Friday June 21st - 47k ride to Douvrin. Overcast, freezing most of day 10°C to 15°C
Goodbye Hotel InterTour, hello rain
Vimy Ridge Trenches of Canadians
There's bugs in the coffee
Louvre Lens is Classy Glassy
Lunch on bench at Le Lens Louvre
Miltons 30 yr old Brooks leather bike seat finally died in Paris - a good place to die
Dinner on the bed
Yum - Cheese, ham, tomatoes, mache and pate - just for something different
A relaxing day. Just 47 k from our Inter Tour Hotel near Arras to Hotel Colibri - another hotel on a busy highway. The land must be cheap. But we're in early as the next few days are time fillers until Sunday when we go to Brussells to take the Eurostar to London. It was cold and overcast today. Misty rain followed by a cold south easterly, but an easy day planned. The two touristy destinations were Vimy Ridge, site of teh Canadian battles of WW1 and Lens Louvre, location of the extension of Le Louvre Paris.
It's 7am when we awake to the noise of the TGV's which have resumed after a night of lull. We had left the window open to dry our washing but it's all still wet. Ian uses a hair dryer up the sleeves of his one and only cycling shirt. I sit on the bed and blog and Face Time to Bonnie. It takes me a while to figure out how to reduce Ian's 7 megabyte photos to 300k or less so that I can post the full size on the web instead of just a thumbnail. It means transferring the 7 megabyte files to my MacAir, then importing into iPhoto, then exporting from iPhoto as a reduced file, then importing into Sandvox (my web software) for publishing. So now, folks, you can click on the tinsy image and see the full blown size. You learn something every day.
It's almost 9am when we walk a mile to breakfast. The Hotel Inter Tour is a long building and we are right at the end - closest to the train line. Breakfast is nice - it's a bit more than bread and jam. I get to cook eggs in 30 secs flat on a little induction stove. The coffee is so nice we have 3 cups each. Not really a good idea when it's cold outside and you have to dismantle 5 layers of clothing while hiding behind a rock.
By 10.30am we're out the door and headed for Vimy, a village about 20k away. We get there about 11.30am and stop at the Express Carrefour's supermarket and stock up on Champagne Pate, cheeses, hams, tomatoes, Mache (a cross between clover and lettuce) and bread. We usually buy enough for two meals - lunch that day and either dinner that night or lunch the next day if we happen to eat at a restaurant for dinner.
I made the mistake of asking the shop assistant for directions to the Canadian Memorial at Vimy Ridge. Whether it was his English or my misunderstanding, we finished up at the bottom of a hill on a huge roundabout with signs pointing to places we didn't want to go to. Time to turn around and go back up the same hill to a sign we had seen when we first arrived. A good thing probably - a good way to warm up as the temperature had dropped back from 15 ºC to 10 ºC.
Vimy Ridge is a 14k elevated ridge rising from the flatlands around the Village of Vimy, and was a strategic location in WW1. The Germans claimed it on 1914, but the Canadians managed to take it and hold it on April 9th 1917. 3,598 Canadians died on Vimy Ridge, whilst 66,000 Canadians died in the First World War, a similar number to Australia The site today represents the best preserved trenches and the museum alongside explains the significance of Vimy Ridge. It is staffed by Canadians. There's also a huge monument to the fallen Canadians.
It's freezing, and time for a coffee, but the only place to boil the billy is on the ramp to the Museum, tucked away out of the wind. Another layer of clothes is needed. I strip off and add my Aldi Jacket to the five layers I am already wearing a - singlet, Tee shirt, cycling shirt, flannelette shirt and Haglöfs Rain jacket. Reluctantly we pack up and scoot off down the hill towards Givenchy. It's even colder whizzing downhill. It's easy to get to Lens by following the signs, then more signs to the Lens Louvre, where we stopped for lunch.
According to Wiki, the Louvre-Lens is an art museum displays objects from the collections of the Musée du Louvre that are lent to the gallery on a medium or long term basis. It was built in 2003 to spread art outside Paris. The glass building was designed by Japanese architects. Interesting as it was, we were hungry - it was already 2.30pm - and the logistics of leaving bikes and luggage was difficult. Ian spread out lunch on the park bench whilst I added yet another layer - I had to dig deep in my bag for my long skins.
After lunch, a visit to the tourist office near the railway station to find accommodation for the night was a good detour. They booked the Hotel Le Colibri in Douvrin, a small village about 15k north of the hugely urbanised town of Lens. Uh Oh. Another hotel near another busy highway. But apparently its common place with many travellers spying the hotel from the motorway and pulling over.
It's 5pm when we arrive - our earliest night yet. Time for me to re-do all my thumbnail photos into larger sizes with reduced magabytes to upload easily. But first it's time for a beer for Ian and a Rose for me whilst we check out emails. Donna and Milton arrived in Paris yesterday, but Milton's bike seat died - it's a 33 year old relic - a leather Brooks saddle - and the tip broke off. I suppose Paris is a good place for a bike saddle to die.
Tonight our double-up of picnic stuff will serve us as dinner. The restaurant at the hotel is closed and it's too far and too cold to ride down to the village. So tomato, cheese, pate, mache and ham washed down with a local red is dinner.