Waking up to the sound of raindrops made me want to curl up and stay in Rouen. But that wouldn’t be me. I waited for a break in the rain — and off I went. The break didn’t last long, but fortunately, the rain didn’t last long either — just about an hour.
After sleeping on the decision, I ditched Le Havre as end point of La Seine a Vélo — and with it, Lillebonne. Just outside Rouen, I switched to the Seine’s left bank. As in any big city, industrial suburbs awaited, and I rode straight through them. Being Saturday, traffic was minimal; on a weekday, this route might’ve been a bad idea. Still, it let me skip the ferry I would’ve otherwise needed — actually, by sticking to the left bank, I dodged three ferries in total.
Most of the time, my route overlapped with the official one, though I still took shortcuts. By noon, I was near the campsite I’d planned to stay at — tucked inside the Marais Vernier nature reserve, with nothing else around. On a whim, I decided to keep going — all the way to Honfleur, the alternative final stop on La Seine à Vélo.
An hour later, I was pitched in a campsite a few hundred meters from the center of town. Four days — that’s how long it took me to finish the first leg of this three-part trip. Overall, the itinerary was worth the pedaling. The Veloroute itself? Less so — often just a dirt track or a regular road, with too many needless detours.
Since Honfleur hadn’t been in the plan, I hadn’t read a thing about it. So I wandered — and discovered it’s where Erik Satie was born, where Monet spent almost a year painting, and where Baudelaire and Sagan came to visit. It’s a charming little town with a marina, history, art, cafés… and thick crowds. Halve the crowd, and Honfleur would be the perfect place to spend some time. (Yes, I know — I’m part of the problem.)
Today in numbers:
118 km – distance cycled
1 — Nobel laureate born in Lillebonne, Annie Ernaux
130+ — paintings of Honfleur were created by Claude Monet, Eugène Boudin, and other Impressionists
1681 — Vieux Bassin (Old Harbor) was originally dug out in under orders of Colbert, Louis XIV’s finance minister
3.6million — visitors come to Honfleur every year
