Day 42: Cergy to Maisons Laffitte

October 18, 2022

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The Ibis Budget, particularly the one in Cergy, have got to be as basic as you can get in hotels. However ours had something in common with our luxury chateau, and that is the reliance on Nespresso type machines to produce hot water. This morning I repeatedly ran the machine in the breakfast room, to get enough water to fill our thermos bottles for coffee and hot chocolate. The Nespresso, of course, only produces 6 oz of hot water or equally coffee, because that is the size of hot drinks here. It's an old story with us, trying to get such drinks in a size we recognize. With coffee, for example, it does not matter if you specify rallongé, American, grand, or any such word, it's all 6 oz!

We needed to make our way from the Ibis back to the track. Since the way we had come had worked out well (safely) we simply "backtracked", even though that might not have been the most efficient way to progress toward our day's destination. None of it was really a worry, because all the basic roads we have encountered have felt ok. One of the features that has really helped is that drivers respect the crosswalk markings on the road, making it fast and easy to be crossing this way and that. No safety islands, mad dashes, or multi-stage button pushing!

Heading back to our track - this bit is a "dual carriageway" but it offers a bike lane!

Soon we found ourselves on quiet and forested roadway, always following the so far excellent Avenue Verte signage.

Below, we have reached the River Oise , which starts in Belgium and is on its way to join with the Seine, at Conflans.

Approximately when we reached the Oise, the Avenue Verte began to break down a bit, with missing signs and also path surfaces that were less than ideal. In fact what might have been a pleasant cruise beside the river turned to tears, as the track was unpaved, narrow, and muddy.

By tears, I mean that Dodie went flying in the mud, the bike landing on top of her. Unfortunately, I was busy attending to her "request" to get the thing off, and failed to get my traditional photo of the disaster scene. However, those below give the idea about the trail, and were taken seconds after the crash.

Dodie and her bike are stood back up, but mine remains where I ditched it to go help.

The bikes are conferring about how to carry on given the conditions.

The trail continued in an unexpectedly crude way, given that we are no more than 30 km from Paris.

We thought this surface was too rocky to like.

Dodie was seriously "muddied" but not bloodied by her fall. We later saw that her left knee did not take it well, and is swollen and bruised, but still ok.

Following the Oise did of course eventually lead to the Seine, at a rather famous confluence, and the town of Conflans. Perhaps we could liken this confluence to the Deutsches Eck near Koblenz, minus the giant statue of William I. Or maybe not, but at least there was a sign board explaining the spot and featuring a photo of the nearby war memorial statue.

The actual confluence is not that exciting - Oise comes in on the right and Seine continues right and left.

The way to our friend Didier's place in Maisons Laffitte cuts across a loop in the Seine (the Seine is all loops and loops, all the way to the sea) and through a forest. The forest is riddled with bike routes, but they are all dirt tracks.

We bust out of the forest, and into Maisons Laffitte. I think the "maisons" part of this unusual name is something like the more common "hausen" found in Germany. And Laffitte was a banker who was one of a succession of owners of the local chateau.

In the vicinity of the chateau we found a lot of examples of an style of house using elaborate multi-coloured brick work.

We have a certain record of stealing friends from our kids. One of these is Didier, who was a real sweetheart of Joni when she was eighteen. Joni lived with Didier and his parents near Paris, and Didier also came to our place in Canada. We cycled by Paris in 2014 and visited Didier, and again actually stayed with his parents, in 2017. One "famous" Didier adventure was when he came to collect us off the Rhine and we had him drive us all around the Black Forest, looking for a cuckoo clock.

Here is Didier today!

Today's ride: 30 km (19 miles)
Total: 1,735 km (1,077 miles)

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