Monday 27th May: Weather: 12°C to 19°C: A cool breeze but sunny
Paris: 16k walk from Igny to Versailles on the GR11
Accommodation: Hotel de Reims near Gare de Lyon
Walk from Igny to Versailles
Track along the River Brieve
Through the woodland at Versailles
Home to a beer wine and cheese
Highlight today was Ian arriving this morning followed by a train ride to Igny on the RER C then a walk along the Brieve River through the valley to Versailles.
I’m awake at 4am after a good 7hrs sleep and make a cup of tea. After a few hours of blogging and catching up with emails, I go for a short walk/jog along the Coulee Verte for 30 minutes. It’s a very cool 12°C and I arrive back at the hotel at 7.30am with cold hands. Ian rings to say his flight from Abu Dhabi has landed. He has no checked in luggage, just a tote bag with his back pack and essential hiking gear inside and is quickly through border control and customs. Another phone call to sort out which SNCF ticket office sells the Navigo Discovery pass and he’s on his way on the RER B to Gare du Nord then the RER D to Gare de Lyon. Like me he spends 30 minutes trying to find the exit out of Gare de Lyon, and eventually finds his way to Diderot Bd. A 400 metre short walk and I meet him outside the door of the Hotel de Reims.
Over a Jetboiled cup of tea, we decide to head out of Paris to the woods somewhere for a walk. We walk quickly to catch the 12.07pm train from Gare d’Austerlitz to Igny on the RER C train towards Versailles and 50 minutes later hop off at 1pm to find a little supermarket open in the village. Of course the boulangerie is closed like most shops in France between 12 and 2pm, so dreams of a fresh baguette with the tomatoes and cheese we brought with us for lunch fade and we settle for a loaf of sliced several-days-old bread.
Heading down towards the River Brieve it’s easy to find the red and white dashed markers of the GR 11 and follow it towards Versailles. It’s a cool afternoon and good for walking along the Brieve River - more a creek than a River - but very pretty through the woods, with an occasional village on the way. Lunch at 2pm is a bullocks heart tomato and cheese on a slice of almost stale bread. The track signs are few and far between but there’s no chance of getting lost with the River Brieve so close most of the way.
It’s 4.30 when we arrive in Versailles. We’ve been to the Chateau several times over the years but there’s no time to visit again. It’s a good place to go to remind yourself of the decadence that caused the French Revolution. The train station is a busy intersection of tracks and we check with the information centre which is the correct platform to return to Gare d’Austerlitz. It’s only a five minute wait for the 5.06pm and after 35 minutes, we’re back where we started.
A short walk over the River Seine and we stop off at the local Franprix to buy a nice Brie, two beers, a slab of Pate and a bag of ice. Then back to the Hotel de Reims to spread out our goodies on a towel on the bed for dinner of tomaties, capsicum, onion, brie cheese and mayonaise washed down with a cold beer and warm left over rosefrom the night before with a few blocks of ice. Forcing ourselves to stay up as long as possible, we’re in bed at 9pm.