Rambouillet to Chartres

September 10, 2021

We miraculously slept until 8 this morning. So much for an early start! We had this whole section of the campground to ourselves, and not just one, but two picnic tables! It was like winning the European campsite lottery. I think we enjoyed it a little too much, because it was 10 by the time we left.

The threat of rain seemed to have diminished, but we still set our sights no further than Chartres. I recalculated our daily distance based on a slower pace. The stars aligned in such a way as to put us at a municipal campsite each evening. Sounds perfect! We'll take a rest day either on the first bad weather day or when we reach Mont St. Michel, whichever comes first.

This stretch of the Veloscenie is really nice. A fair amount of it is on backroads, but there's a tiny bit of singletrack, some packed dirt trails, and coming into Chartres, a really nice greenway. It even begins with a jaunt through the park of the Château de Rambouillet, an impressive estate that we unfortunately didn't have time to tour.

With every sight we pass up, I ask myself: are we doing this right? It's a trick question, really. There is no right or wrong way of approaching touring. If you get something out of it and haven't harmed anyone in the process, that's a lot more than you can say about a lot of other pursuits. For me, I'm not into creating and checking off bucket lists so much. The main joy is being in the saddle, making progress on our journey. I also enjoy the serendipity of chance encounters with both nature and people.

To wit: 10km or so from Chartres, I encountered Maurits, a cycle tourist from Amsterdam, who was studying a paper map trying to determine whether to take a certain turn. Thrilled to speak English with someone, I asked him the usual questions. He was headed to the same campsite as us, so I offered to be navigator, with one caveat: we had to quickly visit the cathedral first. He was game, so off we went! When we got into town, I switched my navigation to Google Maps because it was easier to work with on the fly. It first suggested that we ride our bikes up a long flight of stairs. Then it suggested that we ride our bikes up 5 stairs, which we all deemed reasonable by comparison. A passerby mentioned to Maurits (he's fluent in French) that the next street over required no stair climbing whatsoever, but by this time we were already well in bike-portaging mode.

We gawked at the cathedral for a few minutes, and Maurits offered to watch our bikes while we checked out the stained glass from the interior. Meanwhile, the wind had picked up and the clouds had darkened. Little did we know that during our little peek inside, all hell broke loose outside. Maurits had quickly donned his raingear. We scrambled to do the same. To our credit, we were prepared and had put it all at the top of our respective clothes bags. The rain soon let up and we carefully rode down the slippery cobblestones towards the campground.

Maurits is a fascinating person. There was no lack of conversation. We were tired, dirty, hungry, and low on provisions, but somehow we managed to fit in some social time. Maurits started from home in Amsterdam, and is on his way to Amboise, just east of Tours, where Leonardo da Vinci spent his last few years. We got rained on again, and again it stopped just as quickly. After we ate our respective dinners, we polished off the bottle of wine Maurits bought and just started scratching the surface of geopolitics. He's staying here another night so he can spend some quality time at the cathedral (he's the smart one), but since we have to hit the road again tomorrow,we bade him good night and invited him over for some delicious gourmet instant coffee in the morning.

I was starting to think that between COVID and the end of the summer holiday season, we wouldn't encounter many cycle tourists, but already in just a few days we've made meaningful connections with two of them. Pretty cool! Let's hope there are more to come.

We finally tried out the solar-panel-on-the-back-rack trick. today. It worked perfectly! Now if only we could get more sun...

We lunched near this idyllic little spot on the trail

Roman aqueduct ruins. Unfortunately it seemed impossible to walk any further than the road, but through a locked gate you could see how much further the structure continued. Amazing!

Shades of Zuheros as I again push the truck up the hill

Maurits and I: now we don our rain apparel

Today's ride: 65 km (40 miles)
Total: 221 km (137 miles)

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