I always squeeze as much out of a tour as possible and ultimately that leaves me feeling a bit frazzled. I usually have options and seldom do more than I want. The main pleasure for me is the cycling and I try to maximise distance covered just for the fun of it. 40 miles a day has worked well on a generally flat route with hills and shorter days in the middle week and no tent or camping.
This is a photo I took of a large billboard advertising a trade electricals outlet; not sure of the message here but I encountered it at the end of a tiring day.
The Ardennes along the river Meuse is a flexible location as road, rail and cycle paths run up and down the valley and then you have interesting rides with some hills but nothing extreme I think an altitude of 450m was as high as I got and the Ardennes is rolling forested hills rather than mountains and certainly nothing above 700m.
Charleville-Meziere is a good base for day rides and for day trips on the train to places like Sedan though the town itself has limited interest; it has river walks and a great town square. Fumay, Vireax-Wallerand and Givet would all make good bases as there is good cycling, train stations and plenty of food options. A week in one place is long enough to ride the area.
I got lucky with the Fumay Gîte as I had a decent restaurant, bakery and supermarket nearby which are essential if you don't have a car with you.
In future heading further east and being able to explore Luxembourg or the German part of the Ardennes would be interesting.
The return trip on the 2pm ferry would have seen me getting a soaking as heavy rain was forecast late morning. Luckily DFDS currently allows you to travel up to 4 hours either side of your booking on the routes from Dover; this is subject to availability of course. The plan? Get the 10am crossing and stay dry.