Metz to Nancy

June 24, 2024

Today we are riding from Metz to Nancy.

I was a bit apprehensive about our route today. I had read the Cycle Blaze journal of the Bartlett’s, who had recently ridden from Metz to Nancy and had a pretty bad time with muddy conditions. Since mud has been our nemesis in the last couple of weeks, I took another look at the route last night. Unfortunately I couldn’t really tell what route the Bartletts had taken, in order to avoid their issues. I even changed the setting on our Komoot app to “road bike” from “cycle tour” per Tricia Graham’s great revelation, but that change gave me an entirely different route through the interior, rather than along the river. So, the upshot of all this research is that we’re taking the Charles Temeraire bike route to Nancy, which is pretty much all along the Moselle Canal, except for some random roads as one gets closer to Nancy. And we are praying for NO MUD. Komoot only identified a couple of very short sections of non-pavement, but we all know she occasionally gets sassy with us.

We came across this remnant of a Roman aqueduct.

At breakfast we met Chris and Koy, who live in Germany but Koy is from Thailand. They were in Metz for 4 days, saying they had to change plans because the weather is bad all over Europe.

The route turned out to be no problem and we enjoyed a lovely ride. This was helped by warm weather but the ride along the Moselle had shady forested areas (good protection from the sun) and enough variation not to be boring. There were a few industrial plants along the way. At the midpoint in the ride we stopped in Pont-à-Mousson for lunch and found a shaded outdoor restaurant right off the route where we had a small lunch. Small because after a ridiculous Nutella sundae last night in Metz after dinner, we are trying to get back to more healthful eating….

The canal is lined with numerous little huts like this. They're privately owned and provide a calm place for the owners to relax and do a bit of fishing.

The route is signed well enough but we had two “deviations” that provided us with some challenges. The bike trail is sandwiched in between the river and the train tracks so there are only specific places where you can cross the tracks to continue on the trail. We came to a train station where the tunnel to the tracks was blocked off due to construction. For the life of us we couldn’t figure out how to detour around the construction and still go over/under the tracks. Dave wound up parking his bike, scouting it by foot, and eventually was able to speak to a construction worker who directed us to go down the main road 500K where there was an underpass that connected us to the trail once again.

The second deviation was one of those notorious signs telling us the trail was closed ahead (route bareé). We took the trail anyway because we couldn’t really see an alternative and the barrier for construction had been pulled down so we got through okay.

The Moselle has a lot of swans and it was fun to see them.

Riding into Nancy had the usual city-riding challenges. Bike lanes were well-marked but the traffic was more aggressive and less predictable and the lanes were narrow and tight and there was bad site distance in a number for places. And, about 1 km from the end of our route Komoot directed us to go up a really steep long set of steps. Really Komoot? We rerouted ourselves.

Komoot thought it a good idea for the route to go up these!

I have mentioned before that when you stay in hotels so many nights in a row you get strongly opinionated about little things. Tonight we are booked for two nights in the Novotel Suites in Nancy. We love our Novotel in Munich so on this trip I booked quite a few and we signed up for the Accor hotel program. Novotel often have tubs.

We have been underwhelmed by our experience in France with Novotel and are beginning to think our Munich Novotel is the gold standard! The hotel this evening is a case in point. It’s described as a 4* place but it’s not. The exterior and lobby look like a Motel 6 or whatever the French equivalent is, with concrete walls. We had a remodeled room which is great, but it was pretty plain, and the ac didn’t work that well. Oh well - first world problems…

This evening we dined outside at a nearby French bistro and ate an excellent hummus with crispy fried onion bits on top, and a salmon bowl (Jill) and salmon tartare (Dave). We also DID NOT have ice cream or anything else for dessert, despite Dave's temptation to do so. We met Vincent and Jacques and had a nice visit with Vincent who lives on a boat on the canal near Nancy. We think Jacques does too.

The weather was perfect and we walked around our neighborhood afterwards. It’s very nice, feels local and has lots of nice flats.

Tomorrow is chore day - laundry and the journal and checking out the train station for a short ride the following day.

Addendum re: the route from Jill: after doing our ride I looked again at the Bartlett’s journal entry from Metz. I think they took the Canal de Jouy route out of Metz before joining up with the Charles Teméraire route, and it was the Canal de Jouy route that was awful/muddy. When we departed Metz we rode about 8 km south through town to join up with the Teméraire trail and skipped the Jouy route altogether. This explains our very different experiences. Mystery solved.

Today's ride: 67 km (42 miles)
Total: 1,977 km (1,228 miles)

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