Day 7 - Rest day in Reims

Yesterday's struggle through the slower offroad tracks had us well and truly ready for our first planned rest day.

Stats for the first 6days are below

Distance covered 451.60k

Time Riding 27hrs:04mins

Total time on Bike 34hrs:43mins

Total climbing 4759vm

Average Speed 12kph

The first few days took us a while to get up to speed with the navigation, but now it's pretty seemless, knowing when to stop to check the directions more accurately saves a lot of time. A lot of time is stil lost trying to stick to the offroad paths as much as possible, but the reward more often than not makes it worthwhile, even when arriving to a paved road again, often you are on the only road in and out of a remote village meaning you have no traffic for 10s of kms, that's when you are in cycling bliss.

Staying at Hotel Campanile in Reims has been great, it's a business style hotel just on the edge of town, but it's well priced and very comfortable. We slept in until almost 8am and had a leisurely euro style buffet breakfast including crepes, cereal, croissants juice and of course coffee

Relaxing was the main aim for the day, but we had also planned to visit one of the champagne houses. Rishi had researched the best ones and had decided on Taittinger. Not one of the oldest, but their main cellars are built on the site of a 12th century Abbaye that was destroyed during the French Revolution, and include some original cellars carved by the Romans digging chalk to build the city.

The tour was great, informative and enough time to explore the cellars and try to take photos in the dark light. We literally viewed the areas containing the most expensive wines, which this old cellar houses. One small cave annexe held up to 100,000 bottles, which they cellar for 10 years each. Retailing at around 200euro a bottle that's a considerable value of wine we were looking at. There is 5kms of tunnels in that area alone, and around 250km under the city of Reims.

The caves are cut out of the natural chalk, up to 20m below ground

This area houses only the best champagne, as it's hand turned

That's what close to 100,000 bottles looks like. 1 in 10,000 will explode

5km of tunnels of 2 main levels

Finally to the tasting, they give you 3 options including just the house champagne, with the 3rd option including the house plus 1 special release of your choice plus the premium champagne the Comtes de Champagne, Blanc de Blancs 2005.

Our host

The good stuff

Good value for 6 bottles, we saw it for 200euro in Dubai duty free

Knowing that it was one of our only chances we would possibly drink that wine we went for the full option, at 41euros including the tour we were the only people out of our group of 30 that got to enjoy it, with most going for just the two tastings. The attendant was great as well, and told you some good information about the wines. Looking it up now, we would have to pay around 400$aud to buy a bottle at a bottle shop in Australia. All of them were expectional champagnes, but the Blanc de Blancs was a step above, with a really refined taste in comparison.

After the strenuous morning of drinking champagne, we strolled back to the hotel stopping for some gallettes, crepes and cider for lunch in a nice place on the way back.

It's been a great stop in Reims, I think it has been the perfect time to take a short rest with the riding only getting harder. We have about 560k next week and pass through the Jura mountains into Switzerland, and will be in Vevey, Switzerland next weekend.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day 6- Laon to Reims- 75km

Today was huge! Even though distance wise it's not a mega day for us, we passed through just about every terrain possible which means some up hill, some down hill, some tarmac, some fire roads, some country back roads, some mud, some pits of doom, some canal tow paths, some vineyards, and much hike a bike, which meant a long day. Lucky for us we know how to prepare for a big day on the bike.....pastries! And Ben came through with the goods! Chocolate and custard escargot!

Bikers breakfast

The first leg of our route today was predominantly off road, through some farming tracks first, and then a forrest. There were many mud pits of doom, and the forrest also had a million mosquito repellant tolerant mosquitos. We got eaten. Most of the forrest ended up being hike a bike with us trying to get around all the pits of doom which meant trying to log hop our 30kg bikes.

First mud of the day- which turned out to be pretty tame

 

Doom pit #1

 

Series of doom pits

After the forrest, mud and mosquitos we were very glad to see the route hit the road. We took an awesome back road with very little traffic, which meant for us riding two abreast and chatting in the sun. It's something I really love on these kinds of holidays. Spending every day together and just talking, having fun, being silly and laughing. Stuff you usually don't get time for.

Chat time

 

Lovely climb in the sun

 

Morning tea hunk of Brie

Soon after Corbeny the route returned to the dirt. And when I say dirt I don't mean a fire road. No...it turned out that the farmers had actually ploughed our track!!! We didn't know how long it was going to go for and there was no other way to go, so off the bikes we got and trudged through the dirt. Then it just kept going. For a kilometre! Dirt filled bike shoes and all. We then had a nice forrest track and some paths through the vineyards, marking our entry into the champagne region! Unfortunately we didn't get to take the track the whole way through the vineyards as the track suddenly stopped in a thorn bush and we had had enough hike a bike for one day so retreated back to the road for the remainder of the route into hermonville for our lunch stop. I did the shop for lunch and Ben was pleased to see we had beer for our picnic lunch! Best lunch ever! Topped off with my favourite dessert in the world, flan, and possibly the best one I've ever had.

Track.....gone

 

 

 

We are in Champagne!

 

 

Best lunch picnic ever

 

Flan!!!

From Hermonville into Reims we decided to skip the next forrest section, taking a different route through the town of Pouillon. Pouillon was quite a surprise! A town FULL of champagne houses! It was a really lovely town too, with the most awesome bell tower, which looked like a series of horns! We saw a bike in someone's front yard with a bottle of champagne in the bottle cage, painted, and with a flower pot on the handle bars. We stopped to look when the owner came out and wanted to chat. Uh oh! So my meagre French managed to get across: I like your bike, we are riding to Rome, and we are from Australia. Haha! Room for improvement ;)

Sunshine!

 

Champagne house of Pouillon

We are now in Reims, the centre of the champagne region. Ben and I are both shattered. It seems pushing the bikes makes us more tired than riding them! We just had dinner and I think we must have looked like zombies just eating our meals and drinking our wine with little movement or talk. Time for bed now. We have tomorrow here as our first day off the bikes. We plan to go visit one of the champagne houses (after a sleep in). Then back to the trails on Sunday! :)

Reims cathedral

 http://www.strava.com/activities/153056983

Day 5 - Trefcon to Laon - 69km

First the end of day 4. Trefcon is a tiny village of less than 100 people, based on our route to arrive in Laon and Reims it was the ideal place to stop distance wise. Being so small there is practically no accomodation accept for Gite Val d'omignon which is like a farm stay, who also run tours by horse and canoe.

Surpisingly when we arrived another pilgrim, James was already there. A few hours later 2 more arrived, and we had a full house. Usually the Gite can provide meals as well but it seemed everyone wanted something light. The host was happy to drive into the closest village with a shop, 10k down the road which we all jumped at the chance.

Pligrims Dinner

One factor we didn't consider in staying there was the horses. Rishi is quite allergic to horses in particular and working with them all day plus two dogs who were allowed inside, left the main areas of the house quite engulfed in the smell and you can only guess the hair of horses, which proved quite extreme to Rishis allergies, we ate outside for dinner but only 10mins for breakfast inside the kitchen and Rishi had quite bad hives a few hours afterwards, anything that sounds like a farm is off our list from now on. A warning for anyone else planning on staying there if you have any allergies to animals.

Otherwise though they were fabulous hosts, The pilgrims ate together in the barn kitchen and traded stories and plans, and the hosts graciously bought out some local blonde abbey beers for everyone, on top of the token bottle of red we all bought at the shops it was a good night, if a little late. The sun doesn't fully set until well after 10pm.

Onto day 5 which was a shorter day again, as we had wanted to stop in Laon which is an ancient walled hill city with a renowned cathedral.

The riding was very mixed today, mostly easy farm roads very flat to start, then we arrived closer to the Canals a short forest section which had quite bad mud, and a short hike a bike with very overgrown sections with lots of thorns. Then the canal tow paths were easy going with a mixture of paved and grass sections. A climb up to an abbey through the forrest on the paved road, which gave us a great descent followed by 10k into a head wind in the open countryside just to finish the legs off for the day! I tried a few shakes of the elbow on the final stretch to no receipt unfortunately!

War Memorial

Everyone has animals in their front yard

More mud!

Grass or a bike car wash, perfect for cleaning the tyres

On the tow path

The track is here somewhere!

Rolling finish to the day, if only Rishi would roll a turn at the front :)

Plenty of small villages again today, and notably more cyclists on the road which we find amusing as they are generally older eddy mercx look a likes with 20 year old fluoro Lycra and down tube shifter bikes. We usually see them going the other way, I am hoping to overtake one at some stage with our loaded touring bikes! Or I would be happy to look back and see someone getting a free ride ala beach road style also!

Exhibit A - fairly modern example, not the drink bottle and flat pedals though!

We managed to get a photo of one guy in Laon but his bike was modern and the Lycra not that old, but it gives the idea!

Tourist!

Main entrance to the cathedral

Stained glass in the cathedral

The city of Laon is a slight let down in the end, the cathedral is amazing, inside and out, but the city in general seems to be in the decline, with many shops boarded up and only the token tourist joints in the old town. A shame when the old town is so beautiful, it just has an average vibe.

We are staying just down the hill from the old town in a great place called hotel des arts, a nice room and somewhere safe for the bikes. Unfortunately though that meant we had to walk all the way up the old town, which consisted of about 500 or more stairs! Luckily we found the funicular for the trip down.

A cyclists nightmare!

Tomorrow we ride another fairly short stage in distance to Reims, with three reasonable climbs which should test our climbing legs as we approach the Jura mountains which will get us into Switzerland, which then leads us to the Alps!

Reims is the home of champagne, and we have our first rest day with two nights. Hopefully not spent with a hangover from too much wine!

http://www.strava.com/activities/152604360