Agon-Coutainville and Pirou-plage (again)

In which we ride to Agon-Coutainville in search of seafood, end up in Pirou-plage and eat an excellent seafood lunch

 This was our last full day in France, and we wanted to make the most of it! We began our ride by skirting south of Coutances towards the coast, aiming to reach Agon-Coutainville in time for lunch. As it turned out, this was possibly some of the easiest cycling of the trip, and we seemed to roar down to the coast in double-quick time. Unfortunately this meant we arrived outside our planned munch venue rather too early for lunch.

After a bit of map inspection, we decided to ride up the coast road to Pirou-plage where we planned to visit the posher restaurant, La Mer. After a bit of seat of the pants navigation, we exited Agon-Coutainvile, and set out northwards. This turned out to be a rather nice route, often with views of sea and sands or of salt marshes with birds. Ultimately, of course, the aim was to score a seafood lunch, and this we found at the aforementioned restaurant.

We both had starters comprising bulots (whelks), crevettes and oysters. I followed this with a lovely piece of pollack with a delicate collection of vegetables. The Stoker had a terrific looking duck breast with skewers of carrot and girolle mushrooms. Nothing for praise for this establishment, great service, excellent food and no qualms about letting slightly scruffy tandemists in!

Once we’d eaten, we sat on the beach briefly – the tide was quite far out, revealing an open air swimming pool which, judging from the fisherman interest, must have trapped some kind of edible sea life as the tide retreated! We returned by a similar route as on the previous visit to Pirou-plage. Mostly uneventful, we did start feeling pretty overheated by the time we passed through Marigny, and actually had to stop to stand around in some shade soon after!

Back at the house, I rested for half an hour or so and rehydrated a bit before popping out with G for what we generously called a ‘training ride’. In actual fact I ended up merely going through the motions – after 55 miles on a tandem in what might have been the hottest day of the trip, my legs weren’t up to much. Anyway, here’s the Garmin trace for that jaunt.