The daily grind.
The above coffee grinders are not a metaphor about the hard life of being a bicyclist in France, this is just a small part of the grinder collection at the restaurant Le Saint Piere, Tonnerre; the place where I had lunch today.
Weather forecast for today was SW force 4 or 5, and rain. Could have been worse, but not by a great deal. Woke up however to clear skies and little wind, and saw no reason to wait for things to turn worse. I was off from the hotel and from Troyes at around 8:10.
Conditions were perfect from the start, I first followed the Seine upstream for about 15 kilometres from Troyes, when I turned SW in order to follow the winding local roads in the direction of Tonnerre, the wind started to build up. It was hard work. The landscape also became hillier, and the wind probably more than the hilly roads slowed average speed down. In case anybody still might be interested in landscape pics of La Belle France, this is what it looks like, somewhere between Lamarges and Praslin.
It was slowing going in places, an uphill gradient of 9% combined with SW force 4 against is not a good combination. However for some reason the rider is tackling these challenges better than only a few days ago, all the good beer and the occasional glass of Muscadet must be good for the body.
The last 7 kilometres to Tonnerre was downhill all the way. Did that in 13 minutes including a change of T-shirt, and started to look for eating-places. Stopped first at some place where they were more interested in discussing possible garden parties among the staff than actually serve anyone, moved on to Le Saint Piere and the coffee grinder exhibition.
The last leg to Noyers sur Serein went without any problems. Hilly, but nice countryside. Noyers sur Serein turned out to have no mobile phone coverage whatsoever, this update has been sent from Vezelay the 17th June.
a couple of pics from Noyers
Total distance 97 kilometres, average speed 18 km/h.
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