One More Croissant for the Road

This slightly sinister warning, as well as a vast, bloated dead cow I spot out of the corner of my eye as I roll past a farmyard on the outskirts of town, make me feel quite nervous and when I lose Matt on a long climb shortly afterwards, I become positively paranoid. Just as I’m about to turn around to see if he’s been flattened by a drunkard on a milk float, he comes round the corner looking a bit pink, and asks, very politely, how many more mountains we have to climb before the big one. I have to confess I have no idea, but there’s certainly no mistaking the thing when we finally reach it: Avranches is a very pretty town, if you don’t mind heights.

The road in winds up round the lower suburbs like a snake, though this gradient is at least preferable to the shortcuts Google Maps keeps trying to divert me onto, all of which appear near vertical. When I finally make it to our budget hotel, I’m puce, and there’s no sign of Matt. ‘Do you have a bar?’ I ask Madame, sweating onto her registration forms. She looks genuinely apologetic as she shakes her head, so I head upstairs for a cold shower instead.

Somewhat revived, I look out of the window to check Eddy is still in the courtyard three stories below, and see Matt sitting on the terrace sipping a large glass of orange juice and looking rather pink. ‘She just offered it to me,’ he shouts up in response to my aggrieved question. ‘I think she went to get it from her own kitchen. I must have looked like I was having a heart attack.’

In the circumstances, it seems wise to head no further than the café across the square lest we lose even an inch of gradient before dinner. I happily put away yet more potatoey pizza, and Matt polishes off not only a sausage version, but a big bowl of ‘pasta General Patton’, named after the leader of the US liberating forces in 1944, which might also explain, now I come to think of it, the large tank parked up on the roundabout opposite our table. With a fair quantity of carb to walk off, we stroll through the town to try to find that famous view of Mont-Saint-Michel before the sun goes down.

As it sinks lower in the sky, almost bouncing against the horizon, we force our protesting legs into a final dash through the botanic gardens, tripping over bits of ancient stonework in our hurry, and just manage to catch a glimpse of the celebrity island across the bay before it disappears into the darkness. The sea is silvery under an apricot sky, and from here, on the edge of Normandy, we can see the Breton coast stretching away westwards in the sunset.

Give or take the odd farmhouse, it’s a landscape that doesn’t look much like it’s changed in centuries. ‘Nice and flat anyway,’ says Matt with some satisfaction as we turn for home.

Km: 157.5

STAGE 3

Avranches to Dol-de-Bretagne (#litres_trial_promo)

Omelette Soufflée

The omelette is an ancient dish, known and loved long before Mont-Saint-Michel was even a twinkle in a monkish eye, but the island has been famous for ‘the exquisite lightness and beauty’ of its version for over a century. These are not the creamy baveuse omelettes of classical French cookery, but puffy soufflés, whipped until they rear from the pan like sea foam, and finished over a wood fire with copious amounts of Norman butter.

One of the benefits of staying at the top of a huge hill, of course, becomes evident the next morning, when we speed out of town like racing demons, Matt shooting past too fast for me to see the smile on his face. We’ve already learnt one valuable lesson today: many things in France, including, incredibly, boulangeries that even open on Christmas morning, are closed on Mondays (see here (#litres_trial_promo), Pause-Café – French Opening Hours). How I’ve never realised this before is unclear, but after wandering disconsolately around the shuttered streets for half an hour, we finally spot a man with a baguette under his arm and sprint to catch up. My reward for accosting a complete stranger in a foreign language before I’ve had so much as a coffee: a pretty decent, very flaky 8/10 croissant. Coffee, however, remains a distant dream.

After crossing the handsome stone bridge at Pontaubault where we finally wave goodbye to the Cotentin Peninsula, the road swings right and climbs briefly out of town before dropping abruptly down into the bay of Mont-Saint-Michel. Suddenly we find ourselves pedalling into a sea mist; the only sounds the plaintive bleating of sheep somewhere to our left and, briefly, the hullabaloo of a convoy of Americans on hire bikes too busy complaining about their ‘sore asses’ to greet us as they pass. As the sound of their protests recedes into the gloom, and I shrug on my jacket for the first time, things begin to feel a little bit creepy.

On the plus side, when the Mont does finally show itself to us, it seems gratifyingly close – until we notice the cycle route sign: 17km. ‘Hang on a minute,’ Matt calls to me. ‘Didn’t that last road say it was only 9km?’ I check my phone, still wobbling slightly every time I take my hands from the bars of my poor, overladen steed. ‘Yeah … I think possibly the cycle one takes the scenic route.’ There’s a short but loaded silence from behind, then, ‘How scenic?’

He has a point: for all the Dutch caravans and British estate cars, these are hardly superhighways winding us through the polders, and I’ve made our lunch reservation on the Mont stupidly early for reasons I can’t now remember, so we’re easily persuaded off the bike route and on to the main road, which takes us past an enormous fragrant biscuiterie churning out delicious buttery galettes. Sadly, there’s no time to stop and investigate the factory gift shop; I content myself with breathing in deeply instead.

Several kilometres from the island itself the road comes to an abrupt end in north-west France’s largest car park. Once upon a time you could drive right up to the foot of the rock at low tide, and chance your vehicle being washed into the great beyond if you lingered too long over the postcards (indeed, as we discover later, there’s still some very entertaining footage of exactly this online). These days, you have to park on the mainland and take a shuttle bus across the sands: visitors are allowed to cycle the 800-metre causeway before 10 a.m., but as you can’t leave your bike at the other end it’s a largely pointless exercise unless you’re desperate to add another couple of kilometres to the day’s total, and we’re too late anyway, so we ditch them in the parking area, lugging our bags with us as the lockers are out of action ‘due to high security level’.

Though the bike racks may be quiet, the bus is busy, and we cram on behind a great muscular man with a shih tzu in a rucksack, who tuts every time anyone inadvertently brushes against the dog, which, thanks to the density of humanity on board, is fairly often. I stack my mysteriously weighty panniers on my foot, hold on and pray that the bus moves swiftly, which of course it doesn’t, stopping almost immediately at the row of rapacious gift shops a few hundred metres from the visitor centre, where more people attempt to squash in. It’s amazing, I think, how quickly even a regular passenger on the Northern Line can get used to the glorious space and solitude of the open road.

The shuttle doesn’t take us all the whole way to the Mont; it stops some distance from it, allowing everyone to rush over to the railings for snaps with the most famous island in France, a fortress that repelled every invasion attempt during the Hundred Years War with England. How things change; outside Paris, Mont-Saint-Michel is the most-visited site in the country.

Much as I love watching people pose for selfies, we’re in a hurry, surging forward through the great stone arch at the vanguard of this particular wave of heathen marauders. The restaurant, La Mère Poulard, is easy to spot, thanks to the crowd standing outside with cameras, snapping the action in the open kitchen, where huge numbers of eggs are being beaten in copper bowls ready for the lunchtime rush.

This place has been known for its omelettes for over a century: the eponymous Mère Poulard set up shop cooking for pilgrims and tourists in the late 1800s, and gained a reputation for her omelettes in particular – an easy thing to put together on an island with no grazing or agricultural land. The hotel she ran with her husband, in a prime position just inside the gates, was perfectly placed to take advantage of the tourist boom, and her dining room was soon mentioned as a must-visit in contemporary travel guides (as, in fact, was the rival establishment run by her brother-in-law, though clearly he was less good at marketing).

Poulard is said to have ruled her establishment with an iron whisk: when King Leopold of Belgium demanded to eat outside, on a terrace reserved for the taking of coffee, he was apparently given short shrift by Madame. She must have been a tartar in the kitchen, too, because those omelettes look like bloody hard work. The recipe is a closely guarded secret; despite my best efforts in wheedling French, all I can get out of the wolfish young chef closest to me is that he has to beat the mixture for 15 minutes before it’s ready. He winks – I’d make a joke about his wrist action if only I could remember the vocab.

Hanging around for slightly longer than feels entirely polite, I watch the process with a keen eye, taking notes as the team beat out a syncopated rhythm with their whisks. Each long-handled pan is heated in front of the massive fireplace until the butter inside sizzles, before the well-whisked mixture is added and the pan stacked neatly on a shelf at the side of the hearth. Once the omelette is cooked, it’s briefly toasted in the flames, and then served immediately.

Having apparently learnt all that there is to be learnt from the tight-lipped staff, and shortly before someone calls security, I make my way up to the slightly sepulchral dining room, where Matt is sitting reading The Times in the company of a pair of Korean girls charging their phones on the table, a family of voluble Italians and a grumpy British couple who look like they’d dearly like to ask him for the features section. Almost every inch of wall is covered with photographs of grandees who have been lucky enough to feast on the famous Poulard hospitality, ranging from Trotsky to Marilyn Monroe and Margaret Thatcher, who came as a guest of President Mitterand, apparently to ‘discuss the problems of the world over a good omelette’ – one hopes they weren’t served by the same rather pungent waiter that we’ve been assigned by the deliciously superior maître d’. ‘I wouldn’t mind,’ Matt says in a manner that suggests that even if he did he’d be too well mannered to say so, ‘but at this time of day surely it must be the beginning of his shift.’ I’m just glad he smells worse than us, I say.

I open the menu and confirm what I already know: that at €34 this omelette is to be the single most expensive dish I will eat on my entire trip, and that includes a Michelin-starred birthday treat a month from now. (The price makes the three-course menu at €48 feel like a bargain, just as it’s designed to, though in fact I probably don’t need a poached egg and samphire salad and a frozen Calvados soufflé to push my egg consumption for the day into the danger zone.)

The American journalist and gourmand Waverley Root, recalling the ‘luscious omelettes’ of 1920s Normandy in his classic work The Food of France, feels confident enough to recommend the Mère Poulard version 30 years later, ‘providing that the passage of time and of a good many thousand tourists has not wrought havoc on it’.

I can confirm that, almost a century later, mass production does not seem to have been to the detriment of quality. I suspect price inflation has been disproportionate, yet given the criminal mark-up, it’s disappointingly delicious. The outer shell is almost leathery, in pleasurable contrast to the moussey interior, and gilded with salty, slightly burnt butter – it’s almost like an American-style half-moon breakfast omelette rather than the classic runny French cigar, but stuffed with an egg-white foam rather than gooey cheese. A dish of potatoes and bacon fried in lard arrives on the side; for a few euros more I could have had scallops or foie gras instead, but, really, there are limits. My advice is, go to Mont-Saint-Michel, watch the spectacle, then go home and make one yourself.

Omelette Soufflée à la Mère Poularde

For all its carefully cultivated mystique, the world’s most famous omelette is surprisingly easy to reproduce – all you need is a bit of elbow grease (or an electric whisk). I haven’t suggested any fillings, as adding extra ingredients to the pan will knock the air out of the eggs, but a few chopped herbs on top are very welcome, and you can serve fried potatoes and cured ham, or sautéed mushrooms, or indeed foie gras if you must, on the side. I tried finishing it under the grill, to replicate the flashing of the pan through the fire, but concluded this was just for show, though if you want to get the blowtorch out, be my guest.

Per omelette

3 eggs

A pinch of salt

Oil, to grease

Generous 1 tbsp cold butter, cut into small dice

1 Crack the eggs into a large bowl with the salt, and begin whisking vigorously. Once they’re fairly foamy, oil a heavy-based frying pan about 20cm wide and put it on a medium heat.

2 Keep whisking the eggs until they’re very thick and bubbly, almost like a mousse. This will probably take just under 4 minutes with a hand whisk.

3 Pour the mixture into the pan and leave to set until it begins to come away from the side of the pan, then gently loosen the edges with a spatula and slide the butter underneath, shaking to distribute it evenly beneath the omelette.

4 Once it’s deep golden underneath but still foamy and wet above, carefully shake it on to a plate, fold over and serve immediately.

Almost €150 lighter, we stagger down the stairs with our panniers, the elegant maître d’s eyes sliding tactfully away from us as we lurch in his rarefied direction, and attack the Mont proper, which is, even on a Monday afternoon in May, fairly swarming with visitors. The single street is one long gift shop, and it’s a relief to pay the entrance fee for the abbey simply to shake off a few school parties – the man doing the bag search is all smiles when I explain we’re cyclists, and lets us go through with our massive burdens, despite their bulk being in clear violation of the security regulations (to say nothing of the deadly salami slicer at the bottom of mine).

With such a burden, it makes sense to take turns in the church; I stand outside, enjoying the sea breeze and the relative peace and watching groups of excited human ants racing round on the treacherous sands below. Next to me, a British woman tells children more concerned with chasing seagulls that ‘apparently the thing to do with quicksand is not to panic and try to move – it agitates the sand and turns it liquid so it sucks you down’. Clearly the ants didn’t get that particular memo, I think, half hoping for a minor emergency to brighten the view. Suddenly an incongruous crocodile of heavily armed policeman, clad in what appears to be riot gear, march through the gardens beneath the wall on which I’m leaning. Be careful what you wish for, I think with a shiver, remembering the earlier warning about elevated security levels.

At that moment, Matt reappears blinking into the sunlight to rescue me from my morbid thoughts, and I slip into the abbey. I have a bit of a thing for monastic architecture (why, since you ask, I do have a favourite: the lovely light-filled Cistercian Abbaye du Thoronet in Provence), and this place delivers in spades, particularly in the quieter nooks and crannies, like the draughty room in the cliffside once reserved for the laying out of dead monks. I close my eyes and try to imagine the gloomy scene; the stinking guttering candles, hooded figures and howling winds. Above a child wails, ‘Bird BIT ME!’ The moment is lost. Time to go.

As we break free from the mercenary Mont without so much as a commemorative fridge magnet between us, clouds begin to gather above, and by the time we’re back at the bikes, it’s ominously dark. It’s not far to Dol-de-Bretagne, our ultimate destination, barely 30km in fact, but shortly after leaving Normandy, and well before we get there, the heavens open to discharge rain so hard and all encompassing that we’re forced to seek refuge in a handily placed bus shelter until it slackens off. Parents waiting for the school bus in their warm, dry cars watch us watching the rain, and for the first time I wish I wasn’t on a stupid bike. It certainly won’t be the last.

Finally, we tell ourselves it’s definitely getting lighter on the horizon and push off miserably into a road already lit for evening at 5 p.m. in the dying days of May, arriving in Dol-de-Bretagne damp rather than actively dripping, though clearly still a sufficiently tragic sight to merit the sympathetic offer of a hot coffee as we check in. Though our beds for the night are considerably cheaper than our lunch, the hostel is a sweet place: new and clean and cleverly designed, and Matt is even kind enough to let me have the top bunk, which immediately puts me in a good mood. If there’s an age when you grow out of the thrill of sleeping near ceilings, I’m still waiting to reach it.

I duck into reception to ask about food. There’s a terrifying pause as the staff confer, and then I hear the glorious word crêperie: ideal, given this is Matt’s first and last night in Brittany. Monsieur is even kind enough to ring to check they’re open on a Monday evening – ‘you must hurry; they are open, but it is quiet, so they want to close soon’. In fact, once installed in the cosily lit, low-beamed dining room with the customary bowl of cider in front of us (‘Are you sure we’re meant to be drinking out of these?’), we prove to be quite the trendsetters, and thanks to the crowd that pour in after us, the poor proprietors of Le Dol’Mène aux Saveurs don’t get their early night after all.

I order a galette with cheese, ham, egg (another egg! I think belatedly – why do I do this to myself?) and a local speciality, the andouille de Guémené, a sausage made from 25 layers of intestine and stomach, smoked, yet not sufficiently to mask the odour of its main ingredient. It looks strangely beautiful, like an optical illusion made from offal, but tastes more challenging – and I’m keen for Matt to at least smell it before he goes home.

He’s not exactly effusive, but actually, fried until crisp, these andouilles are markedly more pleasant than my previous experience of them cold from the butchers, and they certainly don’t dent my appetite for a sweet crêpe with apples and the famous Breton salted caramel sauce. Matt goes for one flambéed at the table with booze poured from a little copper pan, which embarrasses him no end to my actual and lasting delight, and we celebrate with a glass of cider brandy before wobbling back through Dol’s charming half-timbered, solid little main street, with its medieval houses and plaques proudly celebrating the town’s unlikely links to the Scottish House of Stewart. Haggis crêpes, there’s an idea, I think as I fall asleep with my nose pressed up against the ceiling.

Km: 48.4

STAGE 4

Dol-de-Bretagne to Saint-Malo (#litres_trial_promo)

A Platter of Oysters

Oysters need little introduction, save to say that Brittany produces some exceptionally fine examples, which are best – as with all oysters in my opinion – served naked or perhaps with the merest dribble of shallot vinaigrette, preferably within sight of the salty waters from whence they came.