STAGE 4 (Day 6): Châlons-en-Champagne to Chaumont
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FUN FACT: The Champagne-Burgundy Canal is 140 miles long, consists of 114 locks and 2 tunnels - one of which is nearly 3 miles long. Chaumont is twinned with the Lancashire market town of Ashton-under-Lyne, in the foothills of the Pennines, six miles east of Manchester.
It was the best of routes, it was the worst of routes – is perhaps how Charles Dickens might have begun today’s blog. As he is no longer around, we’ve done that instead.
Although today was not the halfway mark in France it was, by the end, half the number of rides in total that we will complete.
Meeting up at Richard and Teresa’s hotel, flanked by an ice rink and a small gypsy camp, we knew that yesterday’s rest day would soon be a distant memory.
Much to Richard’s pleasure, around 95% of today’s route was along the Canal Entre Champagne et Bourgogne. Clearly not many entries in the name-our-new-canal competition.
We would be travelling along veloroutes 52 and 53 for almost the entirety of our journey. For 80+ miles the two trails would once again put the surfaces of our usual cycling routes to shame.
That said it’s not often that you get a leg exfoliation treatment during your ride, but the damp and gritty surface not only covered our rest-day cleaned bikes but also removed any dead or dry skin from our lower limbs.
Twenty miles into the ride, we paused in the pretty town of Vitry for a café au lait in the town square. The other patrons of the café successfully ignored the two MAMIL* who had so rudely plonked themselves down.
Back on the canal we passed many very large grain stores as well as the occasional trans-European barge and cruisers. Paul had earlier sighted a red squirrel and, much later in the ride, M. Reynard made a brief appearance, but the most prevalent member of the animal kingdom today was the heron. Richard remarked that he had never seen as many herons in total in his whole life before today.
We did not need to ask ourselves “why did the heron cross the canal” because it was obviously to avoid those crazy English cyclists! With the canal effectively an all-you-can-eat sashimi buffet for these very effective anglers, it’s no wonder they were less than keen to be disturbed.
With a synchronicity rarely seen outside of military aerial display teams, we met up with the support crew in Saint-Dizier. Riding through the outskirts it would appear that he was the patron saint of tattoo parlours and kebab shops, although our meeting place was on the verge of a pretty and well-manicured park.
A fine repast was provided from the van of plenty and, although not halfway, spirits were high in the team.
The skies were a case of fifty shades of grey today: but the headwind from the southwest made riding in echelon a must again, pushing angry-looking clouds northeast as we headed in the opposite direction.
Looking at the well-wooded hills on either side of the canal, the tow path continued to seem like a good option despite our bikes becoming encrusted in the aforementioned grit (necessitating more bike cleaning ).
Stopping at around the 80-mile mark we came upon a mid-19th-century public laundry and washing pool but resisted the temptation to clean our wheels in it. On the eve of the rest day Teresa had used an outdoor washing machine for the first time, but it had a much better spin cycle than the one we were now looking at.
Reaching the edge of Chaumont, Paul and Richard parted ways to their respective accommodation destinations. In booking his B&B, Richard had failed to notice that it involved almost as much climbing to get to as he had done for the previous 89 miles.
Another fine day in the saddle.
*Middle-Aged Men in Lycra
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Make the most of it lads it downhill till the coast it will be the ride back to Farnham that up hill all the way 🤣. Well done keep it up.
ReplyDeleteThere's a bit of up hill left tomorrow then it is literally down hill all the way (except the final 15 miles). After that I will not be putting my derriere on a saddle for some time! 😳
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