July 7, 2023
Towpaths and Rail Trails
Carlemont to Guise
Today started out inauspiciously, when I made it 4 km for my campsite in Carlemont and realized that I did not have my headphones. It became more inauspicious when I bike back almost all the way to the campsite when I realized that they were not around my neck as I expected, but I was actually wearing them. This is perhaps a good advertisement for how comfortable my headphones are, but it was not a great start to the day. My recorded distance of 85 km then is actually 8 km longer than the distance between Carlemont and Guise.
I did cross the Oise a few times:
Hidden most of the morning was not alone the river but along a series of different canals that are roughly parallel to it. It's made for pretty fast, straight line riding, but it also gets to be kind of boring. A lot of the day looked like this:
Some of it looked like this:
Or even like this:
Which is to recognize that sometimes there were other people, and often boats going down the canal, to break up the monotony.
Later in the afternoon it got better, when there became forested trails. At least some of these appear to be converted rails to trails.
In Guise I met another bike tourist at the campground, Eivind from Norway who was living in Paris. We went to dinner together, and will at least start the day together tomorrow. He's got a hotel booked 100km away through which is further than I'm planning to go.
The other interesting thing about Guise is that the campground host acted a bit like I was a celebrity, or perhaps more accurately like an exotic animal, because I was American. She first called over her husband to introduce him to me, the american. Later she walked over to our campsite and asked to take a picture of the outside cover of my passport to send to a friend, to prove that an American from San Francisco was staying in the campground (I think they maybe just bought or took over management of a campground or something like that?). There are not many Americans in French campgrounds, but nevertheless it was still kind of strange.
Other things I saw today:
A great blue heron
Today's ride: 85 km (53 miles)
Total: 235 km (146 miles)
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 7 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |