From St Malo to Prague - along the EuroVelo 4

I�m sitting in a hotel room in St Malo, Brittany. The room has far too much brocade and chintzy maroon and white wallpaper, but the velour chair is comfortable and the double windows open out to a view of the stone church and a tree with glossy green leaves providing shade for two old blokes having an apertif. 

It�s the last day of summer.

Tomorrow, Cathie and I will begin our autumn cycle from this ancient seaside town, former home of pirates and profiteers which is now overrun with tourists scoffing bowls of mussels and frites or galettes oozing jambon and fromage washed down with local cider. 

We are planning to cycle a large portion of Euro Velo 4 - the Central Europe route. We hope our trip will take us gently north-east along the ragged Channel coast-line; past the WW2 battlefields of Omaha Beach and Dunkirk; the port towns of Le Harve and Calais; the beau villages of Honfleur and Deauville, former haunts of Eric Satie and Coco Chanel respectively before we creak into Belgium - land of beer and chips and divided between the Dutch-speaking mostly Flemish community and French-speaking Walloons. 

We�ll stick to the coast line before entering The Netherlands - the true home of cycling where I have little doubt we�ll get lost among the numerous bike paths before entering Germany somewhere near Dusseldorf.

In Germany, we�ll hopefully meander alongside a few rivers south and east, through Cologne, Bonn and Frankfurt. I�ve promised Cathie very few hills as we putter beside the Main River, before leaving the plains and heading into the Czech Republic and our destination in Prague. 

In all, it should amount to 2,500 kilometres. By my humble estimation that�s about forty days; two dozen croissants; twenty meals of duck confit; a few kilos of pork knuckle and sauerkraut in Germany; litres of wine and beer and a vast array of tortes, pretzels and Dutch pastries. We�ll stay in cheap hotels or bed and breakfast lodgings and try to fool ourselves into believing that the accumulated kilometres we cycle will magically compensate for all that food and drink we�ll be ingesting.

Our bikes, nicknamed Jenny and Craig, have spent the past year resting in a French barn. They are dusty and creaky and in need of a good outing. We hope they will carry us through five countries. I�ve promised them a splash of chain oil and polish if they behave nicely.