Today I rode my bike for the first time in almost a week. It was for a simple errand. It felt very natural, although I'm already losing some fitness. If the rain lets up, we'll go for a longer ride or two this weekend.

This having been our longest tour to date, it's a daunting task to summarize what we experienced. I've put it off as long as possible. Let's start with the practical stuff, which should get the ball rolling.

First, I am so done with the hassle of flying with bikes. It's expensive, it's risky, it's time-consuming, it's tiring. However, I don't see any good alternatives right now. I fooled myself into believing that the length of the tour would make those couple of stress-filled days seem insignificant. The problem is that they bookend the trip. You remember them, like it or not.

We used everything we brought. Even so, I think we could've cut down on weight a little bit. Having two power banks made it less imperative to find electricity every day, but if I didn't bring a tablet, one power bank would have lasted us 3 or 4 days. The solar charger helped us a lot in Brittany, where we (surprisingly) had a lot of sun but fewer opportunities to sneak in a charge at campgrounds. Next time I'd probably leave it at home unless we were heading out into the wilderness.

The radio helmets were not just a convenience. They aided communication during critical moments. At other times, they allowed us to chat freely and to gage each another's mood and energy levels. They do lessen the sense of solitude one experiences, for better or worse. We also found ourselves without much to talk about during breaks, since we now have so much opportunity while riding.

I felt like we generated a lot of packaging waste during this trip. It may be because we bought a lot of ready-made food such as couscous and salad mixes. We often had easy access to trash cans, but recycling bins were harder to come by. On our rest days, we got into the habit of separating our recyclables so that we could drop them off after checking out. We will continue to seek ways to reduce waste while touring.

Before the trip, I was still quite concerned about COVID and the restrictions surrounding it. As we eased into the tour, it faded into the background. For the first time in 18 months, there were days I simply forgot about it all together. I think Sunyoung was a little more aware of it since she did most of the shopping. Over time, we noticed that everyone around us became more relaxed. I think this was largely because the places we visited became less crowded as tourist season wound down.

Our bikes held up well. I had my doubts, considering how much of a beating they went through on the unpaved surfaces, and how much debris our drive trains picked up. We probably could have done a better job cleaning them. With limited tools, time, and energy, it's challenging. I was thankful when Michel was able to bring a chain wear tool when we were staying in Nantes. It assured us that we weren't on the verge of tearing up our cassettes and chainrings.

Speaking of thankfulness, before we go any further, I'd like to extend my appreciation to those who helped make this a special trip by offering their advice, assistance, camaraderie, etc.:

• Shawna at Free Range Cycles for the bike boxes
• Fred and Sue for the pre-trip advice and the ride to the airport
• Jeanne in Arnouville, who gave us a warm welcome and a great place to gain our bearings
• Susan, who gave us our introduction to Paris, secured a box for us, shared routing advice, and helped make our last few days lots of fun
• Maurits, who added a lot of fun to our stay in Chartres, and who kept in touch with us throughout the tour
• Marc for the inspiration us to tackle the hills of Brittany with a smile
• Michel, who showed us around Nantes and gave us lots of great advice
• Jeanne and François for sharing your house, wonderful conversation, and encyclopedic knowledge of cheese

• The readers and commenters of this journal, who provided great feedback and motivated me to keep writing and riding

• The spirit of the French people, their love and respect for cycling, their patience with our poor understanding of the local culture and language, and for making lots of great food to fuel our adventures

I'm sure there are wonderful and important people I've momentarily forgotten, and to you, I apologize.

I went in to this trip with a limited understanding of what we would encounter, and with some personal biases that needed correcting. I was under the impression that we would be perceived as a nuisance by locals, both as cyclists and as foreigners. I was glad to be proven wrong! Some of our fondest memories will be those of random strangers who were authentically friendly, trusting, and kind towards us. This attitude (I want to call it a personality trait) was much more the rule than the exception. I know that it's pretty common to encounter when touring, because people are curious and they see us as unthreatening or even helpless in a way, but this was on an entirely different level. Very seldom were we made to feel like we were wasting someone's time, even in the busy cities.

No matter how much research you put into routes, there are always surprises. I expected us to spend much more time on back roads, and even on busy roads. However, I expected more of the trails to be paved. I expected more of the unpaved sections to be crushed limestone. We navigated our share of single track, rocky dirt roads, and sections with some erosion.

Downloading GPX tracks from the various France Vélo Tourisme web sites, then uploading them to Komoot to navigate, worked out really well for us. If you pay extra for the premium version of Komoot, it'll take long trips and help you break them down into daily "stages". This is ok until the first time you stop short or go further in a single day. At that point, you need to decide if you want to recalculate everything. It would be better if you had a single multi-day plan that would follow you as you progress, giving you suggestions for your daily destination while you're traveling, rather than having to guess it all in advance. Komoot did a pretty good job of rerouting us on the fly when we took detours. In Europe, it definitely does a better job than Google Maps. Sometimes it's a little too knowledgeable, taking you on unmarked "desire paths" where people take shortcuts through fields or to sneak between two streets.

One thing you certainly cannot do is to rely on wayfinder signs. All it takes is one missing sign to throw you completely off-course. When you have a map, digital or otherwise, seeing the signs is reassuring, especially when the route takes you somewhere that seems counterintuitive. They're really helpful, for instance, when trying to find the path that snakes up to a bridge. The turns are too close together to see clearly on a map.

Overall, I think France is doing a good job creating and maintaining its network of long-distance cycle routes. You can tell that La Loire à Vélo is the crown jewel, that a lot of attention is lavished upon it. Even it could use some improvement, but I'd rather see those resources go to the provisional sections of other trails. First and foremost, get that trail between Mâcon and Lyon paved! Route around those steps on La Véloscénie! Add some of those cool bike rest stops on more routes!

Train travel was certainly a mixed bag. I suppose if it were too easy, we'd give in to it all the time and not do so much pedaling from town to town. I think the first thing I'd do to improve bike-friendliness is to install runnels on every stairway in every station. Now that I've written that, it sounds like a lot of work. So what. Do it anyway. Next, be consistent with which cars have bike hooks. Always put it at the end, or always put it at the front. Front would be better, because then it wouldn't matter how many cars are on the train. Maybe you could paint the platform to show where bikes load.

It doesn't seem like the TGV trains are lacking space to take bikes. The fact that they limit fully assembled bikes to only certain routes appears to be a strategic decision on their part. I can't exactly blame them. The passenger fares they give up in exchange for adding bike stowage are much higher than those on the local trains.

I don't mean to complain. Overall, the amenities available in France are far superior to what we get in the States, or even what you find in many parts of Europe. The neat thing is that you can see that the French government and the people do care about cycle tourism. Right now I would caution visitors to take some of the promises and publicity with a grain of salt, but that's true of just about any media directed towards travelers. The goal is to get you to want to go there. If the place is attractive on its own merits, you won't mind a few bumps in the road. Based on our experience, that describes bike touring in France in a nutshell.