Day 5 and Paris

Sitting in Porto, Portugal, I'm reflecting on the last day of our own micro Tour de France. 

I remember being concerned about the rain that was forecast for later that day. I thought by the time we got to our midway point, we'd have to pack up and try catching a train. Thunderstorms by 2pm were in the forecast, but as I have since come to accept, the Apple Weather app is sorely lacking in forecasting beyond the next couple of hours. The rain and thunder would hold off until about 4pm that afternoon. 

Despite this, we were up at about 6am --our Air B&B host taking pains to prepare our continental breakfast in the early hours, all the while in a white t-shirt and boxers. We quickly fuelled-up, changed, packed and set off. The final ride from Beauvais to Paris via Chantilly was about the same in topography as Arras to Beauvais: rolling hills with about two plateau climbs that, in retrospect, I was glad I built into our route. I was feeling strong. After I got to Paris, I found an old scale at our apartment which told me I'd lost about 5kg. It really showed on the last couple days of riding. I was flying up hills! I would usually start seated, getting as far as I could using a flat road gearing. When I lost my momentum, I would switch to a lighter setting as Ryan passed me by. After about 20 seconds of spinning, I would usually take a couple deep breaths, get out of the saddle, and just thrash the latter third of the hill, flying past my travel buddy. This pattern would repeat itself several times during the final day. 

Our detour through Chantilly was wonderful! For those not in the know, there are miles of horse tracks criss-crossing the forests around Chantilly. All are regularly groomed and riders take advantage of them often. All this has resulted in Chantilly proclaiming itself the Horse Capital (of the world? Of France? I'm still unsure about that.) In fact coming up to a larger six point intersection in what we thought was the middle of nowhere, we saw groups of riders sprinting by ahead. We approached slowly until we were waved on by a trial director that had seen us coming --a horse traffic director of sorts! 

Chantilly also has a magnificent, renaissance era castle that has since been converted into a fine arts museum. Unfortunately on our tight schedule, we weren't able to stop in.

 

Getting out of the forests around Chantilly, we had about an hour of pretty straightforward riding that went by in a flash. At the 30km to go point however, we encountered the suburbs of Paris. After riding on primarily back-country rural roads for four days, we have to acclimatize ourselves back into battling traffic for space and swerving around pedestrians. It seemed for a while that we hit every single red light coming into Paris. Without trees nearby, there was also no protection from the sun, which led to some overheating issues for me. 

What should have taken us less than an hour to barrel through ended up taking us about an hour and forty-five minutes of congested, miserable riding. 

Eventually, we saw some familiar roadmarks of Paris proper: bus lanes sprang up, running down the middle of the roads. This was a very welcome sight as bus lanes are typically shared with bikes in Paris. Busses usually stop every 500-800 metres so as a cyclist, you're usually travelling quite a bit faster then the busses, and only interacting with them a small number of times all day. Where boulevards exist, there is usually a shared walking and cycling path up the middle, which takes you away from motorized traffic altogether. Other times, if you're lucky you'll find a cycle track on the sidewalks of busy or popular streets. Large roundabouts also have sharrows to the outside of car lanes, thus making a bike-roundabout in which cyclists seem to have priority. That or drivers are generally hyper vigilant of cyclists. In fact after about four days using the Velib rental bikes, I don't think I received a single beep, honk or profane shout from any other road users in Paris.

Just a dream for urban riders, really!

 

 

Just after 3pm, we rolled up to the Montmartre neighbourhood and our next and final Air B&B booking of the trip. Our host was a woman in her 50s or so with a small bedroom that she was renting in her already cramped apartment. Despite the size of place, I quite liked the location of our apartment --in what could probably be considered the best food area of the city-- and our chatty, eclectic host. 

But that was it as far as our tour was concerned. Our long distance, tour-oriented travel was over. The next day, we rode out to Gar du Nord and sent our bikes to London via the Eurostar. We transitioned into just seeing a bunch of kitschy, touristy Paris destinations and icons. Although I may not write about our time in Paris anytime soon, I will try to make a simple splash page of Paris pics, as well as other photos from our trip.

 

    

Stay tuned for my next post which will be a rundown of the MEC Cote --a cyclecross style bike in geometry that I suited up for tour riding.

Day 3 and 4

As I write this, we are both relaxing in a small flat in the Montmartre neighbourhood in Paris. Huge windows are open to the street running up the hill towards the Sacre Coeur cathedral to the north, and a string of sex shops and strip clubs to the south. All around us, there are great cafes and restaurants offering delicious treats and delectable dishes.

So how did we get here?

Day three of our tour, only 25km long, was the perfect recovery ride for this jourey. Although it climbed Vimy Ridge, just south of Lens --an important battleground and cruiceable for Canadian forces in the First World War-- the weather was perfect, and our pace slow and relaxed. The site itself was breathtaking! A massive memorial to the sacrifices and virtues of those fighting in WWI, and to those Canadians whose bodies were never found, or had unmarked graves. The trenches around the site were also open for visitors wanting a more intimate experience of the site.

The memorial was more than satisfying for me. The somber experience. The crushing weight of loss that many Canadian families had to endure in the early 1900s, only to go through the same experience again in WWII. Our world today often feels like it beginning to teeter out of control. Back to that cruel, uncertain abyss. By standing witness to the weight of sacrifice and mourning at Vimy; I can see more clearly why it's so important to send people here to learn the human costs of war.

 

 

From here, we decended into Arras. Although our Air B&B check-in time was listed as noon, our host had been at work until about 4PM. Unable to contact him, we wandered about town. This is where I set off on my trip 10 years ago. Memories came rushing back: the two big squares downtown where vendors would set up for the weekend market; the dark wood interior and granite floors of l'Hôtel de Ville; the busy restaurants, pubs and cafes, too expensive tens years ago, but now completely affordable! Eventually when our Air B&B became available, we dropped our stuff off, had a quick shower and set off to the downtown restaurants to feast on some galettes. Galettes are a savoury, buckwheat crepe or pancake filled with meats, cheeses and vegetables. We'd need all the calories we could get as we were staring down our longest ride yet.

At 130km, Arras to Beauvais would cover a great deal of the same roads and trails we covered ten years ago. Arras was also where I set off on my journey, meeting Ryan and Dan along the way in Amiens --which we again passed through on this trip. This time, as we rolled along certain roads or buildings, the memories came flooding back to me: camping in Conty, loosing Dan after going through a roundabout outside of Mouy, the wheat fields that we took turns ducking into for photo ops. 

Despite the day's distance, we powered through our ride, perhaps fueled by our calorie-rich galettes from the night before. Though, we were going a little crazy from the blistering sun and probably some minor dehydration. We dropped into Beauvais and reached our next Air B&B quite abruptly, falling into what at this point became an autonomous series of functions: shower, change, search for good places to eat (tonight would be a pub), walk back home after supper, check out Facebook and YouTube and sleep.

 

  

We were nearing the end of our ride. Beauvais to Paris was a moderately flat affair, slightly less than 100km. With thunderstorms in the forecast, however, we knew we would be racing against the clock.