Paris to Flers (26 July):

This is the part I always hate about a trip.  After I decide I want to go, the ‘getting out of town’ part is hard for me.  I want to be into the trip already and the first day I always find myself driving through familiar territory so it is not much like a trip yet to me.  After the second day I am ok.  Don’t get me wrong, Paris to Flers is a nice trip on the D-roads after I get to Dreux using N12 but I have done this a dozen times before so I have to get past this to feel like I am off on a new trip.  After Dreux, I head west on D-926 though Aigle and on to Argentan.  From there I take D-924 to Flers.

When I set the GPS, I usually set short hops and tell it to use the ‘shortest distance’ instead of the ‘fastest trip’.  This keeps me on the D-roads I want to travel but it gets kind of strange in towns and villages.  I wind up on the weirdest short cuts through towns and see things you would not normally see on a road trip.  I wish there was a setting for ‘shortest distance except head straight through towns setting’ but there is not and I would start to just ignore the GPS directions in towns except for the fact that I have seen so many interesting things in towns I had originally just planned to zip through.  One really strange thing happened on this trip that you will not believe but I will save this for when I get there. 

Anyway, I did no stops or took any pictures on this leg and made it to the Flers ETAP hotel without issues.  I had previously did all my ETAP reservations on line and had no problems finding stops where I wanted them except for Biarritz where everything was full. This was not a problem, I just changed a loop and stayed in Pau which worked out better for me for the mountain part of this trip.

As for meals, I carry the makings for lunch on the bike which I refresh each day (eat in roadside parks) and buy what I call a ready-meal from the cooler section that I can heat up and eat in the hotel. 

I do this to contain travel costs and can average about 6 Euro a day for food.   I also average about 14 euro a day for fuel so total daily expenditures I can keep at around 20 Euro a day while on the road with ETAP hotels adding another 48 Euro.