We worked our way toward Liege today on a mixture of back roads and busy highways. Belgium doesn’t have the same mixture of roads as France and its difficult to find quiet roads that are also reasonably direct.

Belgium also lacks in comparison to France in another respect – the courtesy of it’s drivers. The Belgians are far more impatient and pushy than the French and give less room for cyclists. One wanker in a BMW blasted us with his horn as he approached, swerved close to us, then squirted his window washers as he passed to spray us with washer fluid. Ballsack. George thinks that it might be a deep inner frustration that the Belgians have for being the idiot cousins of the French.

It’s also proving to be more difficult to find water. We didn’t come across a single cemetery all day to restock our water and had to visit a motorcycle repair shop.

And one more whinge – it’s harder to find camping spots. It took several failed attempts to find one last night but eventually we investigated a side road that led to a golf course. As luck would have it we stumbled on an abandoned road behind a small ridge that is completely secluded.

We entered Belgium today to visit the arrival town of Tournai and examine some of the cobblestone sections included in the Paris Roubaix.

A fairly flat and not particularly taxing ride, though my backside is unsure what to make of my new plastic racing saddle after riding nothing but Brooks or Ideale leather saddles for some time now. I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt for another couple of days before I do something drastic.

I encountered the second rudest Frenchman of the trip so far when we stopped at a small cafe a about 30km into our ride. If you don’t like customers why run a cafe?

Riding the famous cobbles of the PR was interesting on a loaded touring bike. It must be a punishing ride for the racers when they go over these sections with narrow racing tyres. Even my 42mm 650b tyres had the whole bike rattling.

Tournai have gone to far more effort for the tdf than any of the French towns we’ve been to so far. They have several exhibitions on display, one of which we managed to sneak into right on closing time at the Hotel de Ville. They’ve also produced a 21 page colour booklet none of which I can read.

Heading out of Tournai we had trouble finding water for our camp tonight until we came across a coach business that was unattended. So we helped ourselves to their tap.

Tonight’s camping spot is in a large pear orchard which George and instinctively dove into simultaneously as soon as we saw it after no luck finding any suitable spots to camp beforehand. It’s a tad noisy being close to the rail line to Brussels but ear plugs can solve that.

Another “rest day” today as we slowly work our way backwards along the tdf route, scoping out sections of stage three, getting very close to Belgium now. Friteries are quite common, though I haven’t stopped at one yet.

We rode for a good 45km today before finding any food or water. The sun was out and the early part of the ride was quite hilly so I burnt through what little water I had left in no time. George had excess so he topped me up until we reached our lunch spot at Therouanne. There was a nice little park behind the Carrefour where we munched on our lunch and then got some water at the town “Marie” where the old ladies there gave us hairy, smelly cyclists slightly funny looks but were happy to fill our bottles.

A few km down the road at Mametz we finally found a cemetery where we had a much needed wash. Pretty much all cemeteries in France have a tap that locals use to water flowers and clean graves so it is very useful to know if you’re cycle touring as it can be challenging to find water otherwise.

I also managed to clean some clothes that were really started to stink. I hung them off the back of the bike until we reached the next town and then took the liberty of hanging them over a railing in the sun outside the Internet cafe while George updated his blog. my sleeping bag also got an airing as it has been getting steadily less effective as the down absorbs moisture out of the air in our particularly damp camping spots over the last few days.

Finding tonight’s camp was challenging as the tdf route goes through endless semi rural suburbia. We finally found a thin patch of forest along a creek near some houses. Not the best site so far but secluded enough.

Another morning waking up in a forest with rain splattering the tent. I came to France to avoid the Sydney winter. You call this summer?

I think my tent is becoming a biological sample set of France’s forest micro organisms. Every time I pitch it on a damp, spongy forest floor it picks up a few extra million rare fungi, bacteria, slugs and insects. I’ll need to scrub it before I return to Australia.

Today’s ride was to the tdf finish town of Boulogne Sur Mer. A howling crosswind made it an entertaining and somewhat cold ride. We had planned to stop for a supermarket visit and lunch along the way but none of the smaller towns had a supermarket.

Boulogne is on the coast, and the wind here was stronger and colder than ever. This was particularly evident when we went into a shop or tourism office, where I would immediately start sweating and then freeze again when walking outside.

I gave myself a fright when I passed a mirror in the supermarket. Beard is progressing quickly.

After our usual stops we sought out the Decathlon sports shop where I bought a new saddle. My beloved old Ideale 90 has suffered from all the rain and the leather has collapsed under my sit bones turning it into a prostate grinder. I picked up a Selle Italia racing saddle and a pair of mini panniers on the spur of the moment as well. They should make it easier to carry food as long as they don’t flap into my spokes and destroy the new wheel that I built before coming over here.

A good start to the day with blue skies, cooking breakfast in our forest enclave. Half way through my egg boiling though the farmer who owned the land we were camped on came along. He was quite an elegant chap with his walking cane and deluxe gumboots and cigar. Fortunately he couldn’t speak any English so his attempts to tell us we were camping on his property and shouldn’t be weren’t very effective. But once he realised that we were bike tourists (the highest form of tourist according to Bob Magee) he relaxed and wished us a good day.

Today was Sunday so we had to get to a supermarket before midday when all the shops close. George was also keen to dumpster dive if the opportunity arose.

The day’s riding was largely guided by my GPS which I set to “shortest route” so it will beligerantly follow the shortest path no matter what. So we rode along lots of unmarked farm roads and tiny lanes through thr back if villages. The down side is that all these roads are much steeper than all the main ones so it makes for a hard days riding.

We found another secluded patch of forest adjacent to a farm, and just in time too as I was feeling wrecked by the end of the day.

Duck breast for dinner!

Our campsite just outside Reims the night before was on a farmer’s property near a canal, with two chains blocking the way with signs saying Private Property, Danger. “Perfect”, said George “no one will disturb us here”. We lifted the chains and found a perfectly flat, grassy camping spot with a view of the adjacent wheat field.

It was another rainy night and I woke to the sound of rain pelting my tent. After an hour or so it eased off and I was able to get out and cook my bacon and eggs for breakfast, and some shitty Nescafé coffee. But shitty Nescafé is better than no cafe.

It seemed to take me forever to pack up my tent and get everything on the bike. I’m pretty much over the jet lag but sometimes still feeling a touch vague.

We started off toward Saint Quentin at about 9, and the rain was fairly steady. It was a busy road too, so endless cars sloshing past, and the occasional truck simultaneously spraying us with dirty water and blowing us across the road. Then George got a puncture, his fourth for the trip and second since I’ve been riding with him. The puncture gods have left me alone so far.

Lunch was sardines and cous cous eaten in the car park of a Dia supermarket, followed by more riding in the rain.

Saint Quentin is a ville arrivee, so George of course had to make a visit to the tourist office where they explained that they had no information about the tour yet. We cycled around town a bit and found a small tdf exhibition at the local sports centre, then we headed out of town into sunshine. What a difference that makes!

Tonight’s camping spot is in a patch of forest next to a first world war memorial and a farm that has a bird deterrent that sounds like a cannon going off every eight minutes.

The forecast says sun tomorrow.

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.