Showers, boiled eggs, fix bike, clean bikes, check emails, check weather report, hop on bubbles my bike and off we went, in to Chalons en Champagne, at last. We cycled around and around, saw more brilliant roundabouts, including one that had a very impressive dancing water fountain.
We did stop for a two-course lunch at Le Comptoir de la Licorne in the Place Marechal Foch and then we cycled around even more, through parks and down roads we had already cycled down. I think we had it covered!!!
It was quite a warm day; well it felt like it while cycling around, and I needed a shower when we got back. We’re hoping the weather in England will have improved by the time we get back there on Monday. We met a Londoner in the campsite who borrowed our campervan manual. He had driven up from Spain with an alarm going and a light flashing to say the oil in his van is low, which apparently, it is not and it’s driving him insane. He told us that he now lives in Spain but that it is “so bloody hot down there” that he and his wife are visiting England to cool down a bit. I hope they’ve packed their raincoats!
This morning we drove up to and through Reims and still no sign of a vineyard. Rodney may have glimpsed one on a distant hill, but all I saw were wheat fields and one big field full of sunflowers. Maybe they should plant some more vines and the price of champagne could then come down…..perhaps?!!!!
After Reims we started to see memorials for the 1st and 2nd World Wars along the very straight Chemin les Dames. We stopped in Laon, a lovely old town which was built on top of a mound with an oversized cathedral in the centre. Arriving as the bells struck midday, we expected the town to be closed for lunch…..and it was!!!.
The cathedral felt like it should have had hundreds of people shuffling around inside, but there were only a few tourists. There was however, some beautiful haunting choral music playing through some speakers, which did give the place a very spiritual feeling.
We were really pleased to find a small Asian restaurant nearby and tucked in to some different flavours, then after a bit more of a stroll around the streets, we fired up Eileen again.
We have decided that signposting in France is abysmal. You follow one sign and then any further directions to that place completely disappear. Rodney’s latest theory is that it is to confuse any future invading armies. We think they may also have corrupted the GPS system tin France, as following instructions to drive through the centre of a vineyard, or cross a river without a bridge or boat, would have to slow the troops down?!!! It certainly slows us down and we’re not a tank. To tell the truth we ignored those GPS directions and stayed on the tarmac.
We passed St Quentin and Peronne and at 4pm “Come On Eileen’ by Dexy’s Midnight Runners suddenly blasted out from the radio. We both sang along in our bad, loud, out-of-tune styles. Then as the final lines rang out, we passed another British war cemetery and Whitney Houston started to sing the slightly more appropriate ‘I Will Always Love You’, which instantly put us both into a more pensive mood. We stopped briefly near Bullecourt and read about the Australian battlefield track in 1917 and also went to the Australian memorial on the edge of town. We finally pulled up at Camping La Paille Haute in Boiry Notre Dame near to Arras. We had hoped to cycle in to Arras tomorrow, but we’re not really close enough, so we’re currently eating up today’s French stick, cheeses and salamis and reassessing our plans for our last few days in France.