From Nogent l'Artaud to Meaux: Almost there

June 19, 2008

We wake up to cloudy, stormy weather. But the weather gods take pity and as we pack up, the clouds part and the sun dries our tent.

However, we're not out long before the clouds return in full force. It's still dry when we have our coffee and croissants in a cafe in Nogent, but when we get on the road it starts to rain. Out come the rain jackets, which protect us well, but today I leave my rain pants in the pannier. They keep the rain out - and the body moisture in. Eventually you get chilled from the wet layer. In shorts, our legs dry as soon as it stops raining and we are actually warmer.

In Nogent, before breakfast the sun is still shining

Prepared for rain, but pretty knackered from yesterday's hills

We are now on the next Michelin map and all of a sudden I see how close we are to Paris. I didn't know we were going to be there so soon. Again we have hills. Avoiding the N3, we work our way in a zigzag manner through the villages. Even though we follow the course of the Marne, we are not on the river bank. From Nogent we ride through Citry, Méry, follow a loop in the Marne to avoid traffic and in La Ferté/Jouarre have a sandwich.

June is a beautiful month, inspite of the rain

The towns today and yesterday have cafés, bakeries and restaurants as we get closer to Paris. We have one more nice ascent up to Montceaux-lès-Monts and then back down to the Marne as it forms a semi-circle around Meaux, our destination for the day. At the very end of our ride before reaching Meaux, there is no way to avoid the busy N3 without making a giant detour, so we are hoping there will be some sort of bike path for us. Meaux will be our largest town so far. Yes, there is a bike path next to the highway into the city, not in the best shape, but I'm glad it exists.

Almost reached the top; it's mostly downhill from here

Once we reach the center of town, we make a bee-line for the tourist information office for help finding accommodation. They are able to book a room for us and as we leave it starts to pour. The ride today ends the way it started but now we are happily headed for a dry room. We have a hard time finding our way through the city as our city map disintegrates from the drenching it's getting. We are pretty wet ourselves by the time we find the hotel.

Tomorrow we will be in Paris and I realize the necessity of reserving a hotel room before we arrive. Where we are now staying has wifi but we are both too tired in the evening to do an Internet search on our little asus eee screen. Let's see if we can do a same-day booking on the Internet tomorrow morning.

Today's ride: 52 km (32 miles)
Total: 993 km (617 miles)

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