One More Croissant for the Road

2 Meanwhile, peel the pears and core from the bottom, leaving the stalks on. Bring 500ml of water, the cider or perry and sugar to the boil in a pan just large enough to hold all the pears, then add the fruit. Poach until just tender, but not soft; how long will depend on the ripeness of your pears. Drain and dry well with kitchen paper.

3 Preheat the oven to 200°C/180°C fan/gas 6. Roll the pastry out on a lightly floured surface to about 3mm thick. Cut into thick strips, long enough to wrap round the base of each pear, then roll up to encase it, leaving the stalk sticking out at the top. Pinch together with damp fingers to seal. Brush with beaten egg.

4 Bake for about 35–40 minutes, until deep golden. Serve warm, with crème fraîche.

Km: 7.3

STAGE 2

Cherbourg to Avranches (#litres_trial_promo)

Moules Marinières

Moules marinières is not an exclusively Norman dish – you’ll find it all over northern France and Belgium – but Normandy has been exporting mussels to the discerning diners of Paris since at least the 16th century, so they probably know what they’re doing by now.

Aptly, the first 30 minutes of my epic journey are in the wrong direction. A route that looked simple on the map proves easily lost once the signs, so assiduous for the first couple of kilometres through central Cherbourg, stop abruptly, as if the person responsible knocked off for lunch and never came back. All options are thrillingly open as we circumnavigate a busy roundabout searching in vain for clues, eventually ending up in a grim retail park inadvertently following signs for Oncle Scott’s ‘1er restaurant franco-américain aux ambiances country de la longue liste des restaurants en France’ rather than Bricquebec, the town I’ve earmarked for lunch.

My falsely breezy claim that getting out of cities is always the worst part of any ride doesn’t make either of us feel any better, especially after a promising-looking cycle path down the side of a fast dual carriageway is belatedly revealed to be a works entrance when several pieces of heavy machinery overtake us at speed, horns blaring. Thank God, then, for the kind fellow cyclist who, seeing my face contorted with rage over my phone, stops and points us in the right direction: through a housing estate and a dark, dank tunnel under the road, from which we emerge, blinking, into the countryside.

And what countryside! Normandy has turned on a full charm offensive, as if in a belated attempt to erase this morning’s carwashes and tile showrooms from our minds – we pedal past sleepy cottages with chickens pecking away placidly in their shadow, through banks of tall rhododendrons in full flower and, very soon, behind iron railings and a placid lake, hit the bullseye: a real-life chateau, all pointy turrets and grim stone. I insist on stopping to get a picture, and promptly fall off my bike, as I yet again fail to remember that I have 25kg strapped onto the back wheel.

It’s all bucolic as hell: Normandy is a soft, lush landscape of culinary riches – salt-marsh lamb, seafood, dairy, and dry cider. In fact, in terms of raw ingredients, it’s not a million miles away from the milder regions of our own South-West. More than one source I consult mentions the ‘gargantuan appetites’ of the heartily sized locals, which may be attributing too long a reach to Vikings who settled here in the 10th century, but if I lived in this land of Camembert and Calvados, I’d probably blame my corpulence on genetics, too.

The sun finally comes out as we bowl along hedge-fringed country lanes, attracting barking dogs to their gates like Pied Pipers with pockets full of sausages. I’m particularly taken with one tiny Yorkshire terrier whose warning sign declares it to be ‘en psychoanalyse’. At one o’clock precisely, we hit Bricquebec, a prosperous town with a 12th-century castle that feels like it ought to be full of restaurants, but oddly enough isn’t, with the exception of a forbidding medieval cellar with definite pretensions to grandeur that don’t quite feel appropriate to our clothing or general odour. Mindful of the five weeks of dining out ahead of me, I push for a picnic, but Matt is a man who likes to eat properly, and he tells me so, albeit in such incredibly diplomatic language that it takes me a while to get the hint.

Needless to say, he wins and we end up at a bar that sells pizzas and smells promisingly of toasting Emmental. Thin and crisp, they come laden with unapologetically French toppings. I choose one with Camembert, potatoes, smoked ham and cream, which arrives with a glossy egg yolk goggling at me from the centre. Throw in a cold Orangina and a big bottle of Badoit, and the disastrous start is all but forgotten.

To Matt’s considerable relief, given the strength of the sun and the fact that he’s packed so light he hasn’t even brought suncream, the route climbs on to an old railway line after lunch – ‘They’re always flat!’ – and shepherds us in shaded comfort almost all the way to the coast, with just a brief break for a drink in Saint-Saveur-le-Vicomte. I say a drink – Matt appears from the bakery with the requested Perrier, plus a surprise box of cakes: lemon for him, rhubarb for me, both crammed into our mouths standing up as if we’d just climbed Mont Ventoux rather than slow-pedalled 25km across a pancake.

We’re staying in a chambre d’hôte this evening; the French equivalent of a bed and breakfast, in the tiny marshy village of Saint-Germain-sur-Ay. Unfortunately, neither of us has even a whisper of signal out here, and though I insist it’s likely to be signed, it really isn’t, forcing me to duck into the only shop in sight to ask for help. The place is totally empty apart from a startled child stacking shelves who points mutely through a doorway to the village pub. At the bar, nursing drinks, sit the international standard measure of grumpy old men.

They perk up as I explain our situation, arguing among themselves as to where this place could be, until one of them has the bright idea that I can come and stay with him instead, a suggestion that makes the rest of them laugh so hard they can’t speak. The landlord takes advantage of the brief wheezy silence to tell me it’s the second right, out over the salt marshes, down a road which we later discover spends much of its time underwater. I make a hasty exit, thanking them all for their kindness over my shoulder.

It feels a bit like we’re riding into a dream as we cross the lonely marshes, grasses whipping in the breeze, the only sound the mournful call of birds settling down to roost, and I’m relieved to finally see a sturdy-looking building on the horizon, though owner Nathalie tells us it’s taken a lot of work to get the old barn that way. ‘The first year was all mud,’ she says, showing us a series of traumatic photos straight out of the Grand Designs living-in-a-caravan-on-a-building-site-with-a-small-child playbook, ‘but I like … how do you say …? The wildness here.’

It is indeed a lovely spot if you haven’t read The Woman in Black, and fortunately not so lonely that there isn’t a fancy hotel restaurant a 15-minute pitch-black walk away, neatly saving us from a cosy night in the village with my helpful knights in shining armour. On a fine Saturday in May, it seems we’re lucky to score a table at La Ferme des Mares with its immaculately gravelled courtyard and spotlit wisteria: thank God we’ve decided not to cycle, or we might have been forced to hide the bikes behind the row of shiny Range Rovers to avoid embarrassing ourselves.

The series of low-beamed dining rooms, with windows set in massive stone walls, are politely full, the tables spaced discreetly across a thick carpet, which contributes to the general hush. It all feels expensive (it is), and I’m firmly of the irresponsible mindset that if you’re going to blow your budget, you may as well do so in style, which is why I immediately order the house aperitif, an amber flute of apple syrup, apple cider, apple brandy and a shot of apple and green walnut liqueur for good measure. As a statement of decadent intent, it’s perfect: simultaneously sweet and tannic, fruity and a little bit nutty, and so very delicious with a bowl of papery-skinned roasted almonds that I almost forget about the menu, despite the fact that this hardback tome takes up half the table.

It kicks off with a list of suppliers and their distance from the restaurant, culminating in the jaunty humblebrag: ‘not forgetting the slightly weird-looking vegetables from our vegetable garden – 0km!’

These, and others from further afield, are, I’m pleased to see, unusually abundant in the dishes that follow: my rabbit comes with two different preparations of the (locally) famous carottes des sables, grown in sand and fertilised with seaweed, which, along with a scattering of tiny green leaves, almost qualifies it as a salad in this part of the world. It’s light, elegant and very tasty indeed: modern French cooking at its finest.

Light is all very well, of course, but being in Normandy, we can’t bypass the cheese trolley – and what a feast of softly stinking delights glides over the plush in our direction, crowned by … it isn’t, could it be …? ‘Oui, c’est CheDDAR!’ our waiter announces proudly. I express surprise at finding this black-waxed interloper in one of France’s great cheese-producing reasons. ‘Ah, mais monsieur le chef, il est anglais!’ he explains.

Certainly, the Cheddar has been hacked away at energetically for other diners this evening, but nevertheless, I stick to local boys Livarot, a sticky, spicy washed-rind cheese, creamy salty Neufchâtel and an exceptionally powerful Camembert (my general tactic with a cheese trolley is to keep going until the curator starts to look anxious), all of which come in squidgy slabs, rather than slices. Not that I’m complaining.

A lesser person would have regretted also ordering dessert in advance, but not me: and I see away the presqu’îles flottantes, a big wobbly pile of beer-flavoured custard and caramel topped with snowy meringue, without even breaking a sweat. That said, the walk home, moon hanging high above huddled sheep, is silent. Both of us, perhaps, have reached our elastic limits.

Fortunately, we bounce back quickly, because the next morning Nathalie presents us with a breakfast of raw-milk Camembert from the next village (‘It’s the best around here’), toasted on nubbly brown homemade bread with a few slices of apple: I’ll give it to the French, they really get behind their regional specialities.

Powered by cheese, it’s a fast run down to Créances, home of all those sandy carrots (and a few leeks, too, if the enormous mosaic of them on a roundabout is to be believed), where we join the coast road, looking out over vast empty beaches and seas of wind-blown grass that remind me strongly of North Norfolk. There, the rush is to get a good spot outside the pub for a few pints of Wherry and some whitebait; here, I’m quietly nudging the pace to taste what it’s claimed are the best moules frites in France. Not only is it a sunny Sunday, but it’s slowly dawned on me through the drip feed of roadside advertising that it’s Mothers’ Day here, and if I were a Norman maman, I’d be dropping hints about this place from Boxing Day onwards.

The road narrows as we approach the spit of land on which La Cale perches, and suddenly every car that overtakes us feels like a potential rival. At 11.15 a.m., a time when I’d barely be thinking about a mid-morning coffee at home, the beach car park is almost full. I wonder how many of those loitering I could see off should it come to fisticuffs over the last table: a lot of them look quite old, and there’s a fair smattering of infants, so I’m fairly confident of our chances. Perhaps, I think, if it comes to pleading our case, I could pretend to be Matt’s mother.

The restaurant itself, still firmly shuttered, is a utilitarian shed of a place with a rickety collection of mismatched and largely unstable furniture outside. We retire to the café next door for a tense cup of coffee, interrupted when I spot someone emerge from La Cale with a cigarette. The veteran of a hundred ‘no-reservations’ London restaurant queues, I spring into action like a greased whippet, leaving Matt to pay up. Bursting through the doors, I ask one of the young men leaning casually against the counter if they’re open, fumbling with the unfamiliar words in my nervousness. He looks startled. ‘Oui, bien sûr, Madame!’

I race out onto the sandy, and completely empty terrace, and fling myself dramatically over a table right on the edge of the beach, then semaphore frantically at Matt to make haste. After all this, it’s somewhat embarrassing to discover there was no rush at all: though tables fill up quickly, no one else leaps across the decking as if fleeing from a fire and I suddenly feel a very long way from home.

Having ordered at the bar, underneath a cheerful sign assuring clients that all rats have passed a hygiene inspection), we can sit back and enjoy ourselves, making leisurely work of a cold beer and a dozen oysters between us. They’re good, as oysters always are by the sea, plump and cool, with a marine tang answered by the air, but the real treat arrives afterwards: two huge pans of mussels in a heady, wine-soaked sauce with a great dollop of yellow crème fraîche left to melt on top.

The flesh is small and sweet, and we barely pause to pick at the hot crisp fries alongside. Perhaps it’s also the location, seasoned by the wind sweeping off the beach, the smell of the lamb shoulder cooking on the wood fire inside, or the sense of satisfaction as latecomers hang around waiting disconsolately for a table, but I don’t think I’ve ever tasted mussels so good. Here’s a recipe anyway:

Moules Marinières

Such a simple dish, but such a delicious one, with the added theatre of the whole shelling operation, which I never tire of. I like to use Norman cider and drink the rest with it, but if you prefer, you can use a dry white wine as at La Cale. Chunks of baguette or (or preferably and) hot salty fries to mop up the liquid are, however, mandatory.

Serves 2

1kg mussels

4 long shallots, finely chopped

300ml dry cider or white wine, e.g. Muscadet

50g crème fraîche

A small bunch of flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped

Baguette or chips, to serve (or both)

1 Rinse the mussels in cold running water, then give them a good scrub and scrape to remove any barnacles or dirt. Discard any with broken shells, and give any open ones a sharp tap: if they don’t close, throw them away too. Pull out the beards – the fibrous little appendages which the mussels use to attach themselves to ropes or rocks – by pulling them sharply towards the hinge end of the mussel. If you want to prep them ahead, leave them in a sink of cold water until ready to cook.

2 Put the chopped shallots and the cider or wine into a large pan and cook gently for 10 minutes, then turn up the heat to medium-high.

3 Drain the mussels and tip into the pan. Cover and cook until most of them have opened: about 3 minutes.

4 Add the crème fraîche and put the lid back on for 30 seconds to allow it to melt. Add the parsley and shake the pan well to distribute, then season gently and serve immediately, discarding any mussels which remain closed.

Matt professes himself defeated by this point, but having spotted the children on the table next door chasing their oysters down with bowls of the mysterious orange dessert from the market in Cherbourg, I remember some unfinished business. Teurgoule, the man behind the bar tells me, means ‘twisted mouth’ – he purses his lips like a baby given a lemon – in Norman dialect, ‘because it’s very spicy!’ What arrives is a very slow-cooked rice pudding coloured with liberal amounts of cinnamon and nutmeg that sits like a stone in my stomach all afternoon. It’s too delicious to leave, however, and La Cale’s owner Remi, who lives up gratifyingly to his eccentric TripAdvisor reputation, is visibly impressed by my greed. ‘Welcome the English!’ he shouts happily as he threads his way among the tangle of tables. ‘We love you!’ On the way out of the car park, I notice he’s not joking: La Cale’s van, a huge battered Renault, has been graffitied with the legend ‘Rosbeefs welcome … Frogs too’.

The afternoon continues to heat up as we turn in from the coast, and there’s a lot of ground to cover after a relatively leisurely morning. I’ve already warned Matt that our destination for the evening is up a huge and sadly unavoidable hill, hoping the unbeatable views of the majestic Mont-Saint-Michel will soften the blow, but along the way there are other, unannounced hillocks that Google has hidden from me, and about four o’clock, he screeches to an emergency stop in a small town. ‘I need a drink,’ he says firmly and, like a homing pigeon, heads to the nearest bar.

While I vainly try to prop the ungainly Eddy upright against a house, he tosses his gloves and helmet onto a nearby table and goes in to order. I seat myself and regard the woman boldly doing justice to a large glass of red in the 30°C heat. So French, I think admiringly – so I’m startled when her husband comes back with a beer and broad Kent accent.

Two days away from home, and I can’t resist striking up a conversation with my long-lost countrymen; turns out they’ve been here over a decade, and have no plans to return to the UK, though their older daughter is about to move back because she can’t find work. I ask, in what I hope is a neutral tone, if the prospect of Brexit in less than 12 months’ time worries them. ‘No,’ the lady says, with commendable sanguinity, ‘we don’t hear much about it here. I suppose it will be okay.’

They’re more anxious about us getting run over by what they call ‘milk floats’ – the tiny, whining voiturettes you can drive in France without a licence, making them, they claim, popular with those banned for drink driving. ‘They’re lethal, those things,’ she tells me as we leave. ‘Watch your back.’