Kingswear - 50°21'05"N 03°34'19"W

 We have come to Dartmouth harbour with the desire to get wheels for the boat ... but not the kind you think.

We DO want to go ashore, but unlike these folks, we are happy to leave our boat behind.

We are free to go anywhere that has ocean access, but once we drop anchor and step ashore, we would like a bit more range.  After some consideration and much research, we decided that folding bikes - Bromptons, specifically - would speed up the inevitable trips to port offices, the supermarket, museums and places of interest.

Kate, speeding around the Plymouth dockside on a borrowed bike

Due to some good fortune, we were at a marina in Plymouth (back in May) and met up with a friend who needed his bike transported back to Cherbourg.  When we offered to take it for him, he kindly offered for us to "use it if you want to."  He had just the brand of bike we had been considering and after having one to test ride, we quickly fell in love with the compactness, light weight, clever design features and overall utility of the Brompton bikes.

Of the many brands of folding bikes, these are the standard that most other foldable bikes are copied from and judged by.  Parts and accessories are easy to come by, as the design has changed very little since 1987.  This brand was most widely available in their country of origin - Great Britain - so when we sailed back there to clock up some non-Schengen time for Kate, Sean began scouring the second-hand ads.  Sure enough, we were able to find a pair of the bikes on Facebook Marketplace.

The two tantalizing steeds. 

There was a complication.  The seller was 400 kilometres northwest, and inland, of our port.  Time for a road trip.

A manageable but-not-insubstantial distance

Soggy start.

Getting to the bikes was tricky.  There was no car hire company in this little fishing village.  We needed to catch a bus to the next-biggest town.  From there it was four hours of driving, the bikes had to be evaluated (at this point, we were taking the word of the seller) and then there was at least a four hour drive back.

We arrived at the car hire office at 11 am and after dealing with a problem with the wiper blades (essential in this weather), we were underway by 1 pm.  The drive itself was uneventful but rainy.  We had been given a residential address and were making our way there with the help of Google Maps.  When we reached our destination we met Mark, the seller and asked him why he was selling the bikes.  

Mark runs a mobile bike service and the bikes belonged to one of his clients.  They had bought them a few months after the husband had retired.  Unfortunately, he had fallen ill shortly after buying them and had passed away - the bikes had not seen much use.  His widow had hung onto the bikes for a few years and finally decided to sell them.  As he had been doing the maintenance on them, he offered to sell them on her behalf.

During our conversation about the bikes' history, he asked about us and how we were going to use them.  When he found out about our plans to take them aboard Chinook and what we were doing with Chinook, he was interested in hearing more.  Would we like to have dinner (homemade lasagna) with him and his family and share more stories?  Yes, please!

Dinner and a new audience for our stories!  What could be better?

We had a marvellous meal and a great conversation.  We let them know about this 'blog and offered a boat tour and a sail (weather permitting) if they were ever close by.  We did need to be on our way, though, because we had other friends to catch up with.

We had planned this to be a multi-day trip.  We had seen that the address Mark had given us as a meeting spot was close to the Harleys, so we contacted them and yes, they would be available to host a drop-in visit and even a bed for the night if we needed one.

We did drop in and we did gratefully use the guest room that night.  We woke up to an usually early snowfall and took part in a pre-walk-to-school snowball fight!

Yahoo - fresh snow!

After a long, dreary drive back to Kingswear, we now have the bikes aboard and are making use of them whenever we can.  

Folded and neatly stored in the tech room

Popped open and ready to ride .... back in Cherbourg!

As most loved things on this vessel, they have been given names ... in keeping with our boat's French heritage.

Welcome to the journey, Napoleon and Josephine.  Be prepared to take us further inland and to some marvellous places.