The road entering Laval we had a few cars beeping at us, which we presumed were just nutty French loonies being annoying... Again as in many French town we took a few wrong routes and decided to follow signs to La Gare (train station), so we could find our bearings and find town maps which the French helpfully have in every place. Around the station we found a Brasserie which looked inviting, Andy went in to see the menu and translate it for me. Whilst he did this an old man slowly pondered up to me; he looked at the bikes, looked at me, smiled, and started chirping away in French. My only response I felt was to ask "parlez-vous Anglais?," this though either fell on deaf ears (likely due to his age) or he just wanted to torment me further, as he persisted, I presume, to ask me questions. After giving him many blank faces and probably looking quite scared he mumbled and wondered off. At this point Andy came back, I asked if parlez-vous Anglais actually meant "do you speak English?", which he confirmed. Food was a burger with no bun and fries and Andy had some rice dish. Due to the heat at this stage I had to squeeze around the table into the shade as it was bordering an inferno in the sun light.
After eating we set off to try and find the road out of Laval to Angers. Getting into the centre of the town, next to a river which had some very picturesque bridges, we realised we did not have a clue where we were. So Andy with his "French" asked a lady for directions to Angers, she nattered on and smiled and left. So I asked Andy what did she say, "something about left, then a right" was pretty much his response. But by following the initial way she pointed down the river. We eventually found some signage to Angers, and at this point Andy got a bit irk with his panniers. So we pulled over for some bodging. Giving a piece of guy rope to Andy and one for myself, I fastened my panniers so they wouldn't wobble. Once finished I went over to Andy (who I would like to remind you has a degree in engineering and currently doing a masters in engineering) whom had attempted some feeble pathetic knot thing, :) don't hate me Andy! So I did his as well and we set off for pretty much the last leg of the day.
Not too much to report for this stretch, other than it had very straight roads, which we cruised along at a good speed (probably something like 30 kmph). We came across a McDonalds in Chateau-Gontier, which I persuaded Andy to go to. And clearly not realising how hungry we were quite a few burgers were consumed along with some cupcakes.
So back on the straight roads again, but now the closer and closer we got to Angers the bigger and the increase in traffic was fairly obvious. It was about 5pm so probably a lot of rush-hour traffic. At a roundabout just outside Angers we followed the signs for the centre of Angers. I don't think it took long to realise that we had cycled onto a motorway... looking at the map now I can see its the Nantes-Paris route. But things got worse, further down the motorway we had to cycle down a contraflow, which is why it was the fastest I have ever cycled because I didn't want to be on this road for another second! But things got even worse as we relied on cycling in the hard shoulder and this one had a lot of chippings from a nearby chalk pit and then the hard shoulder became dilapidated and we were cycling through grass, soil, broken up pieces of tarmac. It was just awful. So at the nearest, first, closest junction we pulled off. This, by chance, happened to be in quite a good place, not that we knew that to start with as it just looked like a random industrial estate. But we soon found signs to a campsite and after a call to Dad we decided to go to it.
It was quite a pricey campsite, but it had a restaurant, swimming pool, nice showers and toilets, so we were happy. Annoyingly Andy forgot to pack swim trunks, and I didn't want to endeavour to go into the pool with the borrowed Speedo's I got from Dad! So instead we had a nice big beer and a big pizza each. Not too bad an end considering we had just risked life and limb on the motorways.
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