Three key things you need to do to survive on a family cycle tour

It’s gone a bit quiet on here lately - though not on Twitter (do you follow us on Twitter yet?) since Rhoda’s surprise rise to fame, which has abated now but continues to keep us busy with spinoff projects and requests to use the film! We’ve got all sorts of things lined up over the next couple of months but it’s robbed us of time to write so much about them. Indeed, the rest of the footage from our Borders training camp has yet to be edited, and has only just been viewed for the first time!

Anyway, in a brief lull at forest school today, I was talking with a couple of the other parents about the read-across between what we do as a cycle-touring family, and other family activities which may not necessarily include bikes! It got me thinking about the three things you need for a succesful bike tour - two of which apply in many respects to any family adventure in the outdoors. 

Round-the-World record holder Mark Beaumont taught us in his films that the three key ingredients are...

1. You need to eat and drink
2. You need to sleep
3. You need to do the miles

Eat, sleep, cycle, repeat. So much more in that than a T-shirt slogan, especially with children. Let's have a look at those three elements, what they mean for us, and how the knowledge and kit we've accrued can be applied to things other than cycle touring! We're going to explore each of the three in a separate post in the coming days, in more detail.

Eat

I've lost count of the number of times I've been for a petrol station lunch whilst on my bike (food of champions, often consumed in the cyclist's dining room, the humble bus shelter!) and upon dumping a pile of overpriced packets often amounting to a 'what not to eat' of cycling nutrition on the counter, I've been asked "any fuel?" - "yes," I say, pointing to the crisps, jelly babies, and Thomas Ivor's usual scotch egg - "this is it!".

Eating is a major part of riding your bike for long distances, day after day. It's something that we have to get right for the adults, and the children, sometimes with different strategies - or, more often than not, we sort the children out and supplement that as the grownups find necessary. You wouldn't set out for an expedition in the car without fuelling it first (ok, we've all tried...) but the human body, particularly in child form, needs careful and adequate fuelling in order to perform.

In order to do that we need to choose and source the fuel, but we also need to store it, carry it, prepare and perhaps cook it, we need something to eat it off, and to dispose of the remains afterwards.

So, two things to sort out - what you're eating, and what you're eating it with/off/cooked by. Is this so much different for us on a non-cycling day out? Not really - except sometimes for portion control! We'll have a look at what we fuel with on the road, and in a separate post, how we carry it, cook it, eat it and dispose of it.

Sleep

A day trip isn't a bike tour any more than a trip that doesn't involve visiting an island isn't a holiday. That latter bit may just apply to our family, in fairness. You get my point, though? A tour is only a tour if you actually go somewhere, and then on to somewhere else another day - unless you're Peter Kay.

Sleeping whilst travelling light as a family has some issues specific to cycle touring, when it comes to packing, but whether in a bivvy bag, a tent, a bothy or a hotel, staying out overnight as a family poses challenges most commonly peculiar to the children, rather than the bikes. You might have a baby who’s still up in the night. Toddlers who refuse to accept it’s night time at all. Perhaps your children are a little older and it’s time for them to sleep in their own room - or move out and leave you to it - after all, Mummy and Daddy are on holiday, too!

Getting the sleep you need, for the whole tribe, is critical to the success of your adventure. It can be a major source of expense and stress in inverse proportion, or at worst, both together! Some people thrive on getting up in the morning and having no idea where they’ll sleep that night; others cannot function without everything being booked weeks in advance. We’ll have a look at different planning and sleeping options - particularly our criteria for family tents you don’t need a car to carry. Sleeping bags and mats. How, where, when and with whom to sleep, with or without a tent. When to bail out and use a Premier Inn, and a bit about the kindness of strangers.

Do the miles

If you’ve eaten and slept well, it’s time to get on with the adventure you wanted to have in the first place! That food, and sleeping kit, is going to want putting somewhere while you do it. We’ve adapted our packing for cycling, hillwalking, canoeing, and even the occasional trip, heaven forfend, with the car! The common theme is finding and using kit you can trust, packing it efficiently and adapting the outfit as your family (and the adventure) changes.

There we go, then. A little series that will be of particular relevance as we get nearer to our big summer challenge for this year - and inspiration for you, our readers, too, we trust! There’s your planning mantra to get started. Apply it to all your ideas to test them…How will we nail down each part?

Eat. Sleep. Ride...  Repeat.

"Ride the bike, Ruth!" - Entering the world of Under 8s cyclocross racing...

Ruth ByCycle is not a little girl to sit around and wait for things to happen to her.  Oh no.  Since she could first talk and walk, she has made things happen.  Some of the things have been very successful, others, not so much.  She learned to open doors, and baby gates because she wanted to get out to have a crack at more exciting things she could see on the other side.  She cut her own hair, because frankly Mummy was taking far too long about arranging a hair appointment.  She helped herself to her brother’s bike packing bags and tried to fit them to her frame when it seemed that Mummy and Daddy had failed to realise that 3 year olds need bike packing kit.

So it should have come as no surprise that when Ruth, now 4, decided she wanted to enter a race on her bike, Ruth was going to enter a race on her bike.  Or rather, on her brother’s bike.  Ruth had decided that she was going to need something more competitive than her 16” wheels, so 'Merida' was consigned to the cupboard and Ruth pestered Daddy until he conceded that she could have a go on the semi-retired 20” Islabikes Beinn, which, she pointed out, she could test ride on the turbo trainer.  The reach was a bit more of a stretch than ideal, but having taken it for a spin around our usual training ground, the nearby “Secret Squirrel Velodrome”, Tom was happy enough that she wasn’t going to do herself a mischief.

Training with Dan Lloyd. Like a boss.

So it was that we found ourselves headed for the Milton Keynes Bowl on the cold but sunny morning of 30 September.  

Until this morning,  I associated “the Bowl” with concerts - not bike racing.  We arrive in the car park (such is our eagerness that we are uncharacteristically early) and get Beinn the bike out, and some extra layers to keep Ruth warm while we wait for the race to start.  

Kit is very important to our little people.  They want to feel part of things, so Ruth was already fully kitted out in her mini Canyon-SRAM jersey, her tri shorts and leg warmers (again, shamelessly pinched from big brother @Thomas_Ivor) and had been since she arrived in our bedroom at 6am declaring herself “ready”.  Rhoda, likewise, absolutely required full cycling kit for her role as her big sister’s chief cheerleader, but equally absolutely shunned the idea of wearing anything to cover her legs, so it was shorts for her.

“Mummy, I need my Laura Trott plaits”.  I dutifully braid Ruth’s hair to her satisfaction - if it’s good enough for an Olympian, Ruth thinks it will probably do for her first race.  “I need plaits too”.  Rhoda likewise, is soon sporting her own tribute to the mighty Laura Trott - if you need proof of what the influence of successful women on little girls can be, look no further than these two!

We were ready: time to sign on.  We walked through to the bowl from the car park. As well as being Ruth’s first cyclocross race, it was also Mummy’s first time at a cyclocross race.

It is probably time for a confession:  I am not sure I really understand the point of cyclocross racing.  It appears to me that a group of fully grown adults, and a smaller number of children,  take their bikes to chase around a churned up patch of grass over which they ride lap after identical lap and then go home in a muddy mess having gone, well, nowhere.  However, I am not one to stand in the way of a dream, so I donned my wellies and kept my counsel.

Arriving at the gates, I look around and take in the Bowl, filled with what looks like several hundred miles of plastic tape marking out a course that traverses and climbs the sides and bottom of the bowl, disappearing off into trees.  I try to work out where you get into the taped labyrinth for practice.  I can see the start/finish line, but struggle to work out much more than that.  

Clearly the under 8s weren’t going to tackle the whole course (not unless we wanted the race to last an entire week), but which bit would they race over?  The flat bit at the bottom?  How was four year old Ruth going to fare with navigating her way around this?  Good job we came early for a look at the course, I thought.

But first things first:  a very proud Ruth, grinning ear to ear, was hanging Beinn on the bike stand (which it is barely big enough for) by the registration desk and was soon clutching her very first set of race numbers, and a timing chip (which looked rather large) for her (implausibly small) shoes.  We pin and stick the race numbers to her jersey and look around to see where to get into the course to give Ruth a proper look at where she would be going.  Tom set off with her to walk along the course with her.

This was no flat course, and Ruth was soon having to work out that she needed to get off and push her bike up the sloped side of the bowl, before getting back on to roll down again.  This all took quite a long time, and she lost confidence as other kids warming up zipped up  and down past her.  Urged on by her friend Jake (racing in the U10s) and Daddy, she was soon back with us in the start area to be marshalled.

The body warmer came off.  The drinks bottle found its way to Mummy’s handbag (where all discarded items belonging to the children seem to end up, no matter what I do) in the name of "weight saving", and she was ready.

There were quite a few parents watching, but most it seemed were getting ready to race themselves.  At aged 4, racing in the under 8s, Ruth was one of the youngest competitors.  She looked serious as she listened to the commissaire’s instructions.  As the race began, there was such a look of determination written across her features- I have never seen her so intent on anything.  They were off, with Daddy strategically positioned further up the course to help make sure Ruth goes the right way through the taped maze...

Rhoda and Mummy begin whooping and hollering:  “Go Ruth!  Whooooo!”.  Mummy realises that she might be the only grown up cheering.  What is wrong with everyone?  Why is no one else cheering?  Wait, no, there is someone else shouting.  That would be Daddy.  We are potentially committing a cycle parent faux pas - I have no idea.  Maybe people don’t cheer?  They definitely cheer at road races.  Does cyclocross have different rules?

The race moves away from the start/finish line, and Rhoda and I set off for the side of the bowl where we know Ruth will struggle to push her bike up and around.  There is an interminable wait (at least three minutes) until we can see Ruth well enough to see how she’s doing.  She is dead last.  She is crying but she is still riding the bike.  She approaches the bottom of the hill and looks unsure.  “That’s it Ruth” - I can hear Tom hollering.  “Jump off and push, now”

“GO RUTH!”  Rhoda joins in.  

“Push your bike to Mummy - good girl - you can do it!”

She heaves.  The grass is wet and she struggles for grip.  She sobs, but she doesn’t stop.  The first child laps her.  She stops while they pass her but then she is moving again.

“Ruthie, Ruthie, Ruthie!  You’re doing it - keep going!”

We are still the only parents cheering.  People are looking.  And frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn. That’s my girl, and I’m going to make ALL the noise for her.

She crests the hill, briefly triumphant.  Rhoda and I are jubilant and immediately make a lot more noise.  Tom (down the bottom) is louder still.

Now, get back on the bike, Ruth, I think.

She is still walking.  She turns and looks doubtfully at the slope back down, now churned by the wheels of the previous 30 odd kids to pass over it (twice by now).   She stops and looks some more. 

“Get on your bike, Ruth”, I venture.

“Ride the bike, Ruth”, I hear Tom shouting from some considerable distance away, and briefly register what a ludicrous thing to shout this must sound to anyone else who came here to watch a bike race.

Ruth has rolled down slopes like this hundreds of times, but in this moment she has misplaced the confidence to do it.  She scrambles down slowly on foot until she is back on the level.  She is still running with the bike.

“GET ON YOUR BIKE, Ruth!” She looks at me.  Tear stained.  Muddy.   I want to go and grab her and hug her and take her home.  “You can do it Ruth -just get on your bike!”  She looks daggers at me, briefly, but then climbs on and pedals away from me. She expects to see a flag at the finish (and so do I - she has taken over 9 minutes at this point).  There is no flag.  So she..... sets off for a second lap.  Just like that,  no fuss.  She’s just as intent as she was for the first lap, as the entire field begins to lap her again.  

I can see Tom jogging along with her.  She is making good progress along the bottom of the bowl, and then, they are back at the slope again.

“You can do it, Ruth, up you come!”

She gets off, she grits her teeth. She wails, she cries, she shouts, she growls, but she does it.  Herself.  She is up.  Other parents look at us like we are a) insane and b) possibly torturing our daughter, who is by now so far behind the field that it is starting to look like she isn’t even in the same race.

“Ruthie! Ruthie! Ruthie!  You’re a star! You did it! Woooohooo!”  

She rounds the corner and again refuses to ride down the slope, and slip-slithers her way back down.  The determination face is there again at the bottom.  She is going to finish this.

Rhoda and I hare back down to the finish area, waiting for the marshals to allow us to cross the course to get back.

Ruth is there, muddy, beaming ear to ear.  She came in last, and probably about a minute after the rest of the race finished, one lap down on most of the other participants, but she did it.  

I ask her what she might like as a treat for completing her first race.  She wants to watch the podium. She doesn’t say it, but I watch her as her friend Jake collects a medal and I can see on her face that she knows that one day that will be her on the podium.

Medals awarded, Ruth is back to business.  “Mummy, I have thought of what I would like. An egg sandwich.  And when we do this next week, I would like to win”.

"Next week?"  What?  We have to do this again?

Footnote: Ruth has indeed been Cyclocrossing again, on a brand new steed. As if we could stop her...

We are very grateful for the warm welcome (and cake!) we all received at the MK Bowl, from the Central Cyclocross League. You can find out more about the Central Cyclocross League on their website, and if you're elsewhere in the country, try the British Cycling website for Cyclocross events listings near you.

What did you bring home from your holiday?

A fridge magnet? A snowglobe? An 'I [heart] <insert place name here>' t-shirt? Diarrhoea?

Tonight, I had one of those moments when you just go for broke on the culinary front. 'Caution to the wind' job. "Let's do Thomas Ivor some galettes before he goes back to school".

As perhaps befits such an effort, I managed to end up producing six litres of batter, which turns out to be twice what we were up for consuming, and my technique is still, shall we say, 'improving', but it worked! The egg one went a bit wrong, but cheese and ham worked nicely, and magically, the creme fraiche and smoked salmon came good, too. Took me right back to lunch in St Méen le Grand, just missing the scallops!

We haven't had galettes since we left Brittany a few weeks ago, having enjoyed the traditional Breton staple with all manner of fillings most days during our trip there.

Yes, we have our memories, and our photographs, our blog posts and videos, but how wonderful to bring home the means to have a little taste of our French adventure any time we like.

We're going to have to buy a 'billig' so we can entertain, Breton style, next time we have people to stay with us...

Who will buy...?

I'm not a morning person. I never have been. I'm just not the sort of person who wakes, or is woken, and automatically dives headlong into a new day, full of bounce and vitality, like  a character in a breakfast cereal advert. At the other end of the day, I can keep plugging away into the night, but don't call me in the morning.

Alastair Humphreys wrote "Mornings come peacefully on the road". Now that I am settled back into being 'on the road', even a broken spoke isn't disturbing that peace.

In a complete reversal of the normal order, I woke first this morning, at dawn. Instead of fighting the daylight, or being aware of other people having beaten me to it, I heard the sweet silence of the morning, punctuated only by birdsong, the occasional call from Morgane and Marin's rooster, and the tolling of a distant church bell, quite unlike those we hear at home. All the moment wanted for was some Grieg playing in the background.

Tempting as it might have been on another day to vegetate and luxuriate in the calm, and despite the mileage we've done, which at the moment amounts to more strenuous exercise than I am ever used to at home, I got up, got dressed, and, taking the camera, slipped out into the crisp morning air. With the lifting of the burden of a day already being accounted for before it even begins, and with the children still asleep, I was wound back a decade or more, to the days when I would have gone out to take photographs, just for the pleasure of it, and because I could. Nothing earth shattering, but a wholesale and liberating paradigm shift all the same. Shades of the first scene after the intermission, in 'Oliver'; "Who will buy this wonderful morning...".

I can only attribute to the invigorating power of the road, the slowly settling change in me.

That's not to say we didn't have things to do today, because that spoke wasn't going to fix itself, and our bikes were literally caked in sand and grit after many miles on the voies vertes. The resulting mess was like having oiled your bike with cutting compound.

I returned to the house, where everyone else was starting their day. We breakfasted with our hosts, the girls taking the opportunity to show their new friend Brewen 'In the Night Garden' on the iPad, in between playing with his toys. Oh, add rhubarb jam to the menu when we get back home!

Morgane, Marin and Brewen were off to a baptism, so we let them get on their way and got ourselves ready for a trip into St Méen le Grande, the nearest town, to try and get my spoke fixed, and source some kit to clean the bikes with. Riding the bikes unladen was something of a novelty!

A beautiful new mural adorns the water tower as you enter Saint Méen Le Grand.

Saint Méen Le Grand is a cycling town, justifiably proud of her most famous son, three-time Tour de France winner Louison Bobet. We have seen, again, levels of civic pride we just don't recognise from home, heightened of course because of the passage of a stage of the Tour this year. Every shop in town has a picture of their 'local boy done good' in the window. To think all we managed for our Olympians was a thin coat of gold paint on a post box.

In the midst of this cycling fervour, rolling into town we were stopped by a Police  roadblock - for a bunch of roadies! We never quite got to the bottom of what the event was, but there were loads of them knocking about town. The first guys we stopped to talk to told us the bike shop wasn't open all day, so we got on with that bit of the job first.

In a town like this, we were unsurprised to find a nicely-appointed bike shop, with something of a racing bent; lots of lovely rims hanging up, but nothing of the kind that might have tempted me to buy a replacement wheel. The mechanic took the view that rebuilding the whole wheel would be uneconomic, so we had him crack on and change the broken spoke, whilst we had a whizz round the shop buying cleaning materials and a couple of new chains. I'd had some slipping a couple of times yesterday, and having previously broken one (embarrassingly, in the middle of a road-rage incident, whilst on a roundabout, towing the trailer) in Exeter last year after our trip to Scotland, I figured that whilst they've not done massive miles, at almost a year old, and now covered in rubbish, they could go.

I also managed to source a cycling-themed souvenir from our trip, which will appear in due course...

It was back into town for lunch next, via a cracking patisserie, with their obligatory picture of Bobet in the window. We're learning not to miss lunchtime now! 

We struggled to find somewhere to park the trailer, and our bikes, in the blistering midday heat. In the end, the bikes were locked up at one end of the town square and the trailer came with us to the other. We got some funny looks for parking Ruth and Rhoda a few metres from our table outside the restaurant, but the shade was critical, not only for the comfort of the sleeping girls (and 'Froomey') but for the cakes nestled in the back!

Unsurprisingly, it was galettes for lunch, with some new fillings. Smoked salmon and crème fraîche couldn't be passed by, but when we translated 'Noix de St Jacques', I had to order one of them as well...

Thomas Ivor put away another plateful of steak haché without blinking. It makes such a change for him to just demolish meals without fuss - the lad's clearly been working hard.

Lunch concluded (crêpes all round!), we went back out down 'Rue Louison Bobet' (that man again!) to the industrial estate, to visit the supermarket for some provisions, and for a naughty trip to the jet wash. A bottle of degreasant later, we had the worst of the muck rinsed off the bikes, ready to ride back to base to change the chains and give the drivetrains a thorough clean. This went well enough except for the heart-stopping moment when Thomas Ivor, who was supposed to be keeping an eye on Rhoda as I linked up my new chain, took my filthy old one and made for the house and our hosts' living room. Mercifully, we got to her just in time!

We've had a lovely day in Saint Méen Le Grand, although we must move on once more tomorrow. Another time perhaps we will be able to make time to visit the Bobet museum. We have dropped the shortest day of our schedule to stay here, so we do have mileage to make up tomorrow once more, but we and the bikes are refreshed, the distance won't break any records, the weather is nice, and perhaps I can even look forward to another relaxing early start in the morning.

Religieuse, Ribot, Rayon, Relax

At the conclusion of today, four things stick out in my mind, and it all began at the end of the street where we stayed last night in Loudéac.

Rolling into town, trying to balance Google maps with not leaving Katie behind to keeping Thomas Ivor on the anti-clockwise-and-narrow at roundabouts, I didn't take in much of Loudéac, but upon turning onto the street the hotel was on (for 'hotel', read 'promised land' by this point!) I would have had a job missing the boulangerie/patisserie at the head of the building line. 

In the first glance I formed the instant opinion that upon checking out from the promised land, manna was likely to be found therein. 

I was right. And some!

With the novel advantage of having neither bedding nor tent to pack away, and our bikes still half loaded having spent the night slumbering in the back of the hotel kitchens, we were rolling sooner than usual this morning, and Thomas Ivor grabbed a quick picture outside the hotel before the shortest leg of the day, back to the bakery.

Ruth has so far not spoken much French, it is fair to say, but my word, can she work the 'international language of the gesture'! It was one of those moments when your heart melts, as she entered the shop and just gazed for a moment in wonder, trying to take in the bewildering array of sugar, cream, chocolate, fruit and pastry before her. She couldn't quite believe her eyes.

Soon, she very much could believe her eyes, and had not only decided what she wanted to order, but that she was going to conduct the necessary procurement exercise herself. Not only did she manage to say 'please' and 'thank you' in French, but she managed to pay for the cakes herself, with but a sotto voce reminder from Mummy to take her change.

Oddly enough, the Religieuse which Ruth had so carefully chosen and delicately carried out of the shop was subsequently demolished with great gusto...

All we had to do before we left town was to pick up some milk for the girls. 

That sounds simple enough, but we've been surprised to find how difficult it is to get milk round here. Yesterday in Gouarec our lunch stop told us they only had cream, for cooking with. I am neither a milk nor a tea drinker, but it would seem that the absence of the latter from the local diet makes it harder to obtain the former! Where we have bought milk, it has generally been semi-skimmed or lump it. All we needed was a supermarket and we could be on our way, and the sat-nav was telling us that we would go right through the middle of town to rejoin the voie verse. There had to be somewhere selling milk, somewhere along that route - surely?

We were almost back on the railway path and fearing that we would have to backtrack right the way through town, our early advantage wiped out, until, half way round a roundabout, I spotted out of the corner of my eye a branch of Netto. Sorted!

The day's heat was sneaking up on us as I waited in a car park with Katie's bike, the trailer, and all three children, as the former dashed into the supermarket, returning a while later with water for our bidons and 'milk'.

'Lait ribot' turns out to be quite unlike ordinary milk - it would seem to be partially fermented buttermilk, with salt added. Katie described it as 'like drinking sour yoghurt' and frankly her facial expression upon tasting it told me all I needed to know about its suitability for the girls' morning lactose fix. Seriously frustrated, Katie trudged back across the street and further along, found an organic supermarket (beware genetically-modified supermarkets) with something a little more palatable. Finally, having found a storm drain for the other stuff (lest it become cheesy as well as salty, in the back of the trailer), we got back on our way out of town. 

The remains of the Réseau Breton

The relaxed French way of doing things, which gives rise to the sacrosanct lunch period, actually becomes a source of stress for us, because it gives us a deadline in the middle of the day and reduces flexibility. As it became apparent that we weren't going to make it to Merdrignac for lunch, we took the decision to take a signed link off the path to a fair-sized village where we reckoned we should find somewhere to eat.

A short but very sharp climb later (ideally accompanied by the 'Hovis' music, played on an accordion) past a number of encouragingly-named but distinctly 'ferméed' buildings, we arrived at what turned out to be the only outlet in the village these days, a sports bar with an en suite village shop.

Thomas Ivor and I walked into the bar and practically everyone turned to look. It was like I'd burst into a wild west saloon with a gun in each hand. I'm not sure they see many English families there, in fairness. I had a quick scout of the place, looking for signs of food, but was aware of the eyes following me.

"Who are they?" asked maillot jaune-clad Thomas Ivor, pointing to a frame on the wall filled with pictures of cycling legends. Channelling my inner 'Fraülein Maria', I put my 'confidence in confidence alone' and spoke loudly enough for my audience to hear, too. "That's Jacques Anquetil, son. Big Grandad remembers going to watch him in the tour. There's Eddie Merckx - they used to call him 'the Cannibal'! That man there is Laurent Fignon, I can just about remember seeing him when I was first watching bike racing on the telly, and Bernard Hinault, there, 'the Badger' - these are all very famous, very talented riders, Thomas..."

I glanced over my shoulder; it had worked. The faces were smiling. Suddenly, it seemed, we were accepted. Come to a rural sports bar in Brittany and talk cycling, and it's like a French family arriving in a working men's club in West Yorkshire and talking about Rugby League. I imagine.

Katie, having decided that it was here or bust for lunch, spoke to the genial proprietor of the establishment. No, they didn't serve food, but if we bought our drinks from the bar, we could get something from the en suite shop and sit at a table to eat it. It was the next best thing in the circumstances.

We cobbled together a lunch of stale sliced bread, ham and cheese, a big bag of crisps, and since we didn't have a handkerchief to eat it off, like the local men around us, we fetched out food boxes and sporks from Thomas Ivor's panniers to use as crockery.

We rolled back down the hill to rejoin the voie verte and pressed on, sheltered from the heat by the trees for most of the way. The surface was more sandy in places, but it had generally been tamped down well; the gradient profile was also far more gentle than we'd experienced on the run to and out of Carhaix.

We were in good time for our arrival with our Warmshowers hosts for the night, so much so that we took the time to get the girls out for a nappy change, clean clothes and a leg stretch towards the end of the run, where Ruth learned about the workings of a combine harvester, of which we've seen a few in Brittany. All was going brilliantly until I picked my bike up. The load on the wheel as I raised it up managed to pop another spoke. Just when we were gaining confidence!

The last couple of miles passed in a more circumspect fashion, as I tried to keep my wheel as straight as I could. Thomas Ivor and I stopped briefly to talk to a couple who were evidently impressed with the little guy's progress. Their English, unusually, was no better than my French, at which as I ran out of vocabulary I had to explain that my wife would be along shortly!

As we homed in on our destination, we turned off an already bucolic, rural railway path, further into the backwater. Following field boundaries we came upon a sign for a road serving only two houses, and as we approached the end, out came Morgane, our host, to meet us. After ferries, campsites and a hotel, it was like arriving home. Soon we were joined by little Brewen, and with Thomas Ivor playing photographer, despite sharing not a single common word between them, the children hit the slide together.

We've been welcomed like old friends into Morgane and Marin's home, as have the bikes and the trailer, who are tucked up with our hosts' Chariot in the workshop. We've enjoyed our first galettes of the trip (more of which tomorrow), and been introduced to some of the more vernacular aspects of contemporary Breton culture - like 'Breizh Cola'! It's clear to us that there is a tremendous sense of civic pride here - both at a local level and in Brittany as a whole. Although many of the closest cultural similarities are to Cornwall, the identity reminds me a lot of Wales.

We're reliably informed that there's a decent bike shop in St Méen le Grand, just up the road, so today's spoke can be attended to tomorrow. After a couple of days of logistical difficulties, the Family ByCycle are tucked up in their little outhouse in rural Brittany, and we're feeling quite at home!