Author: Brian Burger

Left Chalon in the morning with a couple of the local cyclists riding along for the first five km or so, including a stop at one of the few supermarkets open on a Sunday morning. France really does shut down on Sundays, especially in the villages we ride through. An open shop or cafe is not to be passed up.

After the thunderstorms of the previous afternoon and overnight we had been wondering how rainy the day was going to be, but I managed to miss the heaviest rains, although others got caught.

Mostly along the Canal du Centre today, which connects the Saone and Loire rivers. That kept the hills to a minimum, although we did climb steadily alongside the canal locks most of the day, including one set of seven step locks.

Finding our lodging at the end of the day’s riding has been a challenge since the start of the trip, and was again today, especially because I hadn’t been able to get the appropriate high detail map tiles onto my phone for half the town… Eventually two locals hopped in their car and lead our group to the auberge, which was clear on the other side of Montceau-les-Mines, several kilometres away.

One last thunderstorm rolled through just a few minutes after we got to the auberge, and while some folks got caught in it we got to watch it from the porch with the bikes tucked away in the garage.

As if to make up for the lousy night in the local gym, breakfast this morning was really, really good. Arrangements had been made to eat at a local cafe, and it was the best breakfast we’ve had in France, probably the best of the trip so far! Great coffee, a German-style cheese and meat platter, and good juice. Free WiFi, too.

The ride was short again and fairly straightforward along the canal, and we found our lodging easily enough.

The local cycling group and the tourism people hosted a short wine and canapes reception on a motor barge moored near the city centre, and while there we had the first of a string of epic thunderstorms march in, with crazy heavy rain and even hail.

I learned a new and slightly off-colour French phrase while watching it rain from inside the barge, “Il pleut comme une vache qui piss”, literally translated, “It rains like a cow who pisses”, ie it is raining very hard. Useful phrase, that.

We had an abbreviated guided tour of the old part of town with a very nice English-speaking guide, cut short as we watched yet another thunderstorm march in.

Managed to get back to our hostel without getting soaked. The place is normally student housing so instead of multi bed dorms I had a single room that was effectively a bachelor apartment. Nice and quiet, lots of space to put stuff out to air and do a bit of sorting.

Nice easy ride today in good weather, with one minor route-finding error that saw us doing some minor trespassing along an active rail line for about a hundred metres before finding the road again and the marked bike route.

Aside from that it was the usual mix of canal paths, farm tracks and minor roads, with a lunch stop at a bar in a tiny village that did very good, cheap sandwiches.

Suerre is a very small place, a couple of thousand or so. No hostel, so our lodging was going to be une gymnase again, a community sports hall.

Turns out that the quite nice modern sports hall on one side of town was closed for renovating most of the summer, so we were in the old gymnase, an asphalt-floored, pigeon-haunted barn on the other side of town. Oh, and only cold water in the showers.

A few folks headed to the local camping bungalows or small hotel at the news of cold water showers; the rest of us stuck it out.

Dinner was picnic-style on the side of the canal, then it was back to the gymnase for some sleep, with some sort of kid’s concert in the adjacent schoolyard providing a soundtrack of sorts.

Easy ride along the river and canal today, pretty much dead level for the whole 60km. We’re somewhere near the two-thirds mark of the trip, both in terms of time – just over two weeks left – and distance – about 700km of 2300 left to go!

Dole is the home of Louis Pasteur, he of pasteurization and the rabies cure. The medieval/Renaissance quarter is well preserved and we got a guided tour of it, about two hours long, courtesy of the local government.

Before the tour, though, I had to deal with the first (hopefully only!) bike repair of the trip: I’ve worn through the tread on my rear tire thanks to the load on the bike and hundreds of kilometres of unpaved trails since Vienna. The red liner centre liner of the tire was showing in dashes around most of the tire. Thankfully the local bike club volunteers had met us at our hostel and one of them rode with us out to the nearby good bike store, where twenty Euro and about five minutes in the shop got me a new Michelin tire.

Dole is a neat little city to visit, but the local hostel, the Foyer St. Jean, is… interesting. The rooms and bed linens are are clean, but the whole place needs maintenance and a scrub – burned out lightbulbs, peeling paint in the bathrooms and hallways, and disorganized staff – no room assignments when our group rocked up, just a disinterested staffer telling everyone to find their own bed, that any unlocked room was available.

I’ve never been in a hostel that didn’t bother assigning beds/rooms before. Really odd.

Off to the small town of Suerre tomorrow, with a short ride of under 50km along the river and canal again.