Day 47: Bourbon-Lancy to Palinges, France: C'est La Carte, C'est La Carte, C'est la Carte!

July 5, 2012

We left our haven at Bourbon-Lancy without even having tried out the swimming pool(s), but we were well satisfied, just with having used the washer and dryer.
Also, in the laundry room, we had a medium length conversation with a man (probably about our age) who came from somewhere in the French Alps. Something happened in this conversation that is becoming more frequent for us - we understood almost everything he said to us. Part of it is the very clear enunciation of the people in these parts, and partly our "ear" must be improving.

One other thing about this conversation is that we felt an immediate bond with this fellow. He seemed so genuine and gentle, maybe the word is "educated". We did not get his name and of course will never see him again. Yet we are connecting with people each day. We love the idea of sharing understanding with people of such differing backgrounds from our own.

One other person was Niko, who is from Germany and who is cycling to Paris. We both benefited a lot from getting information about the route behind and ahead.

Our road these days is a standard two lane affair with not too much traffic. Along it are cute cows (all Charolais), fields of corn or grain, and some fairly cute villages. Basically it's good cycling territory, but not totally WOW in terms of scenery. So it make sense that my first piece of scenery to show is a bug:

My second display is the lovely Dodie, though slightly drowned:

It was rain most of the day. At least we are not running out of water this time.

We followed the D979 along the Loire at first, avoiding the EuroVelo 6 route, which meandered about in the hills above the river.

D979 took us directly to Digoin, which should have been a good place to find some bread for lunch, except all bakeries were shut tight. It's our fault, of course, for arriving in town at 12:15. Real people buy their bread in the morning and evening only.

This patissier looked like it could save the day, since it actually was open. Unfortunately pizzas we got there were truly useless.

We did find one place where we could get some emergency croissants. Outside were sitting four teenaged girls, who I had a word with while Dodie was inside. When Dodie came out, we chatted for a while longer. The girls were interested in our trip, but had not heard of some of our destinations - like Vienna, seemingly. They were also interested in whether we were developing any muscles, and were quite tickled by the blog and the fact that I would put their photo into it:

Our friends in Digoin. To learn English we recommended watching kids shows. Their favourite is Dora, and they gave us a round of "Cest la carte" (It's the map, it's the map!).

The Canal du Centre is central to Digoin, and we easily made our way to it, and headed off, toward the heart of Burgundy generally.

Canal du Centre - it was our ticket to Palinges and will take us to Chalon too.

Little fish in the canal. They acted as a school and looked like one big fish.

This guy was rowing our route. I called out to him that since he was rowing it and we were biking it we had something in common. He denied that, saying rowing was much tougher. I could not really extract his story (where coming from, where going, does he have a blog, etc) though he did draw close to shore for me. He was not very talkative. Still I bet his story would have been interesting.

We made it to Palinges quite easily, having stuck to the canal all day. However there were a lot of periods of heavy rain, forcing us to plod along in full waterproof gear.

At the Camping in Palinges, free wifi is available in this common room.

Because of the rain and just for the hell of it we rented this chalet at the Camping. 40 euros.

We were not lonely for our evening in Palinges, as we now had 15 friends to hang out with. We were only able to talk to those sitting nearest us, but it was fun.

We were joined in the common room by 15 German motorcyclists.

More of our motorcyclist friends. They are all from neighbouring villages near Stuttgart and go for a one week trip somewhere in Europe each year. They insisted they are not a club but only a group of friends.

Today's ride: 68 km (42 miles)
Total: 1,831 km (1,137 miles)

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