This is the first day of a series of short days to workaround the heatwave combined with hill climbs and unhelpfully placed accommodation.
Our hotel is busy and full of tourists to or from other holiday destinations all up for an early breakfast at 7am 😳.
Anyway we were up and off and cycled along (and up) the ridge of Langres. We chose a slight detour to cycle along the tree lined “La Grand Allée” as this looked fantastic and the perfect urban cycle route 😂.
Anyway, we eventually came across the long downhill 🚴♀️🚴🏻🚴♂️🚴🏻🚴♀️.
At breakfast, we studied our proposed route carefully and noted that the “direct route” went up and over steep ridges, whereas there was a slightly wigglier route that followed a small river through lots of pretty villages around the ridges with NO uphills ✔️🤗 and ended up at the same place💪🏻. So that’s the route we chose. Perfect. Weirdly, one km shorter too 🤷🏻♂️.
We got to Champlitte 38km before lunch and got into our accommodation - an appartment opposite the town fountain. It was cool inside. We showered and wandered into town for lunch. Weirdly the establishments are closed on Mondays 😏. But there was a bar open (so we had a small beer 🍺 which came with a French onion tart with anchovies 🤤😋) and the bar lady offered to make us a salade paysanne tonight 😍🥰😘) even though she was closed - and we heard her turn people away.
it turns out that the little village of Champlitte is the perfect place for a short cycling day - it houses the regional museum in the local chateau off the main square. It was cool in the interior ☺️. There were many rooms with each set out as a different craft:- pharmacy, barber, weaver, hat maker, village shop, school room etc. Nicely set out with original exhibits from the past. Pleasant way to spend the afternoon.
By chance, the French Via Francigena association is also based in this village. We got our pilgrim’s passport stamped at the tourist office and studied local cycle routes and made adjustments to our planned route tomorrow.
We also visited the Carrefour supermarket which was air conditioned 🤗😍. Decisions on which biscuit or cheese to buy took unaccountably long whilst we carefully padded the cool aisles to research the options in some detail 😂.
The apartment has a washing machine so we did a Big Wash ☺️.
Our bar lady did us proud for dinner and we retired early to bed. We are getting up at 6am to make an early start 🥱