Just to prove the south of France does get its share of rain in the summer, I was awoken at 1am this morning by the most amazing thunderstorm.
It started out to sea and then came inland. It had the most impressive lightning display and sheer quantity of rainfall that I’ve seen inland, in a long time.
There is a short video taken from my balcony, below.
This was my final day before I passed Marseille and arrived at the waters of the Mediterranean Sea in Cassis. Still very hot, but I only had 32 miles / 51 km to cycle. Very hard to avoid the motorway but it is possible although you have to climb for this privilege. Still the relatively short distance meant that I had plenty of time to stop for lunch. See here, see short video below.
You are finally rewarded when just before Cassis there is a very fast downhill descent into the Town’s outskirts and of course there is the very steep hill down to the water’s edge itself.
The weather today was almost unbearably hot and very humid and sure enough there was rain just before I got into Cassis. Also passed another of the many very sad ‘shrines’ to young men who have died on their motorcycles on the roads of France. They are, almost invariably young men, under 25 who are killed either by motorists or perhaps simply by losing control whilst going too fast.
Here I am at the waters edge:
The rest of the photos I took are available here.
Another hard day of cycling in the heat, despite cycling on 50 miles / 80 km. I came across a tour bus from Scotland, that was obviously either completely lost or had some kind of super-powered propulsion system that allowed it to pick up tourists in the south of France and take them to the highland battlefields within a day.
As I left Avignon, I took a short video of the city walls and where I stayed.
I also found some money and wildlife, both by the side of the road. The approach to Aix-en-Provence is up a series of hills…
…and then there’s a fast descent which brings you right out in the centre of town. I managed to geotag my pictures so you can see the route I took on my photos page here.
Aix-en-Provence is an amazing city of art, culture. It has a really young feel to the place with lots of students and is a very safe place to come home from if you are out until the early hours of the morning. It is also a city of water with over 250 fountains.
Another 55 miles / 90 km travelled today. Not a lot but it is very, very hot and I stopped at the various places I cycled through, plus I took a lot of photos. I cycled through the Drome, the Ardeche, over the Rhone via a bridge closed for repairs, and through Orange before finally coming to Avignon.
Avignon is another very atmospheric place. The ancient streets have the same feel for me as places like Vezelay and Venice. the sense of people having live lives and of the ghosts of past life is almost palpable. The Palais du Papes is even today an symbol of absolute power. I cannot even begin to imagine how awe-inspiring it must have been to the medieval traveller or pilgrim who would have already been in even greater awe of the papal power it represented then we might imagine today, before being confronted with the sheer dominance of the scale of the Palace’s construction.
Another 77 miles / 125 km. This was easily my best day so far. Very fast and scary descent for 20 kilometers going down from the 1161m at the summit of Col de La Republique to La Versanne proper and Annonay.
Once you have descended, you essentially follow the Rhone all the way to Montelimar. The scenery is very southern now, no longer lots of sunflowers, now it is vines and fruit trees. Very very hot and temperature at least 30 degrees. Arms beginning to peel today, note to self: must find sunscreen.
The pictures I took are here. I also managed a video of the N7 below.
Only 40 miles / 60 km today but it did involve cycling through St. Etienne, trying to avoid motorways, getting lost and a very hard (for me anyhow) climb up the Col de La Republique 1161m or 3809 feet on a very hot day! It is also where you pass the monument to Paul de Vivie. Below is a video of what it looks like when you get to the summit.
Met a very helpful cycle shop owner with an amazing cycle shop, located very sustainably, in a disused former railway station. got my water bottles refilled and tyres pumped back up to 80psi. Here’s a link to the shop, which I can recommend, it is right after a fast downhill run before you arrive in St. Etienne. I also took a photo of the shop and it is with the rest of today’s pictures here.
‘Just’ 65 miles / 105 km today but felt as I was getting somewhere as for the first time I saw the roads signs indicating the through routes to the South! Specifically on the D352 to Marcigny which is signposted ‘BIS VALENCE / MONTPELLIER’.
There was no major difficulty until I reached the outskirts of Roanne where it become very hard to avoid the motorway. The route I eventually found can be seen from the photos I took, which I managed to geotag properly today.
However this was not before climbing for a good 50 minutes before meeting an elderly farmer, fixing his fence. He very kindly refilled my water bottles and then told me that the way I was going was impassable for my cycle and that I should go all the way back down the hill and take the ‘old route’ to St. Etienne! Below is a video of I took about 15 minutes into my climb!
Eventually arrived in Feurs and stayed at a typically French hotel which was very cycle friendly. Surprisingly pleasant dinner in their garden next to the railway tracks on Feurs Station. Welcomed into dinner by a charming hostess and served by a formally dressed waiter! Just a shame I was unable to reciprocate, having only jeans and a tee-shirt in my panniers. A further sign I was getting seriously south was the fact that at 9pm was dining outside and it was still very balmy.
A long day of rather monotonous cycling, went the wrong way when leaving Vezelay. An unfortunate mistake as this involves going down hill for a good ten minutes. Once the thrill of going fast downhill for a long time has worn off, it is very upsetting to discover you’ve gone the wrong way.
You have two alternatives, neither are very palatable. Either a long hard climb or make the best of where you have gone and try and get back on track. I chose the latter option. Travelled 88 miles / 140 km and only arrived late in the evening.
Paray-le-Monial is also on the pilgrims’ route and was packed with religious folks with the faithful in tow. Saw several large nuns with what appeared to be homemade backpacks, and also witnessed a teenage boy getting a very loud and public dressing down from a man in a collar for taking pictures in a church!
Paray-le-Monial is not nearly as ethereally atmospheric and beautiful as Vezelay but still with all the charm and gravitas that derives from having been a site of pilgrimage for well over a thousand years.
The few pictures I took are all of Paray-le-Monial and available here.
Just 70 miles / 110 km covered today, but I had been keen to set off early because the route to Vezelay involves a long hard climb and as with Villeneuve L’Archeveque I had gambled by booking a hotel since Vezelay is a key destination for pilgrims making their way to Santiago de Compostella and therefore accommodation is always in very short supply. Consequently I didn’t take too many pictures but those I did are available here. With the climb at the end I arrived at 8.30om this evening, but thankfully not too late for dinner :-)
I did however manage a few seconds of video of the old watermill where I spent the night.
And also of the seemingly never-ending fields of sunflowers that I cycled past.
This was the longest and hardest day (and night) so far. (105 miles / 170 km) This might not sound a lot but when you are cycling and it has got dark, I arrived at Villeneuve L’Archeveque at almost 11.30pm despite setting off just after 8.30am from Soissons. The GPS logger also ran out of batteries so that photos couldn’t be geotagged. However I have uploaded them here. I crossed into Picardie and Ile de France today and cycled through Chateau Thierry. I also took a couple of videos.
The first (above) was when I still in the country side as dusk was falling. I thought to myself that it was still so bright that it would not matter if I was half an hour late. The second (below) is crossing a canal as light began to fade entirely. Little did I know that the route was to take me through a forest where it would be pitch black. What was worse, rather foolishly I had not anticipated being in the dark so only had a dynamo powered headlight, which whilst it was quite powerful was of no use when stopping to read a sign.
That’s enough for now as it is very late and I need to press on early tomorrow.
Today felt like a long day, even though I only cycled about 70 miles / 110 km. This was partly because I crossed several departmental boundaries: L’Aisne, L’Oise and Picardie; but also because it began to rain cold and quite hard in the latter part of the afternoon. By 5pm, I was getting quite cold so began to look for a hotel and stayed in a Premier Inn on the outskirts of Soissons. The good thing about Premier Inn is that usually they are self-service. There is no reception as such, you just turn up and using your credit card book a room from a machine in the side of the wall. This means that you can take you cycle into the room with you, perhaps especially important in an out of town location, where these hotels are located.
Highlights of the day were the pipers I met at Peronne, There’s a video of them below.
I also came across a road sign with the villages Ham and Brie on it. A bit childish and this juxtaposition only works in English but it made me smile anyhow. I’ve uploaded a short video of the sign in question which also gives an idea of small you feel and how big the countryside feels as you are cycling across it.
Finally the pictures I took before I stopped are available here. I managed to get them geotagged, so the Picasa site should also map the pictures over the route I took. Soissons is just north-east of Paris, so although I didn’t get as far as I’d hoped, again! I finally felt I was making some real progress in crossing the country.
Today was harder than I expected, perhaps because it rained and being cold on a bike is doubly demoralising. When you are going slowly, for instance up a hill, you have the cold water which is merely irritating. Then when you get to the top, it feels much colder to go fast. If you put on your waterproof it invariably gets too hot, without it you’re almost bound to get too wet. In a race, where you know when it will end and someone is talking to you constantly, it might not be too bad. However, when you are travelling on an unfamiliar road, trying to look out for road signs, knowing that going the wrong way cannot be speedily remedied, as with motorised transport – it can all be a bit dispiriting.
I had intended to get past Noyon, and indeed was so confident of the 110-115 miles that I booked a place in an Etap Hotel on the outskirts of Town. After getting slightly lost a few times and with light and legs beginning to fade at 8.30pm, I stopped in Bapaume and was grateful to find a room at a local hotel. The patron was especially accommodating letting me put my cycle in a downstairs room. This is the kind of approach, that rightly or wrongly, I cannot imagine happening in England. but it seems typical of France, never once have I been asked to pay for the ‘garaging’ of my cycle. Route: I took the left turning onto the Avenue des Tilleuls (D224) as I left Ardres, with hindsight I should have carried on. I eventually ended up on the D943, then the D928, turning onto the D198 at Rue des Bruyeres, then the D341 before ending up in Bapaume via the D1017, the Route de Bapaume.
I only managed 86 miles / 140km despite being on the road for about 11 hours. I managed to geotag my pictures with my Holux GPSport 245 but foolishly managed to overwrite the notes I made of the roads. I had hoped to use my phone, but as I think I've explained earlier, battery technology is not yet the equal of a Smartphone's capacity to gobble it up for a whole day, well more than three hours if your phone has GPS, an accelerometer and compass (n.b. any HTC Desire users reading this).
I’ve upload my pictures to my Picasa page here.
The journey didn’t start well. I got the 1.15pm train from Beckenham Junction with loaded bike and got off at Bromley South only to find the train to Dover Priory had been cancelled. An hour later and just made it to check in for the P&O Ferry at Dover Eastern Docks. Takes about 20 minutes from getting of the train to cycling to the ferry terminal, checking in via separate window just for cyclists and getting to the front of the queue. The ferry was also late by some 20 minutes, but unlike the train caught up with the schedule. The P&O crew, unlike their Seafrance counterparts when I’ve cycled over to Calais in the past, made me wait until all the cars had got off the ferry. Once off the ferry at 7.40pm French time, I took the D943 avoiding the centre of Calais, past Coulogne and stopped for the night at Ardres at about 8.30pm. Distance travelled: 15 miles / 24km. I’ve uploaded the remaining photos I took to my Picasa account, but here’s one from the ferry, showing what a wet and miserable afternoon it was, as I left Dover. You can just see the tugboat coming to take the Del Monte boat out to sea.
to begin with you need a reliable bike. I have a 9 year bike, bought with my London Cycling Campaign discount from Evans Cycles in The Cut near The London Eye at Waterloo.
Here is a picture of my cycle, loaded up with: two waterproof Ortlieb pannier bags, a couple of litres of water, and a stuff-it pack with quick release water-proof for those times when it pours. I also made sure that I had new puncture resistant tyres and new brake pads, a couple of spare inner tubes and a repair kit. I gambled by not taking along any spare spokes, but these are relatively easy to come by in France.
A few months ago, whilst considering where to go on holiday, a friend suggested that I might cycle across France. The suggestion was a partly a reasonable one, since as those of you personally acquainted with me will know, I am both a keen cyclist and also something of a Francophile. Clearly the unreasonable element in the suggestion was the part about crossing France within two weeks plus the couple of days that I could take as annual leave. Separately to this suggestion, I had wanted to do something to support the work of the Stroke Association and I thought that I could combine these two things by asking people to sponsor me to cross France on my cycle. As far as sponsored undertaking go, it seemed to me that it was as long as many others, as difficult in as much as this would be an ‘unsupported’ crossing without the benefits of any pick-up van to sort things out if I experienced mechanical or physical :-) failure; and all the money I might raise would be going to a charity. It would still, of course, be a holiday, but slightly more strenuous than most.
