From the Misty Castle

July 6, 2023

Chantilly to Carlemont

I started my day, and the tour proper, today at Chantilly. Chantilly is a palace, formerly of the cousins of the king of France, which the people of France also have named vanilla whipped cream after. I decided to name the first segment of this trip "whipped cream to beer", because it will end at Chimay, in Begium. This is the part that follows the Oise River, but more importantly it is the part of the trip that starts with a place that gave its name to whipped cream, and ends with a place that gave its name to beer.

It was a kind of a stressful start to the morning, because I needed to catch an RER train to get to the start of my trip. And it turns out that there's only like two trains that go all the way to Chantilly in the morning. One at 5:58 a.m., and the other one at 9:30am. Still jet lagged, I woke up at 5:00 a.m. at first I was like, oh shoot it's too late. I hadn't set an alarm because if I didn't sleep well I didn't want to wake up this early. And there were other trains that did not go as far that I could have taken instead. But I had slept well, and I was awake. After a minute of thought, I decided to go for it. I started packing and eating a hasty breakfast to try to make it to the train station by 5:58. Some sort of bicycle touring gods were with me, because I did get out of the house by 5:30 (I had packed a lot the night before), arriving at the train station at 5:45 a.m. and not only that, the train was 10 minutes early, and - I guess because it is a regional train where a schedules aren't so important? - it didn't wait for its scheduled time. I basically went straight into the station walked to my platform, the train arrived 1 minute later, and then 20 minutes later I was in Chantilly.

I have seen a fair number of castles in Europe by now, and even so Chantilly is a quite impressive one. My last tour in Normandy five years ago I started at Versailles, which looks like exactly what it seems like it is: a gigantic playground for seducing the nobility to not revolt against the king. It's huge, elaborate, and ostentatious. Chantilly, by contrast, especially at 6:00 in the morning, looks like something JRR Tolkien dreamed up. Surrounded by a moat that looks like part of the natural environment, covered with mist, with a single elegant peaked tower, it seems like the sort of place that elves built with magic. I couldn't help it think for the rest of the morning what it must have been like to grow up at a place like that. Also, probably there would be really great ice skating in winter. Although perhaps by the time ice skates were invented, no one was growing up there anymore.

It is surrounded by a wall, and then by larger domainal forests surrounding it for kilometers, which provided a great and very scenic beginning of the tour. Like, if I were running a bike touring company, can't really think of a better place to start a bike tour then at Chantilly.

I also thought a lot about how the same distance from a metropolis happens to be correct for building a royal palace (close enough to maintain political control over the city, far enough to be away from the dirty masses and revolts); the end of a metro train line; and starting a bike tour (out of car hell). It's the "yep we're really out of the city" distance.

Lots of regional forest roads like this one today

I love these little signs that they have in the middle of French regional forests, because they're crisscrossed with forestry roads, and it seem to be designed to occasionally have multiple roads (usually mostly dirt) meet and a clearing, so these signs tell you where they all go.

Because there aren't that many campgrounds near to Paris for whatever reason, I had to bike 80 km today. That's not that long in general, but usually I would take an easier first day. Since I started at 6:30 though I had basically ridden most of that distance by noon.

I felt very grumpy most of the morning, for reasons I couldn't immediately explain. This was the first day of the tour! This is what I love doing! This was an incredibly privileged thing to be doing!

And then kind of realized that it had been just many days of feeling pressure: about finishing everything up with work, about packing everything for the plane, and then starting out this particular day by rushing to try to catch a train; and then there's this pressure of having to make a longer distance the first day. So I bought a chicken salad at a Carrefour, spent an hour sitting in a village Mairie's park, eating slowly, and watching people. Then I felt better.

Shortly after I stopped at cafe to get a coffee. The server said, in French so heavily accented even I couldn't miss it, the price was "un euro cinq" (€1.05) which was an oddly specific number for a coffee price. I asked him if it really was "un euro cinq" or perhaps "un euro cinquante", €1.50. He confirmed inside that it in fact was €1.50. This is a guy who had arrived so recently he didn't know the difference between five and fifty! And he was working in a cafe; I must have been his first coffee order. I asked him if he spoke English, and he did decently well, and it turns out that he is a Kurd mostly living in Turkey, but visiting his brother to help him at his cafe (where I was sitting).

By that point I was nearly to the campground. Then, imprudently, I decided to take a less used forest road, just to see a less visited part of the forest. It turned out to be very muddy and rutted, and separately from all that, I also got a flat tire on it. So it wasn't until 3:00 p.m. that I made it to the campground. But, it was a very nice campground, basically just a block of showers and a bunch of places to put a tent.

Many campgrounds have a place to eat dinner, but this one did not. I went to one of the nearby towns to look for something, and found a take-out caterer, a bakery, and an organic grocery, all next to each other and open until 7:00 p.m. This is like winning the bike touring strip-mall lottery and I ate very well.

Very pleased with my new food hauling system

Actually, I am *still* eating very well, I still have to eat the eclair

Other things I saw today:

Giant tanks at a place labeled Chanel parfumerie on the map and I want to know if any of them are full of Chanel No 5

A strawberry vending machine. I was feeling grumpy at the time and a person was loading it, so I didn't want to bother them to take a picture.

A juvenile common buzzard (which has a much more elegant species name, Buteo buteo, "hawk hawk"). Although they are common here, they're not that common to me and the juveniles are particularly remarkable with a mostly pale white body with black spots under their wings.
A cat that caught a mouse, just walked in front of me while I was eating dinner.

The campsite owners Harley-Davidson, that he personally imported from California, which he showed to me after we started talking

Okay, signing off for the night, so I can get enough sleep to bike tomorrow.

Today's ride: 85 km (53 miles)
Total: 150 km (93 miles)

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