Nathan, Claire, Stewart, Olivia, Karen and myself left the lunch stop together and with the weather starting to warm up it was promising to be a better afternoon for cycling then the rain and cold of the morning. We headed along the main road for a couple of kilometres before taking a left onto the back roads once more. Nathan, Karen and I stopped at the next corner for the others to catch up and then headed off again in convoy. Nathan and Karen were keen to forge ahead and I just tagged along behind. We noticed that Claire, Stewart and Olivia had stopped moving and Karen went back to find Claire had a front puncture from an earlier pitstop. Luckily Jo showed up in the DA van and fixed it, which included removing the nasty little bit of stone from the tyre that was the cause of the problem.
After this was all sorted, Nathan, Karen and I continued on some fairly open terrain between various mounds of sugar beet that were deposited by the road side. I had thought they were turnips, but apparently Emma, our resident farm girl, had set Karen straight on the type of vegetable being harvested. In one village, an elderly resident gave us a wave and a cheer of "Allez", which was quite heartening.
Jo went past us in the DA van, heading for the water stop. Karen, Nathan and I were directed slightly further right down a very rough country lane with lots of dirt and mushed up vegetable matter on the road. At least it wasn't fertiliser! We came into a little village and left onto the main road and Nathan and I charged ahead until we heard Karen call us back. Missed an orange arrow, so lucky one of us was paying attention. I'm sure that Nathan has repaid his debt for being saved!
Up another "undulation" just before the water stop and back onto the flat and then off into the forest and stopping by a little lake surrounded by trees. At this point I realised I probably hadn't had enough to drink at the lunch stop as I felt quite light headed and in need of a rest before continuing on. In the end I just sat on the grass for a while, eating and drinking plenty to make sure I could get to Compiegne. Karen and Nathan kindly agreed to take it slowly on the final leg as I wasn't sure I'd make it to the hotel without assistance from the DA team if we kept up our previous pace.
Cat, Emma, Stewart, Claire and Olivia caught up with us and a little later Vicki and Holly arrived. Em tried taking off her cycling outer top without removing her helmet, a tricky manoeuvre that failed miserably. It ended with me unclipping the helmet for her, which is something I've only ever done for my children. Em started getting out her gel packs to see if anyone was interested in them; Em and Nathan were then engaged in some light hearted banter about the opportunities for dealing in gel packs in Wales. They were certainly tastier than the Powerbar ones that I'd brought with me; mind you though it's difficult to disguise the taste of the equivalent of six teaspoons of salt and 50mg of caffeine. I gulped down my gel pack to help with the last 30 km and Nathan, Karen and I headed off for the last leg of the day.
There was a sweeping long down hill into the village of Lachelle, big open road and well made (a general feature of the French roads was that they are less potholed than their British equivalents) and we were able to zoom into the village at high speed. After passing school kids on the way home and crossing a little bridge over a small stream, the buzz from the zoom was tempered by the need to cycle up a fairly steep hill. The next down hill took us to an Artisan boulangerie and choclatiere. The tarte au sucre was great, and Karen had some chocolates but alas there was no cafe to sit and have a coffee or a drink of any sort. Back on the bikes and up another hill to find a very busy dog running up and down chasing the cars and bikes from the inside of its fence. Karen realised she'd left her sun glasses behind and went back to get them while I waited with the dog watching me. The hound was definitely quite annoyed that I wasn't moving, this clearly wasn't part of his game. He started running up and down again when Karen came back and we headed towards Compiegne.
Down the hill, over the railway crossing and we found Cat, Emma, Nathan and others looking to figure out which way we were supposed to go. No orange arrows in Compiegne, so a little tricky to navigate through the town. Google maps works as well in France as it does in the UK, which is fortunate, and just as we'd agreed which way to go, Jo showed up and pointed us in the right direction with the added bonus that we were able to follow her for a while rather than trying to use our tired minds to follow the directions we were given. I think we missed the correct turn to take a diversion under the main road into town and instead found ourselves at a give-way sign waiting for gaps to appear in some very busy evening traffic. I managed to find a smallish gap and then cycled slowly waiting for the others to catch up. I eventually reached the bridge where we were to cross the river and turn back for our hotels and waited there until the group was back together.
We then cruised through some fairly leafy suburbia and after what seemed a very long while found our turn offs to our hotels. I was in the Ibis with about 22 or so of the group, the rest were billeted in the Campanile which according to reports did a much better meal than the one we ended up with. Disturbingly, the Ibis was inside a fenced off compound and surrounded by what appeared to be the sort of social housing estates that exist in London in places like Peckham Rye, White City and Croydon.
Arrival time was around 6:30, which made for a very long day and even though we'd cycled at the same average as the day before, around 22km/h, we'd obviously had a lot of down time with our various stops during the day. In all, we'd travelled about 135 km for the day.
Feeling totally knackered, Matt offered me a beer but it seemed I'd developed an allergy to the stuff, possibly from the previous night, and I decided it would be better to sort my room out and get changed for dinner. Turns out that the hotel only had 1 vegetarian on it's list out of 7 and our vegetarian meal was boiled rice with carrots and beans. Quite unappetising and difficult to eat, though the company of Angus and Alan and his daughter Claudia and her best friend Carly helped take my mind off what I was eating.
At 8:30 pm I decided to call it quits and headed for bed. That was the third day and, after another Lemsip, I slept until the early hours of the next morning, and that was much better.
No comments:
Post a Comment