Wednesday 29th May: Weather: 9°C to 19°C: Mostly Sunny, cold then cool with a light breeze
Paris: 22k from Pontoise to Poissy: train RER Nation to Pontoise then home RER Poissy to Nation
Accommodation: Air BnB 20 Place de Nation
Path beside L’Oise River
Coffee overlooking L'Oise
Luxuries boats moored at Cergy
Axe Majeur. You tell me!!!
Olive bread is really chocolate chip
Through woods beside L'Oise
8 ducklings and mum perched on log
Wide wooded path beside Seine
Au Vieux Campeur locations
Highlight today was finding teh path along the Seine River about 40k out of Paris, that the Tourist Office in Pontoise said didn’t exist. Second highlight was discovering our Olive Bread Baguette was speckled with chocolate chips not olives - it didn’t go well with our tomatoes and cheese.
We’re both up at 4.30 am after a really good night's sleep in a queensize bed. But it’s still dark outside. A cup of tea and some emailing/blogging/washing/repacking and at 6.30am I duck out of the aparttemente in the cold 9°C crisp morning air to buy a fresh baguette to split between my breakfast snack and our picnic lunch. But despite the smell of bakery goods wafting through the air, nothing is open til 7.30am. Back for a cup of coffee with yesterday’s stale baguette - if it’s not eaten in the first two hours, toss it out - and we’ve packed some tomato/cheese/butter/tea/coffee and our Jetboil ready to walk across Place de Nation to catch a RER train to Pontoise for a walk along the Rivers Oise and Seine. Our plan is to walk the 22k from Pontoise at the end of RER C over to Poissy at the end of RER A.
By the time we leave, the bakery is open and I buy two baguettes - a plain for me and olive for Ian. Across the Place and down through a mile of tunnels and escalators, eventually we find the RER lines. Getting to Pontoise needs 3 trains, RER A, B and C. In five minutes the train arrives and after several more changes at Chatelet les Halles and Saint Michelle we arrive in Pontoise and go to the tourist office to get a better map of our planned walk. Not possible she said. The last part of teh walk to Poissy is through large industrial areas with closed off roads. OK. We’ll see, as google earth had shown it was possible. Someone isn’t right!!
The first part of our walk is very peaceful and beautiful along the River L’Oise, a destination for famous painters like Monet centuries ago. But today,there;s many cyclists and walkers on the busy path. Soon we see a perfect spot on a seat in the sun overlooking the L’Oise River. I break off a bit of my baguette to have with coffee. It’s rather sweet, I think. A cross between and scone and a doughnut. But it was nice with a a hot coffee. Around a loop of L’Oise and into Port de Cergy where there’s some expensive cruise boats moored near a cluster of restaurants. Through the small village I spy a Petit Casino supermarket and stop to buy a real baguette, one that doesn’t look and taste like a doughnut to have with our cheese and tomato.
The path does a circuit around a loop of L’Oise and soon we come to several supposedly architectural sculptures called Axe Majeur - a Major Axis. The Axe Majeur is a monumental, immensely grand, work of art. At 3.2km long it is extraordinary yet, despite it’s size, the Axe Majeur on the edge of Paris is hardly known outside of France. Despite googling it many times, I still haven’t discovered its real meaning. That’s French Art for you!! The only people taking advantage of it were the hundreds of people training by running up and down the hundreds stairs many times.
This loop of L’Oise is a beautiful picnic area with play grounds and picnic tables spread across acres of wooded parkland. A perfect spot for lunch. It was here that my worst fears were confirmed. Our olive baguette was not speckled with olives but chocolate chip!! Good job we’d bought a real baguette earlier at the Petit Casino as chocolate chip does not gow ell wit cheese and tomato.
The path follows L’Oise down to it’s confluence with the Seine where there are large industrial areas, barges and mountains of sand and gravel dredged from the rivers. Time for another cup of coffee while we make an executive decision on whether to trust the tourist office’s advice that a path down the Seine doesn’t exist and return to the nearby train station of Conflans, or my instinct and google’s maps that there is a path down the Seine to Poissy We/I decide to follow the River Seine and trust that the path went the wole way to Poissy. And it did! And it was a wonderful riverside walk just metres from the Seine along a gravel track, with such interesting things along the way - like the ultra expensive mansions with views over the Seine and the eight little duckings with mum floating on a log near the rivers edge.
After 6k of flat walking through wooded paths and past magnificent mansions overlooking the Seine, we arrive at Poissy at 4pm, just in time to catch the RER C non stop back to Place de Nation. It was a relaxing 45 minute journey after a 22k day with no train changes.
It’s maze through the underground to find a way out on to Place de Nation, which we eventually do, stopping to buy mushrooms at Le Petit Casino. A welcome beer while cooing dinner of sliced pork, zucchini, mushrooms, onion and capsicum. A cold bottle of Alsace Brut Rose is almost as good as a Veuve Clicquot. A few hours of French Open tennis and bed at 9pm.