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.
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