I thought I got up early this morning but obviously not. There are two other independent touring cyclists camped beside me, they are both already gone. There is another cyclist a few spots away who was just doing the last straps up as I walked to the loo. Even the motor cyclist behind me is gone, with his motor bike. I didn't hear any of them :) Of course there is no point leaving early as nothing will be open before 10 am anyway.
The camping ground is already today's route so I just followed it out of town and across a bridge to the other side of the Marne river. I took a few photos here as it was quite pretty. There is a Route Touristique de Champagne which follows the Marne for quite a distance so I thought I would follow that. Of course we all know what following a river means!
After a few K's I came to a very nice little town by the river and decided it was time to finish off breakfast, so I got a chocolate eclair (a really nice one) and a coke and sat by the river to eat it. It is lovely and hot today, sunny, not a cloud in the sky. Sigh, so nice. To add to that there is a monster tail wind running down the valley in the same direction as me. It doesn't get much better than that. Of course we all know what often happens to monster tail winds in the afternoon don't we? I hope not, still it is better than rain.
The road made a few excursions up the side of the hills, for no obvious reason, but I did get some nice photos out of it. Eventually we came to a town where I thought I'd have lunch. There is a monster, 33 m, statue of Pope Urbanus II from the 11th century. I went up to have a look at that and the view then went back into the town. No restaurant, only a bar. Bummer.
I continued along the route, checking each town as I went. Eventually I found one in the town of Verneuil, it turned out to be a lovely spot. They had a not so small lake beside the hotel which was being fed with about half the water from the nearby stream. There were quite a few cute ducks around as well.
I sat on the terrace and ordered the menu du jour, I thought I'd make this my main meal of the day. The entree was a salad of chicken and mushrooms, lettuce, jambon cru and calamari rings. The calamari batter wasn't quite cooked but everything else was very nice. I think with enough bread it would have been enough for lunch on its own. Oh, and I had it with a glass of champagne as well, of course. Champagne Lehreux (or something like that). For the main it was pork medallions in a mustard sauce with potato that were done with onion and cheese. I also had a carafe of water. I was pretty stuffed by now and then I did the thing that would shock Paul, I skipped the cheese course! I just couldn't eat it, and went on to the dessert, which was a plate of fruit. Cool and very tasty. I'd go so far as to say that the fruit may be direct from the farm as it definitely seems better than what the stores sell. And then I did it again, I refused the coffee/tea after the meal. I'd had another carafe of water and was just too bloated.
About the route, there were oodles of champagne houses along the road. As Paul wasn't here I wasn't too inclined to go in on my own. The houses, and some of them literally are houses, are not very inviting. They are quite pretentious and they rarely have anyone in them. The amazing thing is how many of them there are. Hundreds. And that is just on the road I am riding along. Surely some of them have just one little field of grapes that they make their wine from? There just isn't enough planted for so many champagne houses to have much of a yield?
Anyway, back to the ride. After a quick walk around the lake at the restaurant I set off again, already 2.30 pm. It was pretty hot too. According to one of the towns I went through 34C. From here I rode pretty much straight through to Chateau-Thierry, didn't like that and so just rode on out of town and continued on along the Marne. In the end I finished at the camping at Charly-sur-Marne. Of course that tail wind I me mentioned in the morning, the wind turned during the afternoon and there was one horrible straight stretch where I was going directly into it, I was only able to manage 11 or 12 kph it was so strong.
After setting up I walked into town. It is quite a pretty town but it is odd in one way, there are no restaurants. There are 2 pizza places, a bar, a bar with pizza and a bar with proper food but which only serves food at lunch. In the end I went to the bar with pizza so that I could watch the news on TV. The pizza (4 seasons again) was quite nice although a lot of cheese. I had another Fanta with it and he didn't charge me for it for some reason. (I think perhaps it is because the taxes on food have been reduced from 19.6% to 5.5% from the beginning of July.) The bar seems to be used by itinerant workers, there were several there having dinner with the bar man, looked good actually Calamari and rice.
No comments:
Post a Comment