Day 109: Vouecourt to La Louviere

June 4, 2023

Beyond the "Barree"

“It’s a bit chilly this morning, just when I tossed my legging,” Rachel says leading out on the trail again. The past week or so her legs and arms have been liberated.

As we cross the bridge over the Marne River, the church clock chimes 7 times. “There’s a stream of thin cobwebs from your back, Patrick comments and Rachel acknowledges that she is breaking the trail of spider webs.

Rachel finally is ready to toss the leggings, the knees are about to break through the material. The leggings went on the 2015-2017 RTW tour and the 2021 Nothern Tier tour. The sarong is from 1994 Africa, and 1999-2000 South America tour....still doing well.

We knew today was going to be a longer day, what we did not expect was the trail construction going on just past Froncles, our alternate stopping point for yesterday. There is a fence across the path but not much obviously going on. And of course it is Sunday so no work happening.

We ease around the barrier, it seems like we are not the first ones to do so. Except for at one point, we get through the 20km or trail work by dodging a dozen fences and many filled-in potholes. It seems like they are removing the worst deteriorated asphalt and preparing to put in new fill. The plan seems to be to install a nice smooth new layer over the top later. For now though it is a bit of a pain, but as long as we can follow the canal we are not complaining.

That is until we get to one lock where a small backhoe is completely blocking the path, probably because just past it a bridge deck has been removed. So we back-track, weave our way through a small town and find the path again downstream from the lock. Not much further on, the asphalt returns.

Around the barrier, and now hopeful that the asphalt trail returns.

The canal is not quite a scenic today. Or maybe it's because we've been following canals for a couple of days. We are leaving the hills and the horizon becomes much wider. Sometimes we are sheltered by trees, but often the sun is beating down on us. Even though it is only about 80 degrees the sunrays feel strong.

At St. Didier we leave the trail to find a grocery store. Only at the last minute do we realize it is Sunday and open stores might not be as common as we expect. We are lucky, the Leclerc is still open, but it closes just after we get our groceries.

Our ride through France so far has taken us through many small towns where we hardly see any people and surely find no Boulangeries, Boucheries or Epeceries.

Rachel asks Patrick if towns used to have more services. Patrick remembers every town having some, but it must have gone like small-town America where Wal-Mart killed off all the small grocers. Many towns also seem dead, we hardly see any people walking around. St. Didier is an exception; there is a free fishing day or something going on along the canal judging by the number of people along it.

After the groceries we stop to eat another ham and cheese sandwich, and then crank out the final 28km to our destination. The canal and path are very straight and boring now the after several days of the “same, same but different” as the Thai phrase best expresses (Scott and Rachael mentioned this too).The sun is hot, but we just need to “get there”.

The “Nature” campground is nice, lots of shade and lawn. The internet is weak and only unisex bathrooms / showers. Americans should be outraged! But they are very functional, individual cubicles with full doors for toilets sinks and showers. One urinal is tucked away at the very back. This is France so no toilet paper or toilet seats. But there is a nice area with sinks for cleaning dishes.

We carried a small watermelon that gets butchered right away, a bottle of wine, two liters of a tea drink and for dinner we will eat our Beef Stroganoff freeze dried emergency dinner.

We eat our "emergency" meal that Rachel has carried from the beginning of the tour.

Today's ride: 88 km (55 miles)
Total: 4,507 km (2,799 miles)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	7
Comment on this entry	Comment	0