, cheering you up, shouting your name. When we arrived at the parking area, we parked the bikes and went straight to them, to say hi (and thanks).
Somehow, this became a larger stop. We quickly went to get our stamps and then we visited again the same cafeteria/restaurant where we had lunch with Luis the previous day. Today we enjoyed a nice meal in the company of our supporters/followers ;-D
The heat was starting to make things a bit uncomfortable for my feet, so I removed the shoes while we were sitting at the table. I remember clearly how good it felt back then to have my cooked feet on that cold floor.
David sat with us and we shared stories, experiences and feelings over late lunch. We also talked a bit about how the plan of the day was going. We were doing fine, but it was almost 18:00 and we still had near 150km to go before arriving in Fougères (with another control stop in the middle, in Tintèniac).
So far everybody seemed to be fine, no breakdowns, no mechanical trouble. The four of us were in good spirits, a bit tired, but ok.
What was clear at that point was that we were going to ride again a few hours into the night. I must admit that I didn’t like that idea much. The memories from the previous night and the fact that I had barely slept 2 hours out of the last 59… let’s say it didn’t help with my self-confidence.
1 hour and 5 minutes later, we left Loudèac.
To be honest, the part of the ride from that last control to the next one in Tintèniac is a bit blurry in my memories. I do remember we kept riding together, the four of us, having company here and there, but not really riding into any group.
I do remember all the swearing David was doing, just joking about we galicians making him suffer. “A la vuelta voy a bajar 15 kilos, y voy a ir a galicia a machacaros” (literally, “back home I’ll loose 15 kg and then I’ll go visit you in galicia and make you suffer”).
I also remember passing by more and more people laying on the grass by the road. We passed one place, a long straight line of a road, where people were laying on the grass to our left, like if some giant had put them there as if they were toys. Perfectly perpendicular to the road, separated from each other by what seemed like the exact same distance. We even passed by bikes left by the road, alone, the rider nowhere to be seen.
And how could I forget the people from Bretagne, being everywhere, cheering, tirelessly offering food and water. And some times doing it in the most picturesque way.
We came upon a family that had a table outside their house. The kids were there to tend to the riders who would like to stop, while the rest of the family was sitting at a table nearby. They waved on our way when we were getting closer, offering water, tea, coffee. There were no other riders at that moment there and we decided to stop for a moment.
They were sooo nice. We tried several homemade things they offered us and we refilled the bottles with fresh water. They even had fresh water with a pinch of (natural) lemon, which was awesome. It was only a 5 minute stop, but it was awesome. I gave them stickers (obviously!) and we insisted in giving them some cash too (they had a kind of a money pot there in case anybody would like to leave something).
During those 5 minutes, more riders arrived and stopped there. When we resumed riding, we had some more company.
We passed through Quedillac, food stop but not a control, without stopping (thanks to that family by the road, we didn’t need anything else when passing this village).
As it happened the previous day, we put our vests on when the sun was getting lower. It was a few minutes after 21:00. Not strictly needed, but better have it on earlier than risk a penalty from the organization.
Half an hour before arriving in the next control, I decided the baguette on my back would make a wonderful snack. So I picked it up and slowly ate it all.
It was delicious. With the heat from both my body and the sun, the fromage had melted a bit and all of it was pretty warm. I didn’t realize how hungry I was until I started eating it, and by the time I had finished, I was tempted to pick up the other half, which was packed over my saddle bag.
A bit later, the sun definetely went down and we were able to enjoy another gorgeous sunset just before arriving in Tinteniac.
It was a few minutes before 22:00 when we finally made it to the control. It was already dark, but the control was completely lighted up and full of people. We spent just 23 minutes in that stop. Get stamp, refill bottles, eat something (me, I opted for having the second baguette that has been riding over my saddle bag).
60 more km to Fougères, to the next control and then to our hotel. Leaving Tinteniac the street lamps were still on, which felt nice, to be honest.
We did those 60 km, without stops, in near 2 hours and a half.
At the start I was feeling better than the previous night on our way to Brest, but then we went back to unlit roads and complete darkness. I tried to keep focus, enjoy the ride and keep on. The control wasn’t that far.
I remember going up another short hill in the darkness, when suddendly cow bells started to sound to our left and people started shouting loudly “Allez! Allez!!”. They startled me big time. They were just there, in the dark, without any lights and decided to shout precisely when we were passing by. Well, they definetely helped keeping me awake!
I am not sure if it was the darkness, being tired, being shortsighted or a combination of all of it, but soon I started to have something like tunnel vision. I wasn’t having any haluccinations at that time, but it was like if my vision were limited to a small, centered, area. The most annoying thing was the feeling that I had something above my eyes, like a baseball cap, that was limiting my vision.
The last part before arriving in Fougères had a couple of fast sections, longer descents where I learnt a new meaning for an old expression we have here, at home. A tumba abierta, literally translated on an open grave. David looked like possesed by some devil and the rest of us were following him blindly.
Finally, we passed by what seemed like big industrial buildings, then a huge McDonald’s and the sign marking the start of the town. Even so, we were still riding in complete darkness.
I remember clearly my feelings at the time, when I saw all the light coming from the arch we had to cross to get into town. They had the street lamps on and it looked half an oasis, half the light at the end of the tunnel. I shouted - “They have the fscking street lamps on here!!! YESSS!!”
It was near 1 in the morning and the streets were empty. In any other place, any other time, that would be no surprise. But I have to admit it surprised me back then, after having met people late in the previous couple of nights in the most unsuspected places, I thought a bigger town like Fougères may have some people on the streets at that time.
I was ahead of the others when we reached a roundabout, the garmin was telling me to keep straight ahead and so I did. Cobblestones, going up, soon the street seemed a dead end. I looked back and told them it looked like a dead end, but our different gps devices were telling us to go there.
“Maybe the official track is wrong?” - someone said. “Over here!” - someone else said. I did stop and looked back, they were going down a parallel street, kind of an avenue. I turned back and went after them, passing by some other randonneurs that were trying to find their way. I told everybody to follow us.
We went down that avenue and then right and up again, arriving at the control a few minutes later, after a short detour.
This was the control with the huge flags hanging from the roof in the area where we got our stamps, on our first visit, the previous day. We went right to get our stamps again. This time, more people were laying on the floor and there was a queue of people waiting to ask for a bed. I also noticed another queue, people waiting in line to visit the physio and doctor. Looked like some riders were a bit worn out by the endless hours of riding.
I’m not 100% sure, but that may be when we split paths with David. If I recall it correctly, he went to check if he could get a bed in the control to sleep a few hours, deciding to sleep there anyway if there wasn’t any available.
With the stamps in our brevet booklets we decided to pay a visit to the restaurant before leaving for the hotel. Honestly, I wasn’t hungry at all, but Ferreiro and Dani insisted on having proper dinner before going to the hotel.
They got lots of food, while I was looking here and there at what to pick up. I was thinking about getting some fruit, maybe bananas to bring with me… when I saw there was pasta with carbonara. I asked the Benévole for a dish of it and I guess my face was telling a different story from what my brain was telling me, because the old man served a big ration of pasta, then put the carbonara over it… and when he looked back at me, he put more pasta and more carbonara again!
When I finally got to the table, Ferreiro and Dani were eating already, and when they saw that huge mountain of pasta they started laughing loudly. “Look who wasn’t hungry!” - Ferreiro said. “It was the volunteer there, I probably look like shit!” - I replied - “But there is no way I’m going to it all this”.
Oh, my friend, how wrong I was. I ate all of it, plus bread and a piece of cheese cake afterwards.
45 minutes later we were on our bikes and ready to leave the control. Our hotel was just a couple of km away and it was all the way down from the control.
This time it was an Ibis Styles (muuuch, much better than the Ibis Budget ones). We did the check-in and this time we brought our bikes with us to the room, which was fun… the room was on the first floor and there was no elevator, so we had to carry our fully-loaded bikes on our shoulders upstairs (now I did some ciclocross, not like the previous night! ;-D).
We had a shower (lesson learnt from the previous night… I had the shower first!) then we checked on the others. Manolo and Felipe were sleeping in this same hotel, Luis was a bit behind us. We discussed the wake-up hour and plans for the next day and went straight to bed.
It was almost 3:00, and I fell asleep in a few seconds.