| Day # |
04 |
State of Legs |
:-) |
|
Distance (miles) |
Distance (km) |
Ascent (feet) |
Ascent (metres) |
Punctures |
| Today |
65 miles |
km |
2133 feet |
metres |
0 |
| Trip Totals |
232 miles |
km |
8517 feet |
metres |
0 |
Travelogue
Day 4 and I'm now in the small town of Guise where I'm camping for the night at the town campsite. Today was another fairly taxing day with 65 miles of lovely French road, cobblestones, canal tow path and nightmare stony trail from hell. And there was a lot of the latter.
I got up at 4:45, having camped under a tree that was home to a horde of highly musical and very vocal birdies, at least one of which apparently thought it was OK to use my tent as a toilet. Luckily the deposit was nice and fresh and so easy to get off.
By 5:30 I was on the road. Not surprisingly it was super-quiet. But this is a very rural area and a Sunday too, so the whole ride was very quiet apart from in the occasional town along the way.
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| Vimy town hall |
After a while, my route took me off road, something that was not a surprise and which I'd assumed would add some variety to the day.
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| Crossing the fields by the direct route |
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| My very own Paris-Roubaix |
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| Fine gravel - quite a nice surface |
Eventually, I reached a large canal and crossing over by bridge, rode along the tow path for a good few miles.
Almost all shops are shut on a Sunday. Supermarkets at best close at lunchtime. So, I decided to buy some groceries at Cambrai, which is about half way along my route rather than try to get to a supermarket nearer to the campsite and risk it being closed when I got there. Cambrai has an ALDI, so in I went.
Now, have you ever tried to carry a baguette on a bike? No? Me neither. Until today that is.
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I knew I'd packed some cable ties for something!
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Brilliant. But don't try this at home, kids (read on to find out why!)
Oh and the paper bag at the top contains two pain au chocolat which I ate as a kind of in-ride fuel/treat!
My next off-road section went on for mile after mile and the surface was just awful. Incredibly rough, stony and unforgiving. I was forced to go at no more than about 3 mph and at one point, concerned I was going to damage the bike, got off and walked with it over a particularly nasty section. It was then that I noticed I'd lost half my baguette! So that was that. No shops open. Half rations today! :-)
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| I did not like this stuff! |
I decided I'd had enough of the bone-shaking off-road sections and as soon as I got to a road, had my Organic Maps app calculate me a new route, back on lovely tarmac. It may have been a bit longer but at least I could go faster than 3 mph!
It's always good to see a sign for your destination, no matter how good a ride you've been having, and apart from the stony off-road sections, this had been another good day, with lots of lovely farmland to pass through and pretty much no traffic. But soon (after over six hours!), a sign for Guise appeared.
On arrival, I checked into the camp site and was told to pitch my tent anywhere I wanted. There were hardly any other campers so I had my pick. The tent was pitched, I hit the showers and then came back and ate the remaining baguette!
That's it folks. Tomorrow is another day.
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