Dieppe Dunkerque

Le Dash is a traditional late spring manoeuvre, taking in, as the name might suggest, a briefness of the delights of France. It is a chance to see how the winter and Spring's 'training' has panned out while enjoying the joie d'vivre so often associated with cheap French wine and a baguette.
This dash is truly a dash as we are enjoying just one night away and so this year we have ditched the tents in favour of a nice looking hotel. Booking.com is a handy site with plenty of hotels allowing cancellations up and til the day before arrival. The weather has been most unappealing and unreliable and tenting in the wind and cold rain is about as much fun as having a pimple on your batty, of which I have had plenty.

The 140 mile route is simple:

but shouldn't be confused with the other version, slightly longer at 989 miles:

 

The Nitty Gritty

London Victoria's service to Newhaven at 20.47 gets you into Newhaven Town with sufficient time to do the needful. This stop is in fact nearer to the ferry than the Newhaven Harbour stop. This is a hangover from WW2 where the confusion was supposed to have sabotaged any invasion by the Germans. The 20.17, however, allows for Network Rail calamities, such as the wrong kind of sun, and the time to enjoy the 'cafe' at the ferry departure hut. 

The ferry itself takes just four hours but unfortunately these are the four hours in the middle of the night. The cost is £28 for a passenger and bike. The DFDS ferry from Dunkerque to Dover is £15. There are also Calais ferries run by both DFDS and Piano. If there are three of you, the Dover-Victoria train is 3 for 2 in off-peak - though how long that offer will be around for is anyone's guess - at £14.75 or so each. It is an odd journey done in rustic slo-mo, stopping at places with magnificent names such as Shepherdswell, Faversham and Selling (also a firm of solicitors in Dereham, Norfolk, probably). (2012 PRICES!)

approaching Faversham

London Victoria - the usual delights of delays

I arrived a tad early at 19.57 for my 20.17 to find the Old Vic packed with commuters staring into the mid distance, their heads slightly elevated up from the flat. They looked as if they were witnessing the arrival of a spaceship just like the one in Close Encounters.

Awaiting a platform at London Victoria

Stuff was being delayed and cancelled willy-nilly due to a line-side fire at Gatwick (thankfully not a line-side plane crash). I eventually boarded the 20.17 at 20.40. I was due to rendezvous onboard with N(eil) and D(euan) at Clapham Junction 6 minutes later and so I called N to tell him which carriage I was in. Just as the train was about to shut its doors the announcer announced that the first stop would be Haywards Heath - news that was received in a deathly silence by those unfortunates with a takeaway awaiting them in the environs of Clapham.
It was all looking like I would be spending the night by myself in the ferry hut as the later 20.47 was now even later and would get in just as the ferry would be letting its spinnaker out.
I ploughed on ahead gloomily into the night as N and D seemed likely to abort and go home to comfy beds and a 98-part Scandinavian whodunnit on BBC 4.
But, as if by magic, a train appeared ready to take them away. I got to the ferry hut to explain the tardiness of their train and that it was likely to be carrying other prepaid cyclists. This pleading was met with stony faced disinterest and a hint of amusement by the hardy ticket booth clerks. As it was, the boat was late boarding anyhow and all was well that ended well. This 'result' produced a state of euphoria that could only be calmed by several receptacles of brew from the boat's bar. We still had plenty of time to manage two hours sleep before the ship docked in the blustery pre-dawn of Dieppe Harbour. The moral of this preamble is book trains earlier than the ones you think will get you there early.

Le Dash

While we waited for dawn to crack open the new day, we sat in a kind of Satre-esque limbo in the DFDS departure lounge among lots of excited people eagerly waiting to get going to Dover on the ferry we'd just got off. The sepia dawn eventually bled into the sky at 6am. We are not to be confused with those types who engage in night cycling, an apparently exhilarating experience. Many charity rides take place in the depths of the dark, but not my bag, pal. I like the prospect of a nice view and a coffee. 

Night cycling

In following the tradition of my first visit to Dieppe, when I took the wrong road, I took the wrong road. However this was of no lasting material consequence as I got the general direction correct (not that difficult when you have to keep the particularly visible sea on your left). 

These booties weren't made for walking

It was a blustery, cloudy day and the coast was not an appetising option so we cut inland a wee bit, along empty A-roads and pleasant lanes, before dropping down to peculiar Le Treport for our first coffee/croissant combo, 27 miles on.

Treport sea front

The lack of sleep had yet to kick in as we were too busy enjoying the new day and the gentle scenery but, when tiredness got the better of us, the three of us sounded like five year-olds who'd had their sweets nicked at school. 

The Somme

There was no slap up lunch to light up the chilly gloom. As is their wont, there seemed to a huge lack of interest in the day by the French. We figured that perhaps they made a proper, wholesome, relaxing, family oriented holiday of the weekend - unlike the UK where we see days off purely as an opportunity to go shopping. 
Once again, we came to the Somme River, now at its broadest and constrained by concrete banks as it neared the sea. We decided to give the blustery, chilly coast and Le Touquet a miss and head for the hotel - time was pushing on and the lack of sleep was producing headaches all round and at least one of us began speaking in tongues. After a gruelling straight stretch through the Crechy forest - a scene of a battle between Richard II and some upstarts - we ate some over-priced, rubbishy Croque Monsieurs in a grubby bar in a grubby town full of grubby people who liked to stare grubbily. 

Are we there yet?

We hit a series of valleys and endured some hefty ups and downs before finally arriving at the Canche valley with its peculiarly uphill downhill road on the north bank. My estimates of how far we had to go were being taken far too literally by N and D who, by now, were both becoming increasingly unimpressed by the outstanding natural beauty of the Canche that I enthused about as an attempt to distract them from mileage issues. This valley has many quaint Olde Monde style villages snuggled in its clefts and crannies. We eventually reached Neuville and took a left to Montrueil Sur Mer, an old market town wrapped around a high hill. The nice looking hotel, Le Patio, on the the town's cobbled main drag, turned out to be incredibly nice inside. The double superior room was off the Downton Abbey set and boasted an en suite jacuzzi and beds so big that you needed a map to find your way across. Montrueil is a pricey town - I managed to pay 19 euros for three beers - but it provided a welcome change from the crummy food we'd come across en route.
The day's mileage was 81.5 miles.

The Next Day

D is very well travelled. He has been to places such as Coloumbia, Argentina, Brunei and mysterious places in Central Asia. He has also been to the continent on many occasions. In spite of this worldliness he was unable to adjust his timepiece to accommodate the +1 hour feature of mainland Europe. Consequently, having persuaded the very accommodating  hotelier to divvy up the petit dejuner at 8 instead of their traditional 8.30 so that we could get off early, D and I arrived at 8.20 to find N licking his lips and enjoying his breakfast at a civilised pace. D and I hurriedly crammed all the elements of the continental breakfast onto our plates in the most unique of combinations. I tucked into Cornflakes with yoghurt and a tinned pear while D concocted a similarly abstract plateful.
After stocking up with essential lunch and snack items at the local supermercado, we were able to leave at 9.20 for the sixty miles to Dunkerque. If we were able to arrive at 15.00 we could, at no extra cost, avail ourselves of the 16 hundred O'clock sailing, two hours ahead of our booked boat.


                                            

It was a beauty of a morning though still a bit nippy. 
But we were able to ditch the booties and tights - enough pantomime!
We returned yet again to the Canche valley so as to hang a left at Marles sur Canche onto the D129 for a beautiful ride up the Bras de Bronne, a small river that we were able to follow to its marshy beginnings a few miles eastwards and up a testing two-mile hill. We coffee'ed in Fauquembergues, which was celebrating some big day.

Are you going to Fauquembergues Fayre?

The streets were lined with people selling their personal belongings and, in the town centre, was a fair, complete with dodgems, from which disco-teque music was booming so loud that my ears literally bled, nearly. I guess it was 11am after all.

Ideal album cover for rock/indie/urban/folky combo, The Windmills

A few more hills later and a couple of busy roads and, if I may say so, some nifty mapwork to bypass St. Omer, we wriggled our way through cute Tilques and Serques on the D214 to the canal road just south of Watten. There are several canals in this neck of the woods and we had to be careful not to follow the bigger Canal de la Haute Colme. The route along L'Aa took us 25 miles north to the D11, south of Grand-Fort-Phillipe, where we turned right for the ferry-port, several miles west of Dunkerque. We managed this in double quick time, passing through the ferry-port's entrance bang on 3pm.

North to Dunkerque

60.5 miles for the day.

Le Fin