Ride Day 26: Bordeaux means Beaune!

It turns out that today's ride was the longest of this trip. It wasn't meant to be that way, but sometimes things go a bit haywire and you have to go with it. We did the entire ride that you see in the summary below, and quite a lot more. I'll explain in a bit. All told, we rode just about 140 km (about 85 miles). That's a lot on a massive tandem.

We rode from Paray-le-Monial to Beaune, in the heart of beautiful Burgundy. We wanted to make a side trip to the Sunday market in a little town called Chagny, since we'd heard that the market is really fun. But it was about 95 km to Chagny, and the market closed at 1300, so we had to make really good time. No stopping for coffee or other fun things like that.

So we left the Hotel Basilic in Paray-le-Monial early. The front desk was vacant, so I rummaged around and found the key to the bike garage and freed the bike. We loaded it with our bags and set off in a drizzle at about 0630. A steep 11% hill greeted us about a km from the hotel and was a rude way to wake up the legs. But the rain stopped pretty soon and we had a wonderful and fast ride along a canal for dozens of km.

An early start to the day

I'm not sure what the name of this canal is, but it was a joy to ride beside.

The boatmen were still asleep.

We rode for km after km after km on a gradual stair step upward along the canal with numerous locks. We rode hard because we were on a mission: to get to the market in Chagny before it closed! We passed a couple of other cycle tourists, but we saw no cars for several hours.

By this time, maybe 0830, the threat of rain had pretty much disappeared

Then, just as we were "stepping" up one of the locks, we saw a bike stopped on the side of the road and heard a voice call out in English, "Hey kids, look, its a tandem and it's a Co-Motion." That caught our attention first because it was in English, and second because he noticed who made our bike. We turned around to see what was up, putting the mission on hold for a bit.

A Co-Motion triple; Peter, Alex and Abbie

 

It wasn't a tandem that we saw, but a triple, made by Co-Motion in Eugene. We met the driver / dad, Peter, and his two 11 year old twins, Alex and Abbie. Alex is in the middle seat and Abbie prefers the back. I've never actually seen a triple before and this family, from Colorado, has been riding this way for about 4 years. They actually rode it across the US on the Northern Tier route 2 years ago, 

We traded stories and praised the kids, who are amazing! They absolutely love to ride, though they did say that it was nice to hear English being spoke. They have been riding for 2 weeks or so, and have another 2 months to ride on this trip. That's a very cool way to take a family vacation (Mom and older sister are vacationing on the beach in Croatia).

Then, while we were talking, along comes another guy riding a Co-Motion regular bike. Don, from Pittsburgh. This is his first European trip and his motto is "Start slow, then taper off."

Lorie took this picture of the Co-Motion gang: Alex, Abbie, Doug, Peter, Don.

Peter and his crew and Don were riding the same direction, and Lorie and I had to get back to the mission, so we traded contact information and said our goodbyes. What a random and fun coincidence in the middle of nowhere in France.

We continued to ride hard along the canal, and at one point we realized that we were at the top of the "pass" over which the canal flows. The beauty of this is that from then on, for a while at least, we were stair stepping down the locks. And this side was much steeper descending than climbing up the "up" side.

Heading "down" the canal

We were able to fly along this stretch of bike path

And here is where our day went a little pear shaped. We knew that we had to take a detour to get to Chagny. Time wise, we were in good shape. The detour, if done properly, would have been about 30 km (about 20 miles). But we missed a turn and got so lost that it was just a joke. We somehow rode ourselves into a highway mess and the only escape was along a busy "N" road (in France, we always ride the quiet D roads. N roads can be ridden, but you wouldn't want to ride them. "A" roads are off limits). To get to the N road we had to huck the bike up a verge that was covered in stickers. We then rode as fast as we could to Chagny to get turned of that road.

We made it just fine, and we even made it to the market before 1100. Not bad. We wandered around the market for quite a while (it is tough to push the bike through crowds, but we do OK). Lorie bought three types of aged cheeses, bread, tapenade, and olives. 

 

Sunday market in Chagny

We stuff for dinner in hand, we had a coffee to collect ourselves and figure out how to get to our ultimate destination, Beaune. After some trial and error, we finally connected with our original route and discovered that we had another 35 km to ride. But it was along the Route du Grand Cru, through the most famous vineyards maybe anywhere in the world. The vines went on and on and on for as far as we could see.

World famous vineyards of Burgundy

They go on forever; kind of like soya in Nebraska

Empty roads, perfect riding

We made it to Beaune no worse for wear and found it fairly quiet on this now-sunny Sunday afternoon. We are staying in an AirBnB and got tucked into it as easy as can be. We sat a spell, took showers, and wandered around town to figure out if we could find anything for dinner (in France, everything is closed on Sunday and Monday). Well, we have what we bought at the marked, and Lorie found a "cave" that had a wine she wanted to try. So all is well here in Borgogne!

The old gate into Beaune

Around town

The old cathedral

 

Tomorrow we have a day off and it will be much appreciated by our legs and bums. And we have a reservation to go through the Joseph Drouhin caves and tasting room for a tour. That'll be fun.