Paris Trip - Vauxhall-sur-Seine to PARIS!

 Off we go, Eiffel Tower, here we come!  30 miles to go, should be a doddle, right?  Hmmm.

Left Vaux and went through Triel to cross the bridge across the Seine.  One of the more interesting things was the most enormous snail ever!  Can see why they’re a dinner delicacy.

Immediately missed a turn and ended up on the wrong road.  After debating going forward, decided not to repeat yesterday and headed back to the known route.  Went one more exit down and found our road into the cutest Seine-side village with some fantastic houses and a market!  We stopped for a croissant and coffee before heading up the hill.

That was the first of several hills.  The route meandered through park after park.  You wouldn’t expect so much green on a route coming into Paris.  Or so many hills.  Had a lovely lunch in Versailles and then made our way into the last bit of Saturday afternoon Paris chaos.  And it was chaos, bikes crashing into each other, parents on bikes w/ little tikes trying to follow, people shopping and wandering (without looking) into the road - made steering and navigation especially ‘interesting’!

Wish I could have taken pictures, but there needed to be extreme navigational focus as we got to the last part of the day.  Finally, finally made it to the bridge over the Seine and there was the Eiffel Tower!  What a place to finish!

Super excited to have done it and to be here!  It has been one of the more challenging routes so far, but worth it because we love Paris!  Chris said coming into Paris and finishing at the Eiffel Tower was one of the coolest things to have done!

Nice hotel, Hotel Exposition, easy walking distance from the Tower and convenient to everything.  Walked out to dinner at a very traditional French bistro, Le Commerce. Escargot was had!  Calf’s head was not!  Finished with the Mousse au Chocolate - perfect!  Now in bed listening to the sound of Saturday night Paris and looking forward to introducing Chris to more of the city tomorrow.

Paris Trip - Gournay-en-Bray to Triel-sur-Seine

La Coloc provided a very nice breakfast which included the discovery of a ‘traditionnelle’, my new favourite baguette.  It’s like a sourdough baguette. ‘une baguette traditionnelle, s’il vous plaît’ will be my boulangerie order from now on!

It was a day of six hills and other adventures.  We left Gournay after a lovely breakfast.  There was a bit of Avenue Verte and then ‘just us’ roads through the ‘Parc National’.  We rode on very small roads for miles with almost no traffic. Windy, but quiet and peaceful up on the tops of the hills.

We leapfrogged (leptfrogged?) as we made our way up and down those hills.  Chris was ‘King of the Mountains’, passing us on every one up, often like a rocket although he swears it didn’t feel like it.  Have to find him a spotted jersey.

We and our 500lbs barrelled past him on the downhills.

Onion fields were a new one to pedal past.  So aromatic, we thought someone was cooking!

E’cole with a door for girls and a door for boys.

The route was ‘baree’, but both Komoot and Google Maps said to take it so in true cyclist fashion we made our way around the barriers and over the downed metal gates.  What began as an Avenue Verte devolved to a crushed. gravel track to a rocky and unridable track (where we got off) to a path through the fields to a very rocky wooded trail which we clambered up and up.  Steve / Chris pushed the bikes up and over rocks and tree limbs.  We slogged along for the 4/10ths of a mile that Google promised led to a road, slightly suspiciously as Google claimed we were on a road, but as promised after the 4/10ths of clambering we made it to the road and hill overlooking our destination, Vaux-sur-Seine!  We’ve done a lot of ‘off roading’, this was a new level of ‘challenging’!

This trail would have been difficult in hiking boots, never mind wearing clackety-clack cycling shoes!

At the Vaux-sur-Seine sign leading down into the village where we’re staying tonight. We will be finding a new ‘non-mountain climbing’ route in the way back, but really happy to be here.  

Lovely pre-dinner walk down by the Seine with some beautiful houses across the way and barges slowly gliding by.

Had a crazy bar lady experience over drinks, she was sure all we were interested in was when they served food, even to the extent of carefully writing out the hours for me, when what we wanted was to pay her for the drinks.  Even my ‘Je voudrais l’addition pour le pichet de vin blanc et deux bieres, s’il vous plait’ both spoken and written via Google Translate didn’t make a dent.  She finally charged me for the pichet and i couldn’t get her to charge for the beers.  Right, eight euros it is then!  You find them in every country!

Had a great dinner at a Brazilian restaurant down by the river.  Platters of picana, wings and fritturas - just what was needed to restore all the energy burnt today!  And it wasn’t hard to order drinks at all!

Another hard one, but good.  Made it up lots of hills and didn’t fall when biking or hiking - that qualifies as a good day!

Paris Trip - Dieppe to Gournay-en-Bray

Slept well and all managed the creaky circular staircases successfully.  Steve also managed the French coffee machine successfully - very important in the morning.

We then launched into the ‘find the parking lot game’.  The first attempt at the closest one, door open / could drive right in, didn’t work because it turned out to be monthly parking only when we went to pay for it.  Back to the car, drive it back out the still open open ‘drive in’ door and over to the Hotel d’Ville lot which recognised our number plate and allowed us to pay so mission accomplished!

Packed everything up (amazing how few trips up and down there were when wanting to avoid trips on the twisty narrow stairs), loaded the bikes and set off to find breakfast and the route.  Breakfast proved to be challenge trying two places, but successfully found coffee and croissants so were happy.  Then we got on the bikes and made our way past the marina, past the closed bridge and over the pedestrian bridge to the route.

Day 1 was a gentle incline for 31 miles and then an undulating 20 miles to Gournay, accompanied by a 20mph headwind.  Much of the route was on the ‘Avenue Verte’, a former railway line converted into a paved cycleway winding its way through French countryside and forest.  We saw two chateaus, numerous pointy churches and chickens, lots of chickens.  

After a rain shower, we stopped in Neufchâtel, yes the place of the cheese, for lunch and watched another rain shower from the restaurant.  Love being inside rather than on the bike when it’s raining!

Lots of rest stops, ingestion of paracetamol / ibuprofen and food helped along the way, but still a long day.  The last ten required a good effort (that’s the last hill, whoops, no it’s not), but we all made it to Gournay by 3:55.  Well done, Chris, for successfully pedalling your first 50 miles! You deserve several beers!

We’re staying at Le Coloc, a big funky rambling house in the centre of Gournay.  Covered bike parking and walking distance to restaurants, and the promised beers.  After unloading and showers, we headed out for dinner.

 

Maybe all the restaurants go on holiday after the summer holidays, but the selection proved to be limited, but we successfully found beer and after a ramble of the town, found food - pizza it is!  Really good though.  Mine was called the German, but really it was a tartiflette on a pizza base - what’s not to like and plenty for tomorrow!

Long, but good day!

Dieppe to Paris and Back Again, with Chris

Managed to slip in another tandem trip, shorter, but also pretty epic - pedalling into Paris.  127 miles each way and we finish the first half in front of the Eiffel Tower!

Chris was quite interested in the idea of pedalling to Paris when we went over to Leeds for a visit, so we invited him to come along and he accepted!  Woohoo, even more of an adventure!  

Haven’t really been in training for it, but have gone out once or twice a week since the Danube trip.  Steve has gone out more than I have as he’s started with the Bury Tandem Club again.  Day 1 is 49 miles from Dieppe to Gournay-en-Bray, day 2 is 48 miles to Triel sur Seine and day 3 is 30 miles to Paris.

There’s a double decker bus tour, an evening in Ille St. Louis, perhaps a visit to the Bastille Market for some poulet roti and pommes du terre.

But before that, there was the problem with the ferry.  We got a text saying that the ferry had been cancelled, which was a bit of a problem as we had to be in France wheels rolling on Thursday.  All of the hotels had been booked through to Paris and then back to Dieppe - not really any room to change things.  So, Steve junped on the computer and found us a ticket on LeShuttle from Folkestone to Calais.  Good thing, it got us there in 35 mins vs 4 hours, less good we were 2.5 hours away from Dieppe. Never-mind, we’re taking the train.  Even with the delays, it got us to France by 5ish.

We then made our way to Dieppe and arrived 13 hours after we started.  Big drive for Steve!

We had a house to ourselves, 4 stories, one room to each floor with a narrow circular staircase in between.  Plenty of room for all our gear.

After the unload, a quick change and then off pour le diner.  We went to Le Chalet, a place of tartiflette and fondue.  Chris discovered he really liked fondue (which is really melted cheese so what’s not to like!) so we’ll be looking for more of that.

Then of to our narrow French house for a good nights sleep before we head out for Paris!