Tuesday June 18th - 93k to Bray sur Somme. Warm to hot, 15°C to 30°C
Blog time before hitting the road
Ready to leave Compiegne
Cobblestoned Parc - start of the Paris - Roubaix race each year
A few Bike paths to follow
On the Canal du Nord
15k to go on the Canal du Nord
More wheat fields with poppies
Ian's new camera at work
Passed by a truck at 100kph
And still alive
The start of WW1 cemeteries
Manicured Assevillers Cemetery
Telling the Story of The Somme
At Bray sur Somme after 93k
Meeting up with Donna
Sunburnt but happy
Doing dinner at Maison Lavoir with Milton Donna Jan and Ian
Beautiful garden on the Somme
It's a long ride today. Google Maps told me it was 83k but they were wrong again. Someone needs to tell them their distances don't measure correctly!! The sun is out and the day was hot and thirsty - temperature range is 18deg C to 30deg C. Our route takes us via Noyon, Nesle and into the area of the Western Front where World War 1 saw its darkest days. War cemeteries appear in every village. After 93k, we finally arrive in Bray sur Somme and meet up with Donna and Milton - a pre arranged get-together for old school friends from 50 years ago.
The morning starts at 5am when we are awake early. Time to catch up with blogging as we have internet but not much time to use it. There's an email from Bonnie saying we've forgotten to divert our business phone over to Jenny and Clancy is inundated with phone calls about asbestos and software. Sorry Clancy. Our panniers need repacking. They somehow now don't seem to fit everything in that we bought with us. Funny how we seem to have more stuff now. One garbage bag later and a bit of squashing and there's room to add the food for the day. Breakfast is downstairs at 7.30am - typically French with bread, croissants and jams. Each time I come to France I swear I'm not going to eat bread - until its put in front of me and I can't resist. Caroline, our host chats with us - she speaks fluent English, legacy of her being an exchange student twenty years ago in the USA. As we leave she hands us the leftover bread and croissants for fuel on the way. It's 9.30am when we leave.
Our first stop is the cobbled stoned Central Parc where they start the Paris Roubaix cycling race every year. Our own Stuart O'Grady won this race in 2009. It's so dangerous riding on these cobblestones that we have to walk - and the cyclists race over 200k, mostly on this kind of surface.
Getting out of Compiegne is easy. There's a few bike tracks along the Rive Oise with it's Caneral Lateral - a canal built parallel to the River hundreds of years ago for transport. It's after 12 and the shops are now closed when be find a new bicycle route for 15k along the Canal du Nord which takes us in the general direction of Peronne on the Somme. Lucky we have a bit of food with us. Half way along the Canal bike track, it's time to stop for our first cup of tea - we've already had two cups of coffee for breakfast and we're coffeed out. Our Jetboil is magic. In two minutes the water is boiled.
Once leaving the canal, we follow what was supposed to be a quiet D road that headed directly north through Nesle and on to Villers Carbonell. But it had been turned into a main A road sometime in the last few years and we had to share the road with large trucks and speeding cars. But it's safe. The great thing about cycling in France is that cars and trucks always give cyclists a wide two metre berth, even at the risk of themselves crashing head on into oncoming traffic. It would never happen at home in Oz.
At Villers Carbonell we turn left to head west parallel to the Somme River. It's already 5pm and still hot. More wheat fields, poppies and war cemeteries until we finally reach Bray sur Somme and within a few minutes have found our B and B - La Maison du Lavoir in the heart of Bray sur Somme, where we are greeted by Donna and Milton who have ridden 70k from Lens in the north and arrived and hour earlier than us. Time for a quick swim in borrowed togs in the heated swimming pool before drinkies in the garden. Milton has arranged dinner and at 7.30 we sit down to a 6 course meal with multiple choices of wines, spirits and liquers.
By 10pm we are all chocka. Time for bed in our separate cabins with double glazed windows and thick walls, as the small outhouse is on the main D1 road.