It’s been a little while, but we’ve been making ground steadily and in a stiff lipped fashion. Steadily though, rather than a fanatic cycling quest, we’ve come to meet some fantastically generous and warm spirited people in the past days, so, we should probably go into how that happened…
South of St Quentin, we woke in our gazebo refreshed. Having taken the opportunity to shower at Nicolas’. We made the most of our privately owned campground and left at a luxurious 10am, in stark contrast with the nervy 6am wake up in fields and thickets that we have become used to.
With our goal to head East from St. Quentin, we looked at the map and pointed to Montcornet as our destination for that night. A mostly flat day, we made ground pretty slowly in the heat. Mirages on the road shimmered about and we plodded on dutifully. Passing the cemeteries that litter Northern France, the weight of events was fairly. An uneventful day, we slipped into an eye-high patch of grass and bedded down for the night.
Carolomacériens
Waking in the morning and clattering panniers onto the bikes, a certain level of pinging and dinging made Will aware of the need to take a look at some spokes. Bodging a repair, we turned to technology and the fantastic app Warmshowers. Needing to get to a bike shop, or somewhere where we had a better chance of getting this sorted, we sent a message to a charming chap called Feyyaz. Based in Charleville-Mezieres, we figured the wheel would last the 50km between us and the town and set off. With it being a Sunday, we hoped to get a bed for the night and get the bike into a shop the following day.
Swirling skies soon made it plain that this was to be a bit of a skirmish. As clouds thickened and puffed up their chests, we could see their true colours were blue with occasional flashes of spark-white lightning. Taking winding roads that dodged downpours, we creaked into Charleville.
The president of the local bike touring club, Feyyaz was an incredibly worldly chap who took us in for the night and gave us some cover from the storms, even going so far as to treat us to a proper square meal rather than the rounded pot type that has become our staple diet. Flicking between English, French and German, we talked about touring, Santiago de Compostella and the town in which we found ourselves. A little bike repair later and we were good to roll.
Collonades of Place Ducale
Having skirted the centre, we took a drive into the heart of the town with our hosts to be greeted with a grand Piazza type square, bustling with boisterous and rather inebriated inhabitants. There was a beer festival underway, attested to by the interesting new water courses that seemed to surface from hip height on most walls. Stunning and vibrating with life, in the square we met friends of our fantastic host. Discussing life and the hidden beauty of this patch of north eastern France were met with perhaps the most French expression ever “everyone comes to Charleville for work….you come crying, you leave crying.”
The next morning, Feyyaz showed us to the bike paths on the Meuse. We followed these perfect and winding river paths until we could see the high fields of Belgium. After taking a sit-down lunch in Sedan, we took on the slopes of the Ardennes, stopping at the border in Williers only to ask for some water from an elderly couple with thick Ch’ti accents. Taking some time to talk about the trip, they tried to lift the bikes, and were taken aback with just what a task that actually was. Wishing us god speed and warning us of a steep slope, they pointed us in the direction of Belgium and we swooped the final 50 meters into the second country on our hit-list.
Frittering away our money
Celebrating with a beer at a cafe on the border, we continued onwards, crossing much of South Eastern Belgium in one night. Stopping adjacent to an old chapel in the woods, we made camp and took a little detour only to test out the famed Belgian frittes.
The next day was day 7 on the road. Fuelled by waffles to Arlon before taking the fall down into Steinfort with it’s curious density of strip clubs and the Luxembourg border…
