Wednesday, 14 September 2016

France Tour 2016 - Day 5 - Reims to Saint-Pierre-la-Garenne

Click here for Day 4's diary if you missed it! 

Wednesday 31st August 
Today we managed to get going at just before 9:30 after one of us overslept ever so slightly.. On the way out of Reims, we briefly stopped at the old pit garages and grandstands for the Reims road race circuit. They are literally just on the side of the road as you're riding along so it really would be rude not to stop and take some photos! 
The old pit garages with hand-painted signs
The start-finish straight a.k.a the road
They even had a stand for the media people!
Riding along pit lane
We then headed on through the vineyards and champagne region towards Charly-sur-Marne and arrived there at around 11. The reason we purposefully went through Charly, as well as the pretty countryside of the champagne region, was that it proved my name did have a correct spelling for all those people not accepting it as a "proper" spelling/name. 
Selfie by my town sign with my bike in the background
After our stop in Charly, we headed into another of France's national parks with a general aim of getting to Chantilly for lunch. This little detour also stopped us getting tangled up in the ring road around Paris. The buildings in Chantilly were beautiful but as it was lunch time, all the shops in the centre, minus the odd couple, were closed for lunch so we found somewhere to sit, slowly melting in our bike trousers in 28 degree heat, and had some lunch. 
One of the many beautiful buildings in Chantilly
Parked up in Chantilly
Pressing on in the general direction of Rouen to get to our hotel for the night, we hit a couple of main A roads just to knock off a few miles. After going to the wrong village first as I placed the flag marker for the end point in the wrong place (neighbouring villages with the same road names just makes life confusing), we eventually arrived at the hotel here at around 5:30 so it was a pretty decent days riding all in all. 
Our view from the hotel, parked in the evening sunshine
Our hotel is really lovely and right on the Seine so we've got some good tonight. We're now over halfway through our trip and roughly halfway in mileage terms too despite only having 2 days of riding left to do with a long day tomorrow to the beach via Honfleur.

Daily miles: 180;
Total miles done: 691.

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