A fabulous drug assisted night’s sleep, sadly ended at 6:45 by an enthusiastic surgeon texting, wanting to discuss a case.
Managed to sort it without having to speak but my slumber was over. Never mind. Had a shower. They have done a pretty good job of retrofitting a bathroom into the old room but it’s lucky I’m no wider than I am. The shower took a long time to warm up, in the end I was second guessing myself that “C” really did mean “cold” (instead of “chaud” for hot).
A lovely petit déjeuner out in the courtyard. A great selection of fruit including figs and passion fruit, and some sad looking kiwi fruit. A nice omelette, and a fabulous selection of pastries. Shame about the coffee.
After breakfast we went to hire a couple of bicycles. There was a queue of people in the shop which gave us an opportunity to look around. Beaune is in the middle of the Burgundy wine region, but I was still surprised to see wine for sale in a bicycle shop.
We got a couple of e-bikes and helmets without too much trouble, with the help of my French which was better than the bike man’s English. Only a few hundred metres from the shop got you amongst the vineyards.
The route was very well marked until it wasn’t. About a third of the way through, Simon got cross as we were discussing our next move at an intersection “I’m sick of all this bickering! I just want to get back to the hotel to deal with my inbox and read my book!” Well! And here was me thinking we were collaboratively working on various navigational challenges. Tell me where it says amongst the “in sickness and in health” contract that I have to deal with querulous old men at my age?
Never mind, he seemed to perk up a bit after that and was quite engaged with nutting out the correct route which got even harder as we progressed along. I think not stopping for lunch was a tactical error but I didn’t want to push my luck when Simon was focused on getting back ASAP.
It’s harvest time over here and we saw a bunch of tired looking young people picking grapes, with full bins on the side of the roads waiting to be collected. From there they will be transported back to the farm to be trodden on by peasants. At the halfway mark we had to cross over a railway line, but the instructions were unclear. I pulled over to a quiet spot on the side of the road to check the map, at which point a whole stream of traffic appeared, shouting and waving their fists at us. I guess the French aren’t as accommodating with cyclists as I’d thought. I ended up with black bicycle grease all up the back of my leg, trying to squeeze out of the way, to the side of the road as much as I could.
Having managed to find our way across, we followed the Canal du centre for quite a way. It’s one of those marvels of engineering dating back a couple of centuries, put in to make it easier to move cargo around the countryside. It’s something you’d never get past the RMA in NZ, even if David Seymour was in charge (Heaven forbid).
As it turns out, it’s lucky that our navigation was a collaborative effort, because it took Simon and Google maps to figure out that we’d taken our journey alongside the canal a little far, and were actually heading away from Beaune. That was virtually our only backtracking of the whole day, though. After the canal our route took us through the countryside, and past a series of lakes. We saw a lot of white cows, or cattle beast as my father in law would call them.
I gave Simon the last of my water as we got to within ten km of Beaune. I had finally found a toilet on the side of the track and was in a good mood. The Europeans still struggle it seems with the concept of people needing a bathroom anywhere but at home or in a restaurant.
A couple of kms further on we found a well with a hand pump, which delivered fresh water. There was a sign with lots of French writing on it but it was mostly about not wasting water due to the drought. We refilled our bottles and drank deeply as we were both thirsty by now. We then went on and found another couple of identical pumps, both of which had signs on them saying “eau non potable” which was discouraging. I have decided that obviously the water in the first pump was OK to drink, and that’s the story I’m sticking with. But I didn’t drink any more of it.
It was around 4:30 by the time we returned our bikes to the bike shop, and then walked back to our hotel. Considering we managed to have a headwind all day due to some miracle of meteorology, we were physically in pretty good shape. Simon has a sore hip which he says is trochanteric bursitis. I’ve had a very sore bum for most of the day, which Simon says I can call “bilateral ischial bursitis”, which suits me.
A couple of hours of downtime before dinner, at a restaurant we were recommended yesterday but couldn’t get into. We had an outside table, and there was actually a chilly wind blowing, so after we ordered our food I went back to the hotel for a cardigan (the same one I bought at Wellington airport). I had snails as an entree which were delicious, like chewy garlic bread.
For dessert I had French bread, which unsurprisingly goes by a different name here, although you probably wouldn’t guess what it’s called: “we found the bread that was missing”.
We were surrounded by English speaking tourists, which detracted from the ambience somewhat. In front of us were a young American couple, and to my left were a posh English family whose children were called Aurelia and Maximus, I kid you not.
Back to the hotel to rub steroid cream on Simon’s sunburn (“No I don’t need sunblock, the sun isn’t actually very powerful here”) and then to bed.