‘Serendipity’, as one dictionary defines it: ‘the unexpected occurrence of, or faculty for, finding valuable or agreeable things that are not sought’.

We’ve ridden out of Caen and along the defunct railway line beside the L’Ome, negotiated the watershed and found the La Mayenne’s ‘chemin de halage’, a canal path that will occupy two days of riding. To arrive in town on Halloween, the evening of All Soul’s or All-Saints day. I know the date because there was the silver-masked, black-caped ferry boatman at Port de L’lle. That, and the restaurants are advertising dress-up competitions. The idea of the chic French dressing in single use plastics seems counterintuitive, yet the evidence is all there in the supermarkets. All predictable, just check the calendar. What wasn’t was to find that our evening’s accommodation was situated on Rue Toussaint; street of the All-Saints.

To augment that serendipity, I open the room’s curtain to find I have my own personal piece of street-art right outside, called ‘Pluie d’amour’; ‘raining love’. Somewhat apposite as it’s raining hard, we’re not cycling and we’ve just been presented with an umbrella.

All a rather neat summation of that dictionary definition.