Lions!
There are places you don’t need to hang around in and L’Isle-sur-le-Doubs is one of them, though it does have a half-decent boulangerie for breakfast. The town is very busy with cars in the morning rush, but I’m not sure where they are going.
It’s an 80+km day today, so we get away as quickly as possible, hoping to get to Mulhouse before anticipated rain.
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A faux-Swiss fish massage?
I could swear we are in Switzerland already. Once we leave the vibrant and bustling Besançon (with a belly full of lunch ice-cream) we find ourselves rolling along beside Le Doubs, with vibrant green vegetation and the ground rising sharply on either side.
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I had to ride 1,000km in France to find a vegetarian restaurant
Margie Joyce, June 20, 2023, France
It’s a big day for we cycling tourists in France. After two-and-a-half weeks of riding, we are going to hit 1,000km today. It’s something we’ve done before on our Eastern Europe and Canadian trips, but this time we aren’t even half way! Budapest is still more than 1,500km away!
…R&R in a pretty town
Today is about rest and the only thing we really do – besides rest – is take a wander around town following the directions of a bolshie little cat (who we name Tinkerbell after a dearly departed little bolshie cat I/we used to share a house with). Her directions are at times a little hard to keep track of, and there are the dreaded shortcuts (Ikea anyone?) so she leads us on a merry dance around town.
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It’s a long way to fairyland
Today we have a bold plan. Today we will ride 100km!
It’s been done before, but not on this trip, and it isn’t the greatest way to spend a day, but sometimes you just need to hustle along to get from one place to another. Master navigator for this trip, Neil, who sits up late at night looking at maps and towns and drilling right down to see what restaurants there are in towns (because food is so important) has determined that our best course of action would be to ride straight through to Dole.
Normally we try to stick to around 60km in a day. That’s enough to keep us moving, allows time in the day to dawdle and say, “Oh, look at the lovely castle,” and arrive at the destination in time to chill, have a beer and a look around. 100km is just a bit of a stretch on loaded bikes.
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It all goes downhill today
It all goes downhill today as we travel along Canal du Centre from Montceau-les-Mines to Chalon-sur-Saône. So far on this trip we have travelled upstream on every waterway. The gradient has never really been noticeable, but today, when things turn around and we head downstream on Canal du Centre, it brings on a fun set of downhill locks. We go through about five where I don’t need to use my pedals much, just rolling downhill to the next lock, then down again. It’s enough to bring a smile to the face of a slightly weary traveller.
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Au revoir La Loire
It is such a fast start to the day. With our bikes cleaned and the chains oiled to perfection we zip along wide, well paved and smooth bike paths out of Bourbon Lancy – sometimes the bike infrastructure is just so very, very good in this country! It’s always good to make a lot of progress early up – it sets up the day and make us feel good about our progress.
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Spa day!
Everybody has a spa today, including the bikes and our clothes.
We start the day with our first hearty breakfast since leaving Melbourne. With a small cooktop and microwave in our apartment we can put together a typical “JoyMck” breakfast and eat it while listening to Raf on ABC radio (it feels a bit wrong to be listening to Raf’s Drive program in the morning).
Where east meets west
We’ve been slowly moving east on this trip, while our friends Michelle and Steve have been moving west on their first European cycling trip. We knew we would meet up at some point and today is the day.
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