Today’s ride: 85km, 392m elevation
Total so far: 85km, 392m elevation
It’s 11am in Paris, and opposite the Gare St Nazare Two middle aged men are fiddling with their bikes. Their coffee and croissants are slowly cooling on the table beside them while the traffic honks slowly past, two lanes deep. Things are being adjusted and clipped. A lady with lucky heather takes a step towards them, catches the bald one’s eye, and decides against it. The two men nod at one another.
‘Right. Which way is it?’
Cycling in Paris is exactly as you would expect it to be. You are lower in the food chain than either pedestrians or vehicles and are wise to give weight to both, which makes progress slow and frustrating. Taxis and delivery vans stop without warning and tourist step out in front of you because they can’t hear you. There are sections of flat road and sections of cobbles and with so many junctions you never ever get into a flow. However, Paris is an incredibly beautiful city with some of the world’s best known cultural sites dotted all around, and you can’t help but stop and admire some of the views.
As an extra prologue of sorts – in addition to the short ride from Ouistreham to Caen – we had planned to take in some of the key sites: Tour Eiffel, Louvre, Champs-Élysées and Arc de Triomphe, and Notre Dame. It had to be done but it was a kind of slow motion chaos, and it was with a sense of relief that we took our last tourist snaps and started heading south. The final stop was at Le Réveil Matin in Montgeron, where the first Tour de France set off. The spiritual beginning of all grand tours seemed to be an appropriate place for ours to start.
It might sound strange but we weren’t sure where the first day would end. We had a choice of three campsites at roughly 85, 100 and 115km from the start, and we had planned to ease ourselves in and get as much distance covered as appropriate. But not only was the city itself slow and hard going, the suburbs and satellite towns were too. We were following a route called the Scandiberique which supposedly connects Sweden and Portugal via a 9000km route, but it was hard to follow and felt unfinished We’d come off busy main roads on to cycle paths through parks, only to end up back on the main road a short distance later. Some of the surfaces were rough and at one point I hit a tree root so fiercely it threw my pannier bag onto the floor. There were some really beautiful sections but it always felt hard work, and we were both disappointed to decide to call it a day at La Rochette, only 85km in.
On the plus side, the Belle Étoile at La Rochette was a good site, with a friendly welcome and a snack bar that served good pizza and beer. We ordered breakfast for the next day and settled in, the stars coming out to greet us as we worked through a range of local beers.
The trip had begun.
