Day 46: Maisons-Laffitte to Evry

October 22, 2022

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We had been residents of Maisons-Laffitte for four nights and were really getting used to our little corner of it. We knew the four bakeries on the walk to the train station, the fruit store, the deli, and so forth. Plus, we had made a calm and careful study of the train station, and knew well which entrance to take a bicycle through, and which elevator would then take it down to the platform.

Hopping onto the bike lane in our "home town" of Maisons-Laffitte

Our favourite buildings near the station

Our plan was to bring the bikes onto the train and to ride it to our favourite stop - Charles DeGaulle-Etoile. From there we would ride the Champs Elysees and continue through the Tuileries and the Louvre, before joining our track, which is basically EV3 - the ScandIberique.

That was the easy plan, but fate seemed to object to it. Our first error was to somehow hop on the wrong elevator and be on the platform going the wrong way. OK, back up, over, back down, not a biggie. We stood on the platform and our train arrived. But it slowly pulled to the other end of the platform before stopping. Short train? We followed it down there and since it still wasn't leaving , we pushed our bikes on. It was more spacious than the trains we had ridden from this station in the past days? Hmmm.

Here is where fate revealed its plan. David Leboiteux, a relatively new and enthusiastic cycle tourist, today just on his way to work, noticed us squinting at the list of stops for this train. He asked us where we were trying to go, and we told him The Plan. Of course, this was not our train. It did not go to Etoile, but had the end of its line at St. Lazare. But no problem, said David, it would be easy to get out of St. Lazare station, and we could join The Plan from there, starting with the Tuileries.

David got off with us (his stop anyway), used his card to get us through the turnstile when it did not want to eat my ticket, helped us find the elevator, and tried to point us in the right direction once we were out on the street. What a nice man!

David in the train - note the Parisian scarf.

An often repeated scene of spotting stuff on the GPS.

After a fair bit of thought, we set off, and noticed right away that Paris really does have a lot of bike lanes. Also the traffic has a certain calm quality that makes us not too afraid of mixing it up with them out in the lanes.

Here is a really great two way bike lane, right downtown.

Somehow we were back at Printemps, which is adjacent to Galleries Lafayette. Any pleas for more pastries were summarily rejected!

This Greek style building at the end of a long street is the Church of Saint-Marie-Madeleine known as the Madeleine.

Hey look, we made it back to the Obelisk

Being at the Obelisk meant we were experiencing or about to experience again the Place de la Concorde, Tuileries, Orangerie, and Louvre. What fun to see them so soon again, and maybe to appreciate more things.

Neptune statue - I like his girlfriends.

I don't think this is a named tree, or one planted in honour of someone - like the cedar for Yitzhak Rabin- but I liked it.

Diane - on Diane Street. Diane is goddess of wild animals and the hunt.

Along the Seine near the Louvre and the Pont Neuf there are many stalls, with old books, newspapers, and here, paintings.

This lady with the parrot, fur scarf, hat, and scooter is not that much of a standout, for Paris, but the tourist clearly thought she was interesting.

Near the city hall we ran into a medium sized market, and of course slammed on the brakes. This tour stops at all markets. The problem was that we were already loaded up with food. It all looked so good, especially the BBQ chicken and potatoes. Well, next time.

Paella, with all the traditional sea creatures in there.

Rue de Rivoli runs way out east, and has interesting shops and bakeries all the way, until it ends, I think, at Place de la Bastille. On our first visit to Paris we spent a long time looking for "The Bastille", only to find that it had been destroyed in the Revolution, and all there is there now is a pylon. That time we were searching for the Bastille because it was near a bike shop where we were going to try to arrange a bike for Tricia Graham. We found the shop and all, but the Bastille - we got there about 230 years too late.

This was the point at which our route turned more South, and we entered all sorts of zones that were just a bit disorienting. There was light industry, increased traffic, graffitti, an out of place giant Chinese restaurant, in addition to a few peaceful scenes, as we continued to follow the Seine.

Out of place giant restaurant - the Huatian.

The ride, which had been glorious in old Paris and which was beginning to feel a little off in the southern suburbs, now took quite a dive as we came to a completely unsigned river crossing at a weir and lock structure. Only the track in the GPS knew we had to cross here, and the only on site signage simply loo directed us to a dead end.

Dead end - despite a lot of pedestrians go this way signage, even painted in the road.

Once somehow inside all the fencing and gates, we were faced with this.

There were four or five flights of stairs to carry up, to earn the right to see this.

Half way across Dodie stopped and looked over the side - hey, a soccer ball, she said. Can we go-oo, I said.

At the far side, after carrying down an equivalent structure to the first one, we came to this impression of an annoying England blockade.

As we were finishing with the annoying river crossing (which cost us one hour) we were listening to an also annoying growling and roaring. The GPS revealed this to be a motocross track, and after a while we did see some of the maniacs (to our way of thinking) zooming around. The GPS screen also shows that it was almost 4 p.m. and we were basically nowhere!

The next treat for us was to get diddled around through some sort of pleasure island complex: Port aux Cerises

In a very erratic way, the EV3 signage had been around, but not enough to really help us. Without the GPS there really was no hope, and our GPS seems to be getting more and more inaccurate!

The sour tone that you are reading now does not even come from the inconveniences or less than stellar scenery that we encountered toward the end of the ride - up to this point. Rather it comes from the route now running us more or less on the N7 - Nationale 7. This is a really famous route, like Route 66, that runs our way, down to Cannes, Nice, and Menton. It is lined with steak houses, car repair, home depot type stores, and suchlike. But it does not have a bike lane or shoulder, and the sidewalk can disappear, leaving nothing. EV3 deals with this by wandering off into the (safer) wilderness for bits, only to return later. Our problem was that to reach our hotel in Evry we could not be wandering around with EV3, because EV3 does not exactly go to Evry.

We decided to try blasting down N7 - yeah, on the sidewalk. But, the sidewalk was slow, with broken surface and often cars and stuff in the way. For a bit we did ride the road, until it became too hairy. Back to the sidewalk, until the sidewalk disappeared. Then it was pushing through the grass, until the grass disappeared. We somehow found ourselves on quite high speed crowded road with cars in a steady stream in both directions and no shoulder at all!

Pushing through the grass. How long will it take to walk this way to Evry?

At this time I recall that I was very calmly analysing the situation, not panicked at all, but thinking "The stream of oncoming cars is awfully constant. That means the stream of cars going our way is not able to pull out into the other lane. Their only choice is to squeeze by. One of these is bound to sideswipe us fairly soon. That would be quite a disadvantage."

Dodie on the other hand reports thinking much more simply, but equally irrationally, "Clearly I am going to die here. I hope it's quick".

We did jump on to the paved bit of the bridge that is seen in the photo, and did more grass pushing until some kind of shoulder appeared. As we drew closer to Evry, an unexpectedly big city, more sidewalk or shoulder was available, but the road itself was never safe.

We knew our expected cute Ibis styles hotel was right next to what we though would be the impressive "Cathedral", so we were on the lookout for those two building forms. We did notice the shape in the shot below, but only thought "weird". However, yes, the thing on the left is the cathedral, on the right is City Hall. Shot too dark - well yes, it was night by the time we made it!

Next door to the Cathedral is our hotel. It is very ugly too, but guess what - the room is great, and with room for our bikes!

Today's ride: 50 km (31 miles)
Total: 1,800 km (1,118 miles)

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Keith ClassenThe joys of bike touring … you never really know what to expect. Glad you arrived safely!
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