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Our first stop of the day was of course a bakery. Where else would we stop for the first time on any day on a bikepacking trip through France? And where would the world be without rhetorical questions?
This particular bakery was in the town of Pont-Sainte-Maxence.
We broke from tradition and had two Brioche Suisse along with our usual coffees. We sat in the park next to the bakery to enjoy our choices.
Back on the bikes, we soon found ourselves cycling on yet another amazing dedicated cycle path. We crossed farmland on the best of cycling surfaces.
To our surprise, we soon found that we had joined Eurovelo route EV3. We used a great website, https://cycle.travel/ to plan our route across France to the Swiss border and it's very good at joining up official cycle paths. On this occasion, a section of EV3 had been included and we hadn't realised!
This was a nice surprise as we like the Eurovelo network. Its routes or parts of them have featured in all the European trips we've undertaken. Later in this trip we'll cross Switzerland on EV5 and later, we'll follow the river Rhine on route EV15.
We were overtaken by a couple of young guys on bikes, clearly bikepackers from all the gear they were carrying. M1 gave them a friendly "bonjour". Whether it was the shock of hearing a British person speak French so perfectly or something else, but for some reason the second cyclist chose that moment to collide with the rear wheel of his buddy's bike. There was frantic braking. There may have been cursing (M1's French is not that good!) but luckily, no disaster and they both came to a stop with both bikes and persons intact.
We had a quick chat. They were Belgian and on their way home from a bikepacking trip to Morocco, which sounded amazing. They asked about our trip and were suitably impressed (naturally) :-)
After leaving EV3 some km later, we cycled on quiet roads through scenic villages, woodland and farmland. We saw several chateaux, a castle and (drum roll), a house with an actual face. It looked a little surprised, we thought.
The weather all day was amazing. Blue skies. Warm. Very warm.
Lunchtime arrived as we entered the town of Villers-Cotterets. It looked like a good town to find lunch in. There seemed to be an abundance of bars and restaurants and one or two bakeries. But alas, we couldn't find anywhere that quite fitted our needs. We didn't want a meal. A sandwich would have been fine. A salmon and leek quiche, amazing. But none of these things seemed possible. We wasted an enormous amount of time trying to solve this intractable problem. We found a large takeaway style cafe that boasted speciality breads, sandwiches and more. M1 went in and queued. He couldn't see evidence of sandwiches and so asked (fortunately the French word for "sandwich" is quite easy). They'd sold out because it was 12:30 and they were closing at 13:00. What kind of cafe closed at 13:00 asked M1, incredulously?! In his head. To the shop worker, he said "merci" politely and walked out.
Enter LIDL. Almost next door to the cafe was a LIDL supermarket. Now LIDL is M1's least favourite supermarket. But we were getting desperate. We were slightly hungry and unaccustomed to going without any one of pre-breakfast, breakfast, tensies, elevensies or lunch. Not on a bikepacking trip, anyway!
LIDL delivered. We didn't need much. They have an in-house bakery so a fresh baked baguette was the first selection. After that, it was easy. Tomatoes, obviously. And even more obvious? Fromage. Oh yes. The choice was limited and to avoid further mucking about, M1 grabbed one he recognised, a pack of trusty Roquefort.
Yum. Picnic. Happy. Job done.
On we cycled, fuelled up for the remainder of the ride.
It was quite a bit hillier than previous other days and also the longest ride we'd undertaken so far this trip. As we got to about 10 km from our destination, our legs really started to moan. Or at least M1's legs did. M2 took the lead and put in an amazing effort, a display of true grit (John Wayne style) and stamina, powering us over the remaining hills towards our destination, Dormans. Yeeeeeee haaaaaaaaa!
M1 just about managed to keep up.
We arrived in Dormans and headed straight to the local supermarket. M1 got his trusty drawstring bag out and made ready to enter the store and buy ingredients for camping mush. "Have you checked it's open", said M2, rather sagely it turned out. Because, no! The store was closed!!!
DISASTER!!!!
We had been so looking forward to that mush and after over 110 km of cycling, we deserved a bowl of delicious mush!
Google Maps was hastily consulted. But there were no other supermarkets in the town that were open. We'd arrived too late.
Crestfallen at the thought of a mush-free evening and quite possibly, a food-free evening, we explored the high street. It's not a big town but we counted 5 places we'd be able to get a pizza or two later that day when they opened. So, we would not starve! The disaster was downgraded to
INCONVENIENCE!!!!
We decided to head to the campsite on the other side of the river, get sorted out there and deal with feeding ourselves afterwards.
On checking in, we discovered that the campsite had a cafe and that the cafe had paninis and ice creams. What more could we possibly need (in the absence of camping mush)? We decided this was more than good enough and so ate our fill at the cafe before finding spot to camp in and put up the tent.
What a day! Great weather. Great scenery. Great cycling. And we did not go to bed with rumbling tummies :-)
Photos
Housey McHouse Face
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