travel blog
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Day 11 Marnay to Hotel des Lacs
I think I’m going to need a pilot’s checklist before setting out each morning! Today I forgot to turn the Strava app on until I cycled over 6 miles 🙁 plus the cadence meter obviously was knocked out of alignment too, as Strava didn’t record my cadence. A pleasant day for biking although it’s getting…
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Day 10 Chaumont to Marnay
An excellent days riding with the weather now a lot colder in the morning. Made error Numero Uno when setting off this morning by going down a steep hill to find out at the bottom I was 180 degrees out 🙁 so had to pedal all the way back up. Varied scenery along the canals,…
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Day 9 Vitry to Chaumont
After a mega snore last night I packed and went along to breakfast. Great spread and uber friendly folks. How can some folks make running a hotel look so easy? Whilst others make it seem so hard. The day seemed very tough, it was hot and ‘close’ so progress was slow. The villages are very…
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Day 8 – Mailly to Vitry le Francois
After a restless nights nightmarish dreaming I awoke and very carefully made sure I didn’t leave anything. I was at the breakfast table for 8.30 sharp. The Dutch couple & kids arrived a few moments later, enough to cause the landlady a little consternation. He was told immediately, for no apparent reason, to move his…
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Day 5 Something has to go!
Something has to go on this mega bike trip. It’s either or:- The Panniers The Viewranger app or me Today, Fresnes Les Montauban – Le Cateau-Cambresi was really tough even though it was a fine day weather wise, my carefully planned Viewranger route was rubbish, no way of telling if the ‘road’ is a track, what the…
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Day 5 Gonnehem to Fresnes Les Montauban
With great reluctance I departed from Le Clos du Fouan into the grey & wet morning. I headed back down to the canal, marvelling at the size of the barges, probably equivalent to half a dozen UK ones also on the distance between locks, this part of France is certainly flat. I left the canal at La…
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Day 4 Calais to Gonnehem
After a dreadful nights sleep, what with the squawking seagulls (please remind me never to live near the sea!) and plumbing noises. It was straight off to SFR to sort out the bricked dongle. They eventually replaced it after everyone inspected it like some dead animal. I started to follow the rather magnificent canal although…
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Leaving the Country – Day 3 – Whitstable to Calais
After a most magnificent breakfast at the Oyster Guest House, unusually, in my experience, cooked by the landlady. I started the final UK leg to Dover, I opted for the scenic route to avoid Canterbury & the evils of the A290. The first part was on the Oyster Bay cyclepath, A REAL cycle path along the…
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Black Sea here I come
Today marks my first cycling day in this years marathon ride which, hopefully, will take me to Les Gets to visit my apartment and maybe meet Euan for a walk or two. I hope to cycle over to Zurich to see my neühew then onto the start of The Danube River at Donoueschlingen, cycling down…
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What happened to the daffodils on a Daffodil Dawdle?
Yesterday was Sally‘s big day of walking the Daffodil Dawdle, a marathon size walk that has to be done in 10 hours or less. Her concern wasn’t the walking but the test it presented in her map reading prowess. Fortunately at the 11th hour David emailed her a gpx file which we easily managed to…