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Bike Europe Blog
Day 8: Bar-sur-Seine - Venarey les Laumes
By PaulWe woke up at about seven after a solid nights sleep in spite of the duvet squabbles and went down for some breakfast in the hotel restaurant. Although the owner hailed from Yorkshire she seemed to have forgotten what sausage and egg were and presented us with a basket of French bread supplemented by miniature plastic containers of nutella and honey. The words, “Yeah thanks a lot, you’re clearly a pleasant woman but John spent about half an hour last night presumably explaining what we’re trying to do…ride seventy miles a day etc… How far are we going to get on air injected flour?” come to mind. They remained in the mind though and we remained polite, getting through three baskets of the stuff before they bought sachets of hot chocolate for us to make ourselves.
Despite the shortcomings in the culinary department the hotel was comfortable and warm, especially important after the shenanigans of the previous day. They also provided a room to keep our bikes safe and dry. The effects of a ten-hour bike ride were showing at breakfast as well with most of us in zombie mode; Daniel and John however remained as productive as ever and had the day’s root planned by the end of breakfast.
Returning to our rooms there wasn’t a great rush to get going and after Daniel stumbled on an Internet connection we got a little distracted. Whilst he located Decathlons and campsites throughout the country, Matthew, Kevin and I deviated from our task of updating the Blog and instead exhausted the bandwidth of the hotel by watching South Park.
We were on our bikes and cycling through the glorious French summer rain at about 10 o’clock, putting into practise our team riding techniques: riding in a tight line and alternating the leader every minute or two. We continued until we reached ‘Balot’ where John was waiting with bacon croissants, (actually happened today then not day 5) a much needed boost in light of the poor weather.
We continued on to ‘Bagneaux-les-Juifs’ at the end of the planned route. Daniel then cowered from the rain in a nearby phone-box and tried to get in contact with John. After going back a little way and taking an earlier turning, cycling a bit, Daniel’s phone falling apart, thinking we’d gone the wrong way then realising the texts had come through in the wrong order and we were actually going the right way we eventually came to a sign for Veneray-la-Laumes displaying 11km.
Freezing cold now we accelerated towards it (us now being capable of sprinting 8 miles). Concentrating on keeping the speedometer above 25mph, I failed to notice the sign at the roundabout for the campsite and shot straight through the town and out the other side. On my return to the roundabout I was spotted by the other three who had also failed to see the sign first time round (it was hidden behind a bigger sign and was doing that French thing of pointing in a different direction to that which you’re meant to go) and we made our way through the remaining 500m.
Our advance party of John and ‘Le Gofer’ Jules had already found a pitch, pitched the tents, located the showers (Kevin and Matthew using the ladies’ naturally) and boiled the kettle so it wasn’t long before we we’d recovered from our freezing wetness and were sipping soup by the sink side – John and Jules had ingeniously transformed the communal washing up area into our kitchen, dining room (and bar… to quote Jules himself, ”how can you come to France and not drink the wine?”)
We then adjourned to the TV room to shelter from the rain. Luckily all the channels were showing detective programs so we were soon immersed in a magical episode of ‘Magnum PI.’ Despite the gripping plot line, intriguing characters and finely trimmed moustaches John, Jules and Matt managed to tear their eyes away and consult the map up on the wall, ogling at the vast distance we had covered, I fell asleep and Dan and Kevin played ‘ping pong,’ on occasions briefly interrupting their game to serve into my face.
The day was finished with ‘pasta avec death sauce (stupidly spicy black liquid courtesy of Jules),’ followed by ‘rice pudding avec nutella,’ We went to bed fairly early with a couple of us coming down with colds - I myself had a bit of a sore throat anyway - ready to put on lovely wet kit in the morning and do it all over again.
Paul
Distance: 60.85 miles
Time: 3 hrs 24 mins
Average Speed: 17.8
Weather: Rainy
