Orleans - Basle 7 Days 670km

The Three French


Orleans, Burbon Lancy, Palinges, Chalon sue Saone, Chalon, Dole, Besancon, Mulhouse and Basil


After resting up for the weekend in Orleans I was excited to get back on the bike again and move on. I missed seeing the countryside roll by and I had only 60k to go until I was at the 1000k mark. The 1000K mark was outside a Chateaux.

I ran into Bruce from Waiheke Island who took the photo. Then it was following
the canals until the end of Loire a Velo

The end of theLoire a Velo

To celebrate I got some wine from the supermarchet

Exactly what it was I wasn't sure but it was cheap but tasted very good.
At the campsite I got talking to some fellow bike tourists and after many bottles of rose a friendship was born.

From the left Valentine who is cycling across Europe and back again carrying a back pack. Then there is Vincent, Margot and Pierre. The three french.

Pierre and I talked about his time in Australia (Melbourne) and how he really should have visited New Zealand. He did say that he loves vegemite so all was forgiven. He also showed me their schedule of going from Paris to Istanbul in 2 months. It was astonishing. 4000K in 8 weeks with a single rest day every week. I laughed most of the time reading the plan as I didn't think it was possible to go so far so fast.

Little did I know I would be along for some of the ride.

For 2 days the three french and I followed each other - as you do following the same route. We began riding together after meeting at lunch around 35k from Dole.

That first 35k with the French was more like the Tour de France than tour cycling. At times we were doing 30k/hour and it was a whole new world of pain as we made the climb into Dole.

Thankfully the next day was a rest day. It rained a lot and I spend 6 hours in Mcdonalds using their free Internet and creating the blog. Dole was nice but it was France on a Sunday so everything is closed.

The butchers was closed but there is always a kebab shop

Louis Pasteur did some work in Dole so the hospital has this.

We meet up with Roland (with the map). He is a German who was biking back home to Germany after spending the winter in Portugal. Roland has biked all over Europe and racked up around 25000kms so he had some great stories, had plenty of good advice and could tell me about what to expect on the journey from Austria to Greece - Hills!

At the top of a tough climb Vincent found a fire hydrant and with some skill opened it up for a drink.

Riding with the 3 French meant I had to stick to their brutal schedule.
It went like this.....

25/6 To Nevers 91k
26/6 Burbon Lancy to Palinges 70K
27/6 Palinges to Chalon suer Soane 100k
28/6 Chalon - Dole 90K
29/6 Rest day
30/6 Dole to Besancon 70k
1/7 Besancon to Mulhouse 150k
2/7 Mulhouse to Basil 96k

Up until this point I had been doing around 60-70k per day with about 7 hours of travelling time and around 5 hours of actual cycling and I thought I was doing quite well.
I would leave around 10am bike until 4 when I would start looking on the GPS for somewhere to camp.
It was ride 3 days then take a day off. This was working OK - I wasnt tired but I wasnt moving very quickly either.

This all changed when I began biking with the French. It was get up around 7am. Breakfast and have a coffee. Depart at 8.30/9am then stop for coffee at 10. Then bike until lunch. Have a coffee. Bike some more. Have a coffee. Bike some more and then camp. Cook dinner around 8.30pm have a beer or a wine and finish the dinner with a coffee.
It made for some long days but it was a much better way to bike. I was going much further and faster than I had in the previous 3/4 weeks and drinking a lot of coffee.

The longest day was 150k and that happened by accident. There was no camping ground at the town we wanted to stop at so Vincent and I continued on to the next town which had a camping ground.
The problem was that the camp site was 10k off the track in the wrong direction so at around 6.30 PM after being on the move for 9 hours we decided that the best option was to carry onto Mulhouse which was a further 40k away.

So we shared an orange, set the MP3 players to loud and set off as fast as possible which turned out to be 23k/hour. 

It took just under 2 hours and it was around 9.30 when we arrived. We had 2 very cold large beers and then setup camp.

Dinner that night was interesting. Vincents gas burner started leaking while it was on and flames around 1m high were coming out of the burner. It burnt a big hole in the grass and made for some spectacular and very funny viewing for 20 minutes until the flames died down.

 
The final part of the France trip was a ride over a bridge and then you are in Swizterland.
It was just like riding over any other bridge and there have been many in my time in France.

I had crossed my first country by bike!