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Today's Route
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Travelogue
After leaving the campsite on one side of the River Marne, we crossed the bridge to the other side and cycled down the main street of Dormans seeking breakfast. Naturally it didn't take long to find a bakery. M1 was dispatched and came back with..... something novel. The name of today's tasty breakfast treat is lost in the mists of time but was basically a slab of soft sweet pastry interspersed with layers of apple. A good enough start to the day.
5 minutes later, we were cycling alongside the river. Almost all of the day's cycling ended up being by a river or the canal that runs roughly parallel with it. The weather was warm, the sun hiding behind a thin layer of wispy clouds all morning but revealing itself fully in the afternoon. Lovely. The local wildlife also came out of hiding and we saw a heron in flight, dozens of colourful dragonflies, a mummy duck with her ducklings and a great big fish coming up from the deep to snatch an insect from near the surface of the water.
Around eleven o'clock, it being the time for elevensies, we happened to be a town and so left our route, found a bar and sat outside having coffee.
It was a little after this that it happened.
We were back on our route. M1 needed to consult the map on his phone but the bright conditions were making this difficult, so we stopped and dismounted. M1 looked at his phone, still had difficulty and removed his sunglasses for a better look. The required information was found, we got back on our bikes and continued.
5 km later, M1 said....."Errrrr..... did I put my sunglasses in my bag"? Where indeed would the world be without rhetorical questions?
Checking his bag, the answer was "no". M1's sunglasses were lost!
DISASTER!!!!
In truth, M1 rarely has sunglasses long enough to form an attachment to them. They get left on tables or in the street, typically. Or they just decide they've had enough and make a run for it. We might never know. But they're always disappearing.
Neither of the Ms had the energy to cycle back and look for the sunglasses, so they're gone. C'est la vie.
It was almost immediately after this that the local wildlife, or at least the insect population, saw their chance and seemingly every insect, but ironically, never once, an actual bee, made a beeline for one or the other of M1's eyes. Ouchy! New sunglasses are on the wish list for our next rest day.
In the very nice town of Chalons-en-Champagne, we cycled into the centre and sat at a table outside a cafe on a square which boasted a very attractive town hall. M2 just wanted an ice cold coke zero. M1 wanted a coke originale with extra sugar. On queuing to get the drinks though, M1 spotted some very tasty looking quiches and ordered a saumon et poireau quiche after checking what poireau means! (It means "Leek").
We drank our cokes and M1 ate his incredible quiche (offering to share it of course) in the sunshine and rested a while.
We rejoined our route and soon we'd passed the 90 km mark and then the 100 km mark. On entering Vitry-le-Francois, a small town less than 5 km from today's campsite, we headed for a supermarket and once again M1 went hunting for mush ingredients. This time he emerged triumphant with a bag full of couscous, tomatoes, avocado pears, tuna and a tomato and olive sauce. And a big bag of crisps that M2 had said she simply had to have.
We cycled to the campsite which happily required only a short detour from our route. It's nice. Very quiet. Very green. It's like camping in an enormous back garden, with big mature trees, lots of space and little noise apart from bird song. Which is ironic because on checking in, we were told that there was going to be noise (we couldn't work out why from the French) and that as such, there would be no charge for camping today! Sweet! No noise yet, either. What sonic treat is in store for this evening?
Showers were had. Mush was made and was amazing and delicious and everything you could hope for from camping mush.
Blog written, all that's left is to relax.
A totally fab day. Here's to many more.
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