Pornic ➡️ 56 km ↗️ 313 m

Cumul EV1: 470 km, Total 496 km

(Batshit crazy head-winds before the storm.)

Bakery is closed on Wednesday and we head grumpily towards Corsept where the baker serves us coffee to go. We have chat with a fellow cyclist, all of us seating on the planters in front of the bakery.
As we get closer to St Nazaire, the ship building sites respond to the family owned “carrelets”, the fishing cabins perched upon the banks and that will from now on accompany us till the Garonne Estuary.
As we reach the Estuary of the Loire, the monumental installation from artist Huang Yong Ping greets us. We turn our back to the industrial city and reach St Brévin where the mood is definitely one of a bathing place. Houses wear silly names referring to the ocean or to retirement.. The back streets are more pleasant, with mature tiny garden, graphical pines, cedars, cypresses. And the thick smell of chalef..
The wind is in our face and as we cycle round the Pointe St Gildas, it veers with us… Pornic and its turquoise water is close by now, and we see the Ile of Noirmoutier on our right.
The campground is closing in a couple of days and we enjoy the pool by ourselves, its exciting tunnel slides -some in total darkness, some connecting to hidden pools- and get to place the tente right above the seafront.
But the water is not turquoise, more of a lead colour, and wind is not softening.
Dinner in Pornic where we hear the weather is unexpectedly worsening rapidly and will hit hard between 11pm and 2am..
We cover the 4km back on the Corniche, with heavy rainfalls, cautious traffic and wind blasts that brutally catch our bikes sideways. The night is tense, the tent just holds, with the deafening sound of wind, rain and waves…Read more