Читать книгу One More Croissant for the Road онлайн

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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’.