I started this revisiting of the day saying: “this is one of the days that does stick in my memory” … and now I have looked at the map and the (few) images I have realised that that recollection is very partial! Hm, that is a recurring and salutory discovery
I had forgotten that I headed back into Giverny still vaguely wondering about visiting the gardens but one look at the lines of big tourist buses put that idea out of my mind. Then I don't remember whether it was my mistake or Gurgle's that I found myself heading to Vernon but I don't think it was deliberate. I wanted to make it to Chartres by the end of the day as I was going to have a first rest day there. (It turned out to be the first and last if I don't count the day in Compostela.)
However, I did it, I found myself in Vernon and did find this, the collegiate church.
And this rather fine house.
But mostly Vernon seemed unexciting and I headed back the way I had come, albeit on a different side of the rather magnificent river Seine.
Then, back in Giverny, Gurgle took me into this ...
... and this ...
... before I had to turn round because it had led me to a dead end on the side of a fenced off major road. That going had been very hard with the sore knee reminding me of my fall the night before and the clock moving forward reminding me that getting to Chartres in time to have the rest day there was getting to look touch and go.
Despite trying to keep a good pace after that debacle it was 19.30 by the time I found myself in Dreux (see waymarker on the map) still a long way from Chartres but booked into another of the very cheap "F1" style hotels on the far side of Chartres. I knew I could cop out and find a place to stay in Dreux but refueled.
... and opted to try to make it despite seeing that there were no likely hotels between Dreux and Chartres. A long stretch was glorious cycling: straight, on what had been quite a good major road which had been replaced by a new double carriageway right alongside it so I had lovely tarmac and I think just three cars, all coming the other way, in perhaps 20km. I ended up having to use my bike lights and was a bit stressed fearing that I'd have the same nightmare I had had in the early night in Calais finding a similar hotel but I found it fairly easily and collapsed, exhausted but really quite of myself that I had made it and could enjoy the day off from cycling the following day and visiting a crucial place for my memory's lanes!