Sant Malo to Jard-sur-Mer and back 30th May to 6th June 2009

My Mum decided late last year that it would be fun if the whole family went on a trip to celebrate her 60th birthday and whilst I was a bit wary of what this might mean I thought agreeing to join in was probably a good idea. Soon the idea developed into taking a couple of gites in a village called Jard-Sur-Mer on the coast of Vendee in France for a week which wasn't really of great appeal to me really especially as my wife would demand I take her around various sites of historic interest whilst my family would prefer to mainly lounge about by the sea and I'd obviously want to disappear off with a bike for much of the time.

Fortunately my wife found that the agreed date of the 1st week of June clashed with her latest round of accountancy exams so I was now free to take a bike and if I was going to take a bike I figured a may as well ride out on it. Not having done anything like this before I started to look into what was needed. My rigid slidey dropout Inbred seemed the best bike option as it has rack mounts so I converted this from single speed to geared using a set of 48/36/26 rings I'd bought cheaply but never used for and some deore shifters and mechs I'd taken off a bike some time ago. Curiously my Inbred lacks the rack mounts on the dropouts but does have them at the top of the seat stays but it does have some machined holes in the dropouts that I was able to use instead. I now had to decide what bags and rack to get. I found that racks are available cheaply but that don't hold panniers so securely and can also break. More expensive ones are made from steel or titanium but seemed overkill for a jaunt on well made roads so I settled on a Tortec Expedition rack which is made from larger aluminium tubing that most and holds the panniers away from the wheel better. For panniers I went for Altura Dryline 56 litre ones simply as they were waterproof, looked rugged and had decent capacity. I also chose a matching bar bag as this is useful for carrying things that need to be accessible like a camera, valuables and things to eat whilst riding; a bar bag is also easy to take off the bike if leaving it outside as shop for a while and you don't want to leave anything valuable behind. I also added a saddle bag with tools so that they were easy to find.

As the bike now weighed 36lbs I was quite keen to limit how much clothing I took so I got some hand washing liquid and decided all I needed was 1 change of clothes for whilst riding and 1 for when off the bike. I did think about changing the pedals to flat ones, so I could just take one pair of shoes, but in the end decided to take a pair of cycling shoes as if I didn't and it rained one day whilst riding I'd have to wear wet shoes in the evening.

Lastly I planned my route. I initially decided that 100 miles a day was as much as I wanted to ride but not knowing the terrain,or how difficult riding a heavier bike than normal would be, I decided days of around 75 miles would be more sensible - this also allowed for getting lost. The most obvious ferry crossing was an overnight one from Portsmouth to Saint-Malo from there it is about 170 miles to Jard-Sur-Mer but in order to make it a longer trip I chose to do overnight stops at Laval and Cholet on the way out then a more direct return via Nantes and Rennes. I booked rooms at Formule 1 hotels as the low price seemed right given that I'd be doing little more than sleeping and I'd also heard about others on cycling trips who'd used them and found they were happy for bikes to be kept in the bedrooms. I didn't plan the route any more than noting the hotel locations and used print outs from Google Maps to navigate. I took my gps which helped me on occasion such as getting through larger places like Rennes where the road directions were set up to keep cars on larger roads away from the centre whilst I wanted to go straight through the middle.

The trip went well as I arrived at Saint Malo at the start of a heat wave which lasted for my trip out to Jard-Sur-Mer and the 4 days I spent with my family. On the way back the weather changed and I got drenched on the last day. Mostly the roads were quite flat though I started to struggle in strong winds on rolling hills later on my 1st day - once I got to the hotel I realised I had suffered from the sun and the 3 1/2 litres of water I'd drunk wasn't enough which had made the ride more difficult. The next day I bought sun cream and drank an extra litre of water. My route mostly took me through farmland and regular small towns so buying food and water wasn't a problem though shops mostly shut on Sundays so important to remember to stock up the evening before. I found riding on the roads in France a far more pleasant experience than in England with car drivers taking almost excessive care when overtaking; the roads all had good surfaces and many places along the way had picnic stops with tables.

My route:

Out	Sant Malo to Laval	88 miles
	Laval to Cholet	81 miles
	Cholet to Jard-sur-Mer	66 miles	235 miles
Back	Jard-sur-Mer to Nantes	73 miles
	Nantes to Rennes	73 miles
	Rennes to Sant Malo	61 miles	207 miles	442 miles