Yesterday, on the way over to Portsmouth on the ferry from Saint-Malo, I remembered a coaching inn on the edge of the Hampshire South Downs where Richard (my cycling pal from our village) and I had stayed last year en-route to Paris on our bikes. We’d enjoyed a great welcome and good food there. I did a quick web search on the iPhone and booked the last available room. The George and Falcon at Warnford doesn’t serve food on a Sunday evening but I was assured that Mat, who runs the place, would be able to make a sandwich for my scheduled arrival between 8:30 and 9:00pm.

The pub is 16 miles from the ferry terminal and I was pleasantly surprised to pick up a well-signposted cycle path through Portsmouth. I then climbed a long, steep hill up onto the South Downs. It seemed to me to be the toughest of the whole trip, but that may simply have been tiredness. The ride to Warnford was a bit of race against impending darkness because I managed to take the long way around again, rather than the most direct route. It rained intermittently, but I didn’t get soaked. When I arrived at my destination for the night, the promised sandwich was forthcoming, washed down with a couple of glasses of wine and I slept soundly through to 6:30am. It was raining when I left at 8:30 after a very good breakfast. The rain was to continue on and off all day.

Setting out in the rain from the George and Falcon for the last day of the trip.

The final day’s journey started with a climb onto the South Downs again as I headed for Winchester. My route then took me via Andover, Devizes, Melksham and Bath, before following the Bristol and Bath Cycle Path into Bristol. At one point, I ended up on the A34 dual carriageway north of Winchester and the traffic was horrific. I should have paid more attention to the map and gone through the centre of Winchester, picking up the Andover road without using the A34. I turned off the dual carriage with great relief at the first opportunity.

The day’s ride was pretty wet and windy but I was riding through wonderful countryside, crossing both the South Downs and Salisbury Plain. It got easier after Devizes, with very few hills and greater shelter from the wind. At one point, I passed within 2 miles of home but I was determined to achieve the original goal of taking the Thanet back to where it was made: 50 Elmdale Road, Bristol.

Riding along very familiar roads, I went through Bath onto the cycle path, the first major cycleway in the country created by Sustrans.  As I arrived in Bristol, the heavens really opened and I got my first and only major soaking of the whole trip. Finding Elmdale Road took about another 30 minutes, and when I arrived at my destination I was surprised to find that 50 and 50A, as they are now, had been subject to some serious development at the front and didn’t look at all like the building as it was in 2008. I actually double-checked to make sure I was at the right place, which I was. There were no answers when I rang the doorbells so I just propped the bike up outside and took my photographs.

50 Elmdale Road, Bristol  BS3: the Thanet Silverlight comes home after more than 61 years, but nobody else is at home.

According to my Garmin Edge 200 GPS, I had covered the 903 miles in 8 days 10 hours and 20 minutes. (Due to some finger trouble in St Emillion, the journey was actually split into two sections, Barcelona to St Emillion and St Emillion to Bristol).

I finally rode the 25 miles home to a very warm welcome from my family. Champagne, roast chicken and asparagus fresh from the garden. What could be better after 928 miles in the saddle?

What next? This looks fun: L’Eroica (and I do have a 1965 Hetchins bike in the garage that needs a good run).

I left Pouzages at 7am yesterday morning with the aim of putting in a big day. No big lunches, no relaxing coffee beaks, just head down and see how far I could travel. The temperature was 3C, according to a sign on the side of a commercial building but with the NNE wind still blowing it felt even colder.

At least the day started off brightly and the beginning of the journey, through rolling hills and hedgerow lined fields, was not unlike cycling near home in Wiltshire. The hills were quite hard work. However, most of the time the terrain provided some degree of shelter from the wind, so that was very welcome. (As I write this, I’m sat at lunch on the ferry to Portsmouth and the guy on the next table has just said that the weather forecast for Berkshire tomorrow is a 90% chance of rain and 25 mph winds – from the SW – again, not quite head on, but close enough!)

The countryside looked like Wiltshire, but the cows are different.

The crank continued to squeal in pain, but at least when it was squealing I knew that things were still tightly connected. It was when the squealing stopped and the clunking began that I knew things were falling apart. That happened just once during the day buy by now I was able to tighten everything up petty quickly.

Parts of the ride were once again along long, undulating Roman roads, some sections through forests. Because I was in a bit of a hurry, I was grabbing food at shops along the way. My diet was a disgrace – Danish pastries, croissants, energy drinks, chocolate bars and even Liquorice Allsorts (although I think the French version is called something else).

The ride took me over the Loire. In the past couple of days I had already traversed the Garonne, Dordogne and Charente rivers, as well as a host of minor ones, so if there’s ever a pub quiz question about naming major French rivers from south to north, I could be in the money. If the question’s about north to south, that would be tougher. The Loire crossing was by far the most picturesque with wide sandy beaches lining the banks as I cycled across an attractive suspension bridge at Ingrandes. The sun was shining, the terrain was reasonably flat, yet sheltered somehow from the worst of the wind, and I made good progress.

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The area just north of Ingrandes in the Loire valley provided some of the best cycling of the trip.

I had numbered my map sections for France from 2 to 13. Number 1 would have been Spain, but I hadn’t had a Spanish version of the Michelin maps I was using. I don’t think these exist. When folded to fit into the little plastic pocket on my handlebar bag, the depth of the map, as I traveled almost due north, represented about 18 miles, an hour and a half at my average speed of 12 mph. The towns, on average, seemed to be about 12 miles apart, so I was beginning to judge my likely progress for the day on this basis. As I set out yesterday morning, catching today’s ferry seemed a possible but rather challenging target. However, I knew that it would be a good time to cross back into the UK because most people visiting France for the Easter weekend would travel back on Easter Monday. For this reason I had decided to go for the greatest possible distance yesterday, timing the trip to end up in a feasibly large town where I would almost certainly have no problem finding a hotel.

At 135 miles for the day and 8:35 in the evening, that town was St-Aubin-d’Aubigne. I walked casually into a bar and asked for directions to the nearest hotel. In a repeat of the previous evening’s response, my request was greeted with a shrug of the shoulders and open palms. The husband and wife owners of the bar then dug out their equivalent of ‘Yellow Pages’ and made some phone calls. By 9pm they had reserved me a room in what turned out to be a lovely Auberge in the centre of the town of Sens-de-Betagne. I headed out of St-Aubin-d’Aubigne on a major road, part of which was a mile long section of dual carriageway. It was getting dark, still windy, and then the clouds that had gradually become more threatening throughout the afternoon became precipitous and I had to pull over and don the waterproof trousers and overshoes once more.

When I arrived at the Auberge La Tourelle about 45 minutes later, the restaurant was very busy but I received a warm welcome and sat down to a very good dinner at 10pm. A bit late, but I had to wash down the Liquorice Allsorts with something!

4am start this morning, in the dark with the odd rain shower, but arrived in St Malo at 7:40, seven days, almost to the minute, after setting out from Barcelona. I upgraded to a Commodore cabin on the ferry for about £85 and looked forward to an enforced rest after 790 miles in the saddle.

After 790 miles in 7 days and 10 minutes, I arrived in Saint-Malo.

Feeling great – just another 100 or so to go tomorrow but think I could be getting wet!

Nothing to do with the food – there’s been a 10 to 20 mph NNE blowing all day. I’m heading roughly north, tacking from left to right as the roads dictate, so I’m heading right into it a lot of the time and then struggling to make 8 mph on the level. You become very sensitive to your surroundings under these conditions. When sheltered by a hill, a few trees, or buildings, making progress is very much easier. When I made a couple of navigation errors and had to retrace my tracks, all I had to do was steer – the wind did the rest. This morning the wind was compounded by a leaden sky, a cold, penetrating damp, temperatures around 6C, and the occasional shower. The Roman road out of Jonzac was long, straight and undulating. As much as I love my cycling, this was damned hard work. I was reminded of Bill Bryson’s description of typical British weather being like “living insde Tupperware” – but I think he was living in Yorkshire at the time, so what did he expect!​

Head down and battling, I arrived in Sureges at 1pm, I stopped at a restaurant in the central square where I followed the biggest breakfast I’d had in years with an equally sumptuous lunch. The meal, a great steak and chips followed by cheese and coffee, set me back £10 and the bar owner offered me another free coffee as I was paying the bill. I tightened the cotter pin again, the chain wheel had stopped squeaking but had been clunking for the past 10 miles because it was too loose to squeak. I then bought some batteries for the lights, thinking I might just need them today.

As I came out of the restaurant, the sun came out from behind the clouds and stayed out all afternoon. The riding, a mixture of rolling hills and long flat sections, was much more pleasant but still very hard work.

One annoying habit of some (a minority) of French drivers is to ‘toot’ to warn cyclists of their presence. This is entirely unnecessary of course because if you cycle on roads you expect to be overtaken by cars. Most of the roads were built for them. What you are not expecting is a blast in your left ear from Citroen’s latest electro-acoustic innovation. In the wrong hands it could be lethal.

I set my sights on Pouzages as a target destination for the day. A quick Internet search on the iPhone showed that it had several hotels. When, at 7pm, I arrived in a small village 20 miles south of Pouzages I was out of energy, out of water, and out of food. I ate a big chocolate and nut bar (575 calories, it said on the label) drank a Coke and a coffee and topped up the water bottle. Twenty undulating miles later, with the sun already below the horizon but enough remaining light to see my way, I battled up the steepest hill of the whole trip to reach the “centre ville” of Pouzages. It’s clearly a place designed to keep out invaders. I stopped at the first hotel I found, a bar with rooms really, and checked in. The barman told me that they will be open until 2am but I know that the noise is not going to keep me awake. Tomorrow, there is no rain forecast but the morning temperature is going to be just above freezing and the NNE wind remains. It was a bad decision to leave my knee warmers at home!