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.
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