Day 22: Saint-Jean-de-Losne to Chalons

April 17, 2018

The B&B had four other cyclists - 2 couples travelling together - that were also on the EV 6, though heading east. Before going down to breakfast Dodie put forward the notion of being polite but not doing a lot of talking, in the interests of eating and getting on the road promptly.

So down we went and quickly found that it is hard not to talk when you are being peppered with the Usual Questions. We also found out a little about the other cyclists, the most interesting being that while one couple was from Normandy, the other was from Nantes. This was their first major trip and they had background with such fundamentals as mapping and GPS route finding. We gave them contact info for our friend Michel in Nantes. Michel, being an expert in GPS and a French speaker, will help them a lot if they make contact. And maybe they will join Michel and his group of friends for rides around Nantes.

Needless to say all this took extra time, so we straggled out of the B&B quite late. And all we managed to straggle out to was the Casino mini mart across the street. That's where we picked up our day's supply of "Sodebo" salads. We are finding these to be really high quality, varied, and with good "extras" like balsamic dressing, bread sticks, or cookies.

With a final peek at St. Jean we crossed the bridge to the Losne side and began to make our way down the Saone toward Chalons. It sounds really simple to say it that way, but this is simply not the case of a path by a river. Rather the route wanders all over the place, and to make matters worse there was often no correspondence between the signage, our maps, and our GPS track. It takes a bit of courage to look at a clear directional sign and ignore it in favour of a track. And it takes time to find shade and look at the track when the signs have clearly disappeared.

Final peek at St Jean. I wish that truck (and the five cars) would move.

So we wove our way around for about the first 20 km. Actually, we seldom could actually just put our heads down and go, for the duration of the day.

Of course with our heads up we did notice a few of our favourite things. If you've read this far in the blog, you know that that is normally animals and churches, when it's not bakeries.

Let's get the animals out of the way first. Here is a new foal, always great to see. Too bad this one was too intent on getting a drink to look at the camera.

Sticking with horses, we also noted these two who looked set up for long distances. We did not see their owners and so we do not know their story.

Touring horses, but they lack Ortlieb bags?

Blue, white, and green was a popular colour scheme along the river. Here are two different animals types trying to fill in the "white" part:

And finally, the frogs. Near Gergy we came to a wetland beside the river which boasted many birds and plant types, plus frogs. The frogs are Rana Almatina - the Agile Frog, so called because they can jump further than their fellow frogs. But we found they were also distinguished singers.

One of the first churches we found fit in with the striped colour theme, except that here we had green and yellow tones:

We have already mentioned that few fellow travelers on this year's route seem inclined to stop and chat. While that is still true, we ran into one today who was very different. This was Ludwig, a cyclist from Germany who had started at Gibralter and was cycling back. Ludwig stopped immediately and a lively discussion ensued about our mutual current routes and about our plans for future routes. Ludwig might like to try cycling cross Canada, and we were excited by the prospect of helping him out. One thing which we have in abundance at our home, for example, is the Pacific Ocean - useful for dipping your wheel in before setting off for the Atlantic. We hope to keeping touch with Ludwig. You can too, especially with the help of Google Translate, at his website, which has German words but universal photos!

Chalon has a reputation for being confusing on a bike. But actually we found cycle lanes all the way in, and though we were using the GPS, the signage was pretty good too. Chalon has an extensive and beautiful old town, and we quickly popped into the centre of it, which is the square in front of the Cathedral, a building that was started in 1080 and sort of completed by 500 years later. (Sounds like some of our own home reno projects.)

So in case you thought this blog day would have one church only, here is a look at the inside of the Chalon cathedral. As is often the case, it was the stained glass that added most of the interest, but an added attraction was the view of the square from within the church.

A view of the square from within the cathedral

Another look at the square. There are lots more buildings like this in downtown Chalon.

Dodie had been doing a great job of navigating us through the confusing velo route all day, plus into Chalon. She also got us out, and to the suburb of St Remy, where our hotel was "Le Saint Remy". We passed right in front of it, but this time it took me to say "Hey, isn't that it?!" And then when we turned around and walked our bikes back, Dodie pushed right past the open gate. After so many hours, by now she was done.

Fortunately, a shower, a Sodebo salad, and a bit of rest has put Dodie back in operation. That's good, because we need her to now find tomorrow's spot, which will be in Macon!

Supplement: Button Down Sun Shrug

Dodie has long been prone to sunburn and so she is careful to keep arms and legs covered. For the arms she has a "shrug", which is like sun sleeves which are connected over the back. The only problem with the one she has it that it leaves a small gap just before her cycling gloves, and that leaves a one inch wide sun burn area. What is really needs is one of those thumb loops that appear on cycling garments, but that was not an option now.

Dodie is proud of what she did come up with. Pilfering loops of material that used to allow our windbreakers to be hung up (which anyway I don't do - I just dump it!) she sewed that to the cuffs of the shrug's sleeves. Then she used safety pins into her cycling gloves as "buttons" around which she could loop the loops. Problem solved, and on/off is easy. Pretty smart, eh?

Today's ride: 75 km (47 miles)
Total: 1,326 km (823 miles)

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