August 12, 2019
And the winner is...
Gray to Rupt-sur-Saône
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TODAY I award the title of most peaceful river in France to the Saône. We have followed it all day as it wandered good-naturedly along a valley wide enough to suggest that either a glacier passed this way or that the river has taken many diversions over the centuries.
It has been the gentle day we wanted after the oddly taxing jaunt of yesterday. Our tyres have hummed their little hum, as loud as anything has been today. We passed anglers keener on staring at the water and passing swans than catching anything.
Riders went the other way with a wave. A German couple smiled as we broke off to make coffee and a Dutch pair passed as we snoozed on a bench. And that sums up the day.
We could have ridden further and we could have ridden faster. But that, you'll have gathered, isn't the purpose of the tour. We want to take our time without wasting it and we want to feel that every day has done us good without wearing us out.
And we'd certainly have done a few more kilometres had we come across anywhere to get water so that we could camp wild. But the only place we found was a small municipal campground and the idea of asking for water only to camp somewhere else seemed so pointless and the campground so agreeable that we signed on for the night.
We're beside the river again, between parallel rows of tents and camping cars and among other cyclists. The warden, a plump and smiling woman who has found her role in life, charged us €8 and gave us each a bottle of water in return for having arrived by bike.
Most of the cyclists are Dutch. They always seem to be. We, however, are the only ones with a proper table and comfortable folding chairs. Steph had barely started cooking - another job for which I am not considered apt - when our neighbours in a camper van took pity as she crouched on the ground and brought out their table and chairs.
They are a retired couple from Alsace on their way to visit their son in Haut-Jura. She speaks in the way that Swiss people do, slowly and slightly sing-song as though giving a dictation test. She says she admires what we're doing, what all the cyclists are doing, and that she's envious. And so we are outside with their table and chairs while they are inside, watching television.
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