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Travelogue
We left our AirBnB house this morning, fully rested. Or so we thought.
Today was what Britain's wonderful, not at all embarrassing tabloid press would call "A Proper Scorcher!". Because, yes. It was hot.
The forecast had been for a peak temperature of 34 degrees Celsius and it certainly hit that. But by mid-afternoon, the Thermodrop that M1 has attached to the frame bag on The Mule briefly showed the temperature to be 37.
What a Scorcher!
And as a result, what should have been an easy day turned out to be more testing than expected. Another day of rest would have been lovely! We soldiered on...
As per other days in France so far, we cycled alongside a canal that runs roughly alongside the River Marne. We saw a dozen or so Grey Herons today, a hundred or so colourful dragonflies and a large fish. Or at least part of one.
Weirdly, there was the head and part of the body of a fairly large fish just sitting on the cycle path a metre or so from the water. And it looked as though it had been dragged there. By what? By whom? Will police find the remainder of the torso in a suitcase or buried under a patio? We just don't know!
Further on, we stopped and sat on a bench by the canal so we could check the map and catch up on a few messages. Job done, we continued. After another 4 km, M1 let it be known that he might....errrrr..... mumble..... have misplaced something.... at that bench. It wasn't the new sunglasses bought to replace his original sunglasses only two days ago. Honestly. So, with a mysterious reason, only hinted at and not confessed to at all, M1 left M2 resting and cycled 4 km back to the bench.... and then back again. Exercise is good for you, they say. And FYI M1 has his sunglasses. So it can't have been that. Can it?
We stopped at Chaumont, the only large(ish) town on today's route to buy groceries. It was only about halfway to our destination but the only other opportunity for buying groceries that we could see further along on the map was a "convenience store" and there's no knowing what you'll find in a convenience store. Might be awesome. Might not be. So we decided to shop early and carry our groceries further.
There was a cafe inside the store, so M2 went in to buy a sandwich whilst M1 stayed with the bikes. A security van which looked like it was here to collect the store's cash pulled up. The driver and his colleague made it known to M1 and some other cyclists waiting near to the store's entrance that they should move so that the van could pull into a space by a restricted access door into the store.
M1 started to try to move the two bikes on his own.
He moved M2's bike as far as seemed necessary and went back to The Mule. The Mule's "rack pack" bag wasn't fixed in place at that point and was currently open so there was a risk it would fall off and everything spill out, so he was necessarily careful.
One of the security guards came over and aggressively yelled "Vite! Vite!" and shock of all shocks, went to pick up The Mule and carry it away! M1 was having none of this and grabbed the guy's arm before he'd laid a finger on The Mule. How dare he? Perhaps he was offering to help, but his aggressive manner suggested he was just being impatient. And the problem with someone else picking up one of these bikes is that heavily laden as they are, grab hold of the wrong part of the bike and lift and there's every chance something will break. Or a bag will fall of and empty itself. And besides..... how dare he?! Get your own bike to man handle! :-)
Having grabbed the man's arm and firmly uttered "Non!", the guard backed off, muttering and returned to his silly van. It was very tempting to taunt him a this point, in the style of Monty Python. But M1 resisted what with being such a grown up.
M1 completed moving the bikes. M2 returned, munching on a filled baguette, having missed all the fun :-)
M1 handed over bike sitting duties and went and got his own baguette.
Lunch over, we cycled on. It was so hot now and despite having drunk a large bottle of cold apple juice with the baguettes, we both found we had almost emptied our two water bottles.
At the village of Rolampont we were lucky to see a bar over the bridge. We headed over, sat down at a table and ordered ice cold drinks. Ahhhhhhhh. So good. Before leaving, the man behind the bar filled our water bottles with cold water as well. We were all set again.
Not too much further on we left the cycle path and found ourselves riding on actual roads. And one of those roads was horrendously steep! A shock to the system no less.
We found our campsite. It's really nice and once again, like camping in a garden. There's a bar and we're sat there now, having eaten our fill of delicious camping mush.
A lovely day if a little on the hot side!
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