Tour de France

After waking to the sound of rain on my tent at our campsite adjacent to the suspected meth lab/junk hoarder forest just outside Marson, George and I continued heading toward the ville etape city of Epernay.

I was on the lookout for hardware shops as I’d been trying to find metho for my stove in every supermarket that we had visited. So far no luck and I have been reduced to eating cold canned food for dinner and unable to make coffee. That gets old very quickly, although it doesn’t seem to bother George in the slightest. He’s more than happy to eat a cold can of one euro cassoulet (French version of franks and beans with a lump of dodgy looking goose meat) mixed with cous cous.

Thankfully one of the first businesses we passed after getting on the road was a large hardware chain store. Think Bunnings but French. They had a very helpful lad who spoke English and found the alcool a bruler for me.

30km later we reached Epernay where we had a picnic lunch in the park, George interrogated and tested the Office de Tourisme as he likes to do, and he got his fix at an Internet cafe and updated his blog.

Reims was another 30km or so north of Epernay, and a long climb after lunch had us removing some layers. The ride to Reims was on a pretty busy road that had us riding single file on the white line and prevented any conversation.

George has a great love for Carnegie libraries and seeks them out wherever he can. So the Carnegie in Reims was his first stop. It’s certainly a nice library, built in art deco style with a huge chandelier in the foyer.

Next to the Carnegie is an enormous cathedral, built in a similar style to Notre Dame but about twice the size. We rode a lap of the building and then came upon the tourist office which George could of course not resist. Unlike most of these places, this one had a male at the desk, and he was quite an obnoxious creature, not bothering to hide his contempt for tourists asking annoying questions like these;

G: we are looking for a route out of town heading towards Laon
OC: but you are a cyclist, you have a map!
G: yes but only have a large map, not a local one
OC: you can buy a map in the shop here

G: I heard that Louis XVI visited a town near here, is there a monument in the town?
OC: No there is no monument there
G: what about a plaque or something to show what happened?
OC: of course there is a plaque! This is an important thing in French history!!

Monty Python couldn’t have done it any better.

The sun was kind enough to come out yesterday which made riding so much more pleasant. Since my body clock is still somewhere between French and Sydney time I woke up at 5am, unheard of for me.

We packed up our damp tents in the foggy orchard and were on the road by 8am, finishing off the steep climb just on the outside of Gorze. It will be an interesting spot when le tour passes through here as the steep descent combined with a very narrow entry into the village below could easily bring some riders unstuck.

The day’s ride was all on backroads and we only passed two open supermarkets the entire day, stopping at the first for some lunch at St Mihiel.

Parts of today’s ride were on the tdf course, and it’s classified as “plain” meaning flat. But in reality the road still undulates and after 136km of this on my second day I was pretty tired as we searched for a campsite just outside the village of Marson. We eventually found a narrow track between a field of weird beans and a patch of forest. We would have camped in the forest but it was all fenced off and on closer inspection was full of weird rubbish. Mountainous piles of old pallets, oil drums and old office equipment hidden under tarpaulins. Not wanting to disturb someone’s secret meth lab we decided to stay out.

About 75km

The TGV from Gare de l’Est in Paris conveniently had a space at the end of the first class carriage that would accept a couple of bikes (at a cost of ten euros). Two hours later I met up with George Christensen at Nancy station out towards the German border.

I met George ten years ago while touring in south east Asia with Ilias. We were in a tiny village in Laos and bumped into George there and then spent a day or so cycling together. We’ve stayed in touch ever since and now have finally managed to coordinate a tour together. George has been chasing the tdf around every year since 2004, so here I am about to attempt the same thing.

The weather has been just as cold and wet as Sydney is at the moment, which made for a damp days riding yesterday, but it was still great to be out of Paris and into the countryside. France never disappoints when it comes to scenery.

We’re heading north towards belgium at the moment, checking out some of the early tour stages in reverse. Let’s hope the weather doesn’t become even more British as we head towards the English channel.

At 310 calories per 100ml this 500ml bottle of creme fraiche contains 1550 calories. And at a price of 89 euro cents at Aldi clone Lidl, that has to be the best bang for buck energy drink on earth.

Enough calories to keep a normal person sustained for an entire day. Good to keep the touring cyclist going until morning tea.

It’s when you come to cities like Paris that you realise how scrubbed clean Sydney really is. Paris has a certain scruffiness that you see everywhere. It’s not that there’s rubbish everywhere (there isn’t), it’s just that all those new paving stones and light posts all over Sydney contrast with Paris slightly battered and worn ambience. It’s rare to see an old car here (ie not straight out of the showroom) that doesn’t have a few battle scars. Indeed the police station near my hotel that is responsible for all the sirens that I hear all day has a gaggle of beaten up and scarred police cars parked out the front. But the gendarmes standing outside smoking are of course immaculately attired.

I had decided not to make any firm plans for my arrival and it was probably a good thing as I got off the plane at Charles de Gaulle after a day in the air to a grey sky pouring water on the runway. And when my bike box finally turned up at the luggage collection it was completely soaked to the point of collapse. Now there’s one damage vector I hadn’t planned for when packing the bike.

So in my jet lagged daze I decided that getting on my bike and riding off into the rain was probably not going to be particularly enjoyable at 7am on a Monday morning after no sleep, so I booked an overpriced hotel at the tourist information desk. David was quite helpful and rang the hotel to make sure that they had room to store my bike, but he was most insistent that I wouldn’t be able to get my bike onto the automated airport shuttle train that moves between terminals. I was pleased to prove him wrong after assembling the bike in a quite corner of the airport. Everything is so difficult when you’re sleep deprived. Even simple operations like screwing on the pedals become unreasonably difficult.

A day and many coffees later I’m feeling almost human again. I have booked a tgv ticket to Nancy tomorrow morning to meet up with George as he examines the tdf starting towns.

If only I had brought some decent clothes I would be able to visit a nice restaurant.

There’s only a few weeks left until I leave for my trip to France and I keep thinking that I’ve forgotten something. Maybe it’s just that I’m not fit enough and worried that George is gonna kill me going over the alps and the Pyrenees.

I think I need to move about 50 kilometres from work and ride in every day for the next three weeks.

Oh well I can always spend my days eating cheese and rubbing it on my belly while I lie in a park next to my bike.

My previous trips have involved the normal setup of a rack with panniers. For my 2012 France trip I want to be able to cover larger distances, so weight reduction is a high priority.I have taken some inspiration from Iik’s blog at http://ultralightcycling.blogspot.com Iik is pretty ruthless when it comes to cutting weight, and I admire a man who can sleep on a sheet of bubble wrap, not wash for days on end and sleep under a tarp. But I cannot. There is a certain level of comfort and convenience that I will not do without, especially if I’m planning to be on the bike for over a month. I differ from Iik in the following ways:I want to be able to cook, even if just to boil eggs or make coffee.I want to sleep in comfort, not on bubble wrap.
I want to be able to get at my stuff during the day without dismantling the whole lot.

I want places to store stuff like camera, eWerk etc so that they can be easily accessed.

Iik dismisses the use of any normal bike bags and just straps a compression sack on his back rack. And he doesn’t use a handlebar bag. This is main way he saves weight, as not using panniers saves about a kilo for each pannier you leave at home.

I have tested out the compression sack technique on a previous short tour, and while it certainly does save weight, it is not convenient. The setup below weighs 600g for the rack, and 200g for the compression sack. Light and waterproof, but a bit of a pain in the arse because you can’t get at anything inside the sack unless you remove the bungees holding it to the rack and remove it so that you can rifle through it.

A previous test rig using a compression sack as main storage

So for a slight weight penalty I have decided to use a Carradice Super C saddlebag. It is quite a large saddlebag with a capacity of about twenty litres (almost as much as the compression sack above), but has the convenience of side pockets, small internal pockets, plastic buckles for fast entry, loops on top to allow easy tent strapping, and it is reasonably light at 800g. To support the bag and prevent it from crushing my rear mudguard I will be using a Nitto saddlebag rack, which weighs 350g. So 1150g for the pair, compared to 800g for the compression sack and cheap aluminium rack. I’m happy to sacrifice 350g for the added convenience.

Proposed touring load

In addition, the saddlebag doesn’t sway as much as the compression sack, resulting in less shimmy and frame flex. I’m using a pretty lightweight randonneur bike built with light gauge tubing and a low trail front end. So any wobbly weight at the back tends to make the bike handle very badly. The saddlebag is a big improvement over the compression sack.

Hilleberg Akto strapped on top of Carradice Super C

In the saddlebag I have managed to fit a three season down sleeping bag (850g), Thermarest pillow (200g), miniature Trangia (220g), some clothes (all in main compartment), Thermarest Neo Air mattress (400g in side pocket), and a lock and tools in the other side pocket (300g). Hilleberg Akto (1.5kg) straps neatly on top using webbing straps borrowed from an Ortlieb pannier set. The little doodads on the end of the Ortlieb straps prevent the straps from hanging down and tangling with my rear wheel. Ah those clever Germans.

And I’m also not prepared to do without a handlebar bag. My bike is built for it with an integrated custom front rack and decaleur, and the Berthoud bag that I use is just the right size for stuff frequently needed. The layout of the pockets also puts my camera at hand and holds the eWerk (53g) that I use to charge things. The front pocket will hold a mini pump, saddle cover, and few other odds and ends. The lid has a zippered compartment that will hold a Kindle. It’s pretty waterproof. At 600g, it’s well worth taking.

Berthoud handlebar bag

All up, my bike weighs 11.8kg without any bags attached. The total weight of the luggage and contents is close to 8kg. Having just done a test run up the biggest hills I could find close to home in the Royal National Park, this load is quite tolerable. On the flat I can maintain a good speed above 25kmh without too much effort, and while hill climbing is slow, it’s not too taxing.