vernon
Harder than Ronnie Pickering
- Location
- Meanwood, Leeds
Ben said:I would be careful recommending 'every single village' it can be quite difficult nowadays to find an open restaurant in small towns and villages. In the last ten years a huge number of small village restuarants have closed down , if you cycle into a village at 11.30am to find one open I'd choose to eat there and not expect there to be something in the next village or the one after that. But you are right that when found they are generally good and cheap.
I cycled from the Channel to the Med in August starting at Calais and finishing up at Monpellier.
The route was largely one from the CTC:
CALAIS
Wissant
Marquise
Desyres
Beussent
Montreuil
Abbeville
Yzeux
Amiens
Roye
Noyon
Blerancourt
Soissons
Chateau-Thierry
Montmirail
Sezanne
Mesgrigny
Troyes
Verrieres
Ville Noyenne
Merry-s-Arce
Chatillon-s-Saône
Dijon
Beaune
Chaion-s-saône
Cuisery
Pont-de-Vaux
Pont-de-Veyle
Trevoux
Lyon
Pierre Benite
Grigny
Givors
Vienne (West Bank)
Tournon
Valence
Le Teil
Viviers
Pierrelatte
Orange
Then onto Avignon, Arles south to the med and turn right to ride through a chunk of the Carmargue.
The first bit of the ride was boring through a monocultural agriculturla lanscape with nothing to distract the rider from the emptiness of the lanscape. Rode along the Somme battle front and visited a few war cemetaries.
Campsites especially municipal camp sites were cheap and normally plentiful. I did a bit of stealth camping. Caped in vineyard. Smapled the grapes.
Things pick up around Chateau Thierry as far as visual appea. There's plenty of patisseries to tempt you to spend more than intended. SUpermarkets have cheap table wine which is quaffable at €1.5 per litre fruit and veg much better quality and more flavoursome than here. Plenty of cheap restaurants/cafes.
Riding through the Rhone Saonne gap toward Orange is very pleasant. Provence is very heady with the smells of resins and herbs when the sun is out. Orange, Avignon and Arles are very interesting places. The Roman amphitheatre at Orange is breathtaking. The pont at Avignon is a tad disappointing as a large bit of it is missing :-)
As for the weather - totally unpredictable. The week before my ride I was baking in Rhodes in 44C. There were severall nights in France including Provence where I had to wear a cap, cycle shirt and gloves to stay warm at night and the day temperature didn't exceed 32 C. Some of the locals were moaning about the rotten summer that they'd had. I found the weather perfect for cycling...
I used the Eauropean Bike Express to get to Calais and back from Montpellier. A painless solution to geting to the start and back from the finish.