Day One: Paris to Rambouillet

March 28, 2017

We said our fond farewells to Didier and Corinne, as early as we all could manage.We are very grateful to them for preparing lots of great food, giving us a bed, and putting up with our gear lying around.

So then it was the true beginning of the tour. We started by wobbling up and down the parking lot and then stopping to adjust seat height, mirror tightness, handlebars not straight, and similar details left during the jet lagged assembly. Finally we were off, following for the first 1/3 of the way to Versailles a bike path along the Seine.

After about 300 feet I was feeling a bit puffed out, and thought "Oh,Oh, justhow bad a condition can you fall into after a one year layoff?". But after another little bit we were both feeling fine. The Seine path was beautiful, and any houses were either cute cottages of equally cute mini chateau.

Paris is in a bit of a basin, which makes sense, what with the river. So there was a bit of a climb to leave the area. This was nothing really to write home about, though I guess by mentioning it in this blog I am doing just that.

After the hill we entered a bit of a congested semi-urban area, though again nothing unpleasant. And we did find a post office for sending cards to the kids and a bakery with really great sandwiches. The bakery was found by the usual "ant trail" method: For about 1/2 km around a bakery people will be seen walking with baguettes protruding from bags. Ity is easy to follow this trail to its source. I couldn't help thinking that people were being greedy, as they typically bought not one but two to four of the wonderful breads.

There were lots of mini chateaux like this that it is fun to dream about buying

A postal delivery e bike. The postman must really appreciate this here in the hilly section beyond Paris.

Quite quickly the -sort of miscellaneous urban landscape began to resolve into a more Parisian appearance, with those massive four to six story grey/white buildings with many windows. And then, we were in Versailles. There is a broad avenue, like BROAD, leading to the chateau complex. This is lined, of course, by those giant buildings. At the end is the huge palace complex, with long lines of mostly Asian tourists snaking back from it.

We had a quick look at the size of the complex and the size of the lines and decided there was no way for just a quick peek. For starters we would have had to find a place to securely store the bikes. This is the situation we expected and accepted when we cancelled our reservation fort a hotel in Versailles and elected to be pushing on.

Still, we set off down the broad avenue, hoping to absorb some of the ambiance of Versailles the town. The town is really a part of the complex, having been laid out in conjunction with it. Where there are broad roads and large buildings, despite lots of people on the sidewalks there was little of interest actually going on. Better was one narrow street in the centre of town that did have restaurants and people sitting out on the tables.

We came to the cathedral and went in to see if we could get a Compostella stamp. No luck, there was no one about. The cathedral itself had a bit of nice glass, but it was nowhere near a match for the big name cathedrals standing close by in Paris and Chartres.

Zoom in on this for an idea about the layout of Versailles palace and town

Lining up to get in. We were told the lineup time might be only one hour.

There were at least 50 tour busses in a dirt parking lot in front of the palace

Look how wide the avenue is leading to the palace

Asian tourists vacuuming up all the snapshots

Looking down the broad avenue away from the palace

Typical broiad avenue of Versailles town. Not much happening, really

A narrow and more interesting street in Versailles

Our way out of town gave us a look at some of the back grounds of the palace. At one point there was an access for a 13 km bicycle circle ride of the complex. That could have been interesting, but of course we wanted to rush off, to our hotel reservation in Rambouillet.

Abandoned farm houses on the outskirts of Versailles

The woodsy palace grounds soon gave way to big box store territory, around Coignieres. We were following a bike way beside the national route N10, which accounts for all the commercial activity we saw. One good consequence for us was that we spotted a Decathlon, and so were able to stock up on CampingGaz, a perennial preoccupation of ours.

As we pedalled along, one time we were facing the traffic as that is where the path was best. So we encountered four men in two company trucks of some sort, pulled off the road ahead of us. One of the men stepped into our path, brandishing a cell phone and saying something about "the route". "Oh my" I thought, "there is going to be some reason whey we can not cycle on this route". But then I thought again "Maybe this is a holdup". But no, Dodie was already talking to the fellow, and it turned out that these big brave men in trucks, with cell phones had no idea where they were. Dodie told them "You are on national route 10, mid way between Cognieres and Le Perrey en Evelines - see here on my (home printed) map". I was proud of her and of our mapping work. Needless to say this encounter took place in French, but with all the other thoughts going on, I only noted that much later.

We had spent quite a bit of time fooling around in Versailles, in a grocery store, in Decathlon, etc., but we were still confident we could reach our hotel easily. On the other hand all that fooling around plus the fact that this was our first day out slowed both our pedals and our brains. We found ourselves staring at our GPS track but still getting lost. And small hills began to look like big hills. We also think our clever track on and around the grounds of Rambouillet chateau got fouled up by closed off sections. So we ended up passing through Rambouillet town the wrong way up one way streets, and now with our headlights and rear flashers on. Our hotel was cleverly hidden behind an Ibis, but we did eventually spot it. Scavenging the room for electrical outlets, we set about recharging our exhausted GPS devices and flashing lights. Then we collapsed, it had been a very full first day.

Ok, not all collapsed. I seem to be still here writing this text and shortly, putting up some photos. But fear not, we will soon be all collapsed!

Rambouillet by night - not a sight we had planned on

Today's ride: 61 km (38 miles)
Total: 61 km (38 miles)

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