Day 64: Baume les Dames to Besancon: Three Strikes and You're Out

September 23, 2015

Leaving the B and B, that is Dodie way down the hill.

I just finished my French lesson, parked outside Super U, while Dodie is inside looking for lunch materials. Last night's stay was delightful, but in a B&B family situation it is not possible to pilfer any supplies. Actually, there is not much lunch potential in croissants and coffee anyway!

So far the tire repair is holding, but I expect to hear more from it, as grit works its way into the pea sized hole and then through the thin repair material. As long as it is not raining, I don't mind fooling with it, and besides we do have one folding emergency tire on hand.

With nighttime temperatures now below 10, we are finding a further excuse not to camp. Just in time, actually, because there is lots of camping opportunity in France, and we are probably in a sweet spot for the next week until they close for the season. We are hoping to economize a bit, though, if we can find camping that also has cabins.

We are becoming more disenchanted with Booking.com, as it becomes clear just how many properties in a place they are missing. It is likely that only higher priced ones feel like paying the Booking commission. On the other hand, research is costly in terms of our time - so checking a lot of web sites or worse, roaming a town when it is late and we are tired is not so great either. Reading our blog from this area from four years ago, we see that we just went automatically to the campings and done. But that was July and we were four years younger. Oh well.

Time to go do some actual pedalling. Dodie should be out with lunch in a moment. With luck, she will have also found some of those cheap and good Super U bargain chocolate bars!

The chocolate Dodie got at Super U yesterday was 2 bars for one euro. Today's special was 3 for a euro! We do admit it's pretty poor quality, but it does seem to have the necessary calorie content.

Despite the low prices, I still had to go in to the Super U to use their ATM and replenish our stock of euros. I put in my card, which is from HSBC (Paris main branch), gave my PIN once, and the machine claimed I had entered an incorrect code too many times. It then shut itself down, claiming to be out of service, and ate my card!

Needless to say, some jumping up and down ensued, and Super U cracked open the machine to retrieve my card. Of course, I still left without any new euros, and with a new caution about handing any other machines the card. We decided to visit HSBC in Besancon to make sure all was well with this critical card.

Back on the trail, we much enjoyed the peace and quiet of the car free route, through farms and beside the river Doubs. This was marred a bit by rain showers and quite low temperatures, giving us thoughts about whether we had enough warm clothes on board, and deciding us once again that camping would be for another day.

We returned to the river and occupied ourselves with activities like chasing boats. This one was easy, as it soon ran into a pile of locks!

A small bit of the route was on road. These signs seem to show that the road planners know the cars will not give proper clearance. Not only is that car in the sign darn close, but the rider seems to be cringing to the right!

There were a few very small towns along the way. This shot happens to catch the bikes of two likely day trippers.

Many parts offered totally idyllic cycling, like this.

Charolais cows have now replaced Brown Swiss.

Besancon was not particularly far away, and soon we were beneath the famous ramparts. The town is almost encircled by the river, and has a tunnel joining one side of the river loop to the other (see photo). The tunnel has a bike path, but when we passed through it four years ago, crazy bike speeders in there lead to Dodie significantly beefing up her stock of French swear words. This time, we put on our lights and flashers as a precaution. Sure enough, approaching lycra speeders two abreast refused to give way, finally moving over just a bit. Grrr.

The city plan for Besancon. The dotted line at the bottom is the tunnel by which you can totally miss the city.

Our plan was to find the Tourist Information, since we are now a bit leery of Booking.com, and at the same time to check on the location of HSBC. As it happens, we fell over HSBC right away. But they not only looked closed, they had a sign in the door that we interpreted to say the branch was closed and go find another HSBC somewhere, anywhere. As far as we know, the next HSBC is in Dole, 50 km away, not that they were volunteering that information.

Our next chore was to find the Tourist Information. We used a combination of our maps and street signs pointing to Tourist Information, but had no luck. So we flagged down two passing (and very sweet) bicycle police and asked them. They both agreed that the Tourist Information had moved because it burned down, but their versions of where the new one was were a little at odds.It turned out the lady cop had the best version, and soon enough we found it. It also turned out that the street signs were wrong, because they (mostly) pointed to the burned down version.

This sign is totally misleading. Tourist Information says everyone tells them about the signs, but the city seems to be lacking in black tape (at least) to fix them.

Tourist Information made several calls and determined that the low cost rooms in the town were all taken, so we ended at the Ibis Budget, just over the bridge - outside the old town. It turns out that is just what Booking.com would have ended with. Tourist Information also phoned HSBC for us, and they swore they were there.

So back we went to HSBC, looked at their sign again, and tried ringing two bells that were beside the door. We had seen the practice of having to ring yourself in to a bank before - even at our HSBC branch in Paris. But the buzzers seemed to have no effect. Then we noticed a man inside, and Dodie knocked on the door. The man gestured and seemed to say something, and then made to ignore us. So Dodie pounded on the door. The man repeated his performance. But so did Dodie. Finally the man came to the door. I asked him if they were open, and he said certainly. I said what about this sign. He said - what about it? I said, you ought to take it down. He said - read it carefully.

On the door of the HSBC Branch. If you know the deeper background, then you might recognize that the branch is one block from the burned down city hall, and they are sort of trying to say that they are unaffected.

The sign says "We are not making any changes to our branch. Thanks for understanding. For anything you need go to the nearest HSBC branch."

Now folks, what does that say to you?

As for the locked door - though it was configured as a pull, it was actually a push - and was not locked.

So in I went. Before this I had tried my card in the HSBC machine outside - and it worked. So we decided that it was Super U that had been at fault. But here's the rub. On this subject of too many tries with the PIN - they told me that indeed, three wrong tries is the limit. But that is not three wrong tries today, that is three wrong tries forever - for your whole life - or the life of the card, I assume. If this happens to you, not a branch and not headquarters can revive the card. All they can do is mail you a new one. If you are in a place with no HSBC - like Germany - you can forget about any access to your funds unless and until you report to an HSBC branch. The lady told me I was foolish to have only one HSBC card, since there is this risk. Oh by the way, this card service costs over 100 euros per year per card!

Aha, so now what about Besancon itself? Absolutely stunning! The old town is very extensive, filling the entire space in the loop of the river. The whole thing seems to have been built in the 1700's or so, and it looks fabulous, At every turn there are opportunities for great photos. For Canadians reading this - Besancon looks basically the same as old Quebec City.

One difference from Quebec, Besancon is using a lot of electric trolleys - just like Basel, but new ones. They look really great, and go ding ding in a most endearing fashion.

My idea was just to roam around and absorb the ambiance, but Dodie feels at loose ends doing that. Besancon is a 36 things to see place, according to the tourist map. So we compromised and wandered around (mostly) but noting where we where and which things on the map we were looking at. To be fair, the map did lead us to some things we would otherwise have missed - like the Astronomical Clock, in Saint John's Cathedral.

Here is that clock (front and back), but otherwise just have a look at the shots that show the general ambiance of the city:

These things always have ingenious workings

One other observation about Besancon. The city has obviously gone out of its way to try to be bike friendly, painting bike lanes or bike symbols on most of the roads. The only thing, the drivers show no respect for either the lanes or the symbols. Often the bike lanes run contrary to the flow of traffic, so you can watch the cars approaching you in "your" lane. Then you basically have to flee to the sidewalk. In one case, I decided to stand my ground. The car came to a stop in front of me, and I showed the driver that he was now parked on top of a bicycle lane symbol. All he did was to yell at me. I think the gist was that he needed some room for his car as well.

The guy had a bit of a point. In a photo I snapped of Dodie fleeing a bike lane in face of a bus, you can see that with pedestrians on one side and bikes on the other, the bus driver really did not have much of an option.

Dodie vs the Bus. Really the bus had nowhere to go, but see the bike sign under its left wheel!

We were glad that HSBC and the weather got us to stop at Besancon. We could have just sailed through that tunnel otherwise and kept going. We will try to make some time for other great stops along the Loire, when we get there. On the other hand, we are also eager to get to Nantes to see our friend Michel. We have also hatched a plan to zip up to Paris to meet up with daughter Joni, who would come from London, where she is receiving an award on behalf of her school. More about all that later.

The view from our hotel. 57 euros bought this spot by the train station.

Today's ride: 50 km (31 miles)
Total: 2,976 km (1,848 miles)

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