August 5, 2023
La Clayette to Paray-le-Monial
None of us had any issues with the concert last night, though Tobias did wake up for some reason. His stomach seems a bit better but he is still not quite his normal self. He slept in but we had a really hard time getting packed up. It didn't help that it was a grey, cold and pretty uninspiring day. The only upside was the 2 kittens living under the canvas tent next to our pitch which Tobias thought were hilarious. A young girl of around 10 tried to convince us to take one with us, but we explained (with the help of a stranger to translate for us) tha taking a kitten on a cycle tour was probably more responsibility than we needed.
Once we finally got on the road we didn't cover much ground before Tobias was all done bike (and I was all done passenger). We didn't have great roads today, but there wasn't a lot of choice as we were trying to get to a bigger town with a store that might sell the gas that we needed. So there was quite a lot of traffic on the road.
We found a picnic table with an abundant blackberry bush for lunch. Tobias can now spot blackberry bushes as we bike and stops to ask me to pick them for him. Him asleep I enjoyed the afternoon of riding. The landscape actually reminded me a lot of east Otago, except with more hedgerows between the paddocks and much older buildings. And a few castles.
We headed straight to the Intersport since Tobias was still asleep as we joined the bike route into town. Again no luck on the camping gas with the screw top so we just gave in and bought a cheap cooker that attaches to the bottles that exist everywhere. It pissed us both off a bit. It kind of feels like campingaz is taking over the gas situation in France. But we are both getting tired of chasing sports stores rather than beautiful roads so we had to suck it up.
It was downhill from there to our campsite. The place is the most expensive place we've stayed in France. I'm a little concerned that we paid for 2 days rather than 1. I need to check with the other cycle tourists that showed up as we were having dinner tomorrow. Its definitely no fancier and if anything just feels a bit odd. There are so many huge Decathlon tents here and when we arrived no people. I have nothing against Decathlon tents. Its just really odd being at a campground where all the tents are the same. The other cycle tourists told us that there is a huge religious gathering, which explains all the people we passed on the way into town. Besides the kind of creepy feel the place is quite nice in that it has a covered picnic table with a solar USB charger that they put up specifically for cycle tourists which is nice. This would be really great in all campgrounds.
I think we all need a rest day. We haven't had a day off just as the 3 of us since we left Annecy and that was a month ago. While we get lots of energy staying with friends, we probably also need to recharge too. Unfortunately we've kind of biked ourselves out of the most interesting part of Bourgandy in search of gas for our cooker (it turns out searching for towns with big stores doesn't find the most beautiful places). We considered heading north on the cycle path tomorrow and staying in Montceau-les-mines, but the Wikipedia page is not so inspiring so instead we will head further west to Bourbon-Lancy and then traverse across to Dijon from there.
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Today's ride: 32 km (20 miles)
Total: 2,664 km (1,654 miles)
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