Our night in Signy-l’Abbaye was perfect. A nice evening with a short walk through the forest, a cool night in the hills, very quiet and peaceful, with a fantastic bird orchestra in the morning to wake up. From Signy we rode to Reims via similar small local roads, enjoying the rural scenery and the quiet, sleepy, charming villages on the way. Only the last part towards Reims was a bit boring; only fields with various crops, even hardly any trees. On top of that, there seemed to be quite a bit of haze – which we have seen regularly already since we’ve been cycling in Belgium and France. Wondering whether it’s really haze, or something different???
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| Our tent under a big tree, at dusk, very nice. |
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| Signy-l'Abbaye town |
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| A house on our way through the sleepy villages, in the traditional building style but unfortunately it seems beyond renovation now... |
In Reims we had no other choice than to stay in a hotel – as we wanted to spend the night in the city itself. We could not find any campsite close by the city surprisingly. No problem of course, we only didn’t “need” a bed instead of our tent yet. It was nice to walk around the city for a few hours, enjoy a drink on a terrace (of course) and a “menu du jour”. We couldn’t resist the Indian thali for dinner, instead of going for French food… And enjoyed it a lot!
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| Fields with various crops, everywhere. One wonders whether this is better or worse than the palmoil plantations in Malaysia or other places, around which there is so much discussion. Of course, these palm plantations now replace beautiful nature with a very rich biodiversity. Nevertheless, the fields here are agricultural deserts, and can't be good for the biodiversity... And finally, after all, it's us, the consumers, who create the need for the products. |
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| Luckily, there are some wind turbines too... |
From Reims we have decided to take a scenic cycling route, going almost via Saint-Dizier to the south-east, and then back to Troyes from there. This way we’ll be following 2 cycling routes, first the Marne route and then the Seine, which should make for nice riding. If we would have taken a more direct route to Troyes it would have been about a day less, but we have enough time so no problem.
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| Riding through the hilly Champagne vineyards just outside Reims. |
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| Vineyards. |
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| A slightly cooling (in the shadow) coffee break in the forest. |
Today we did not know where we would end the day, and we ended up cycling to Chalons-en-Champagne (63km). It was beautiful and very varied cycling, first following the Marne Canal out of Reims, then going into the Reims hills where the Champagne vineyards are - wonderful to ride through. The road was pretty hilly there, and we had a first very tough climb; this brought us into the cooler forest however. After our coffee break we rolled down into the plains again, and enjoyed some off-road cycling through fields and along a canal again. We could have gone further than Chalons as well, however the next possible stop with a campsite would have been at least another 40km, and as it would have been easy cycling it would have been fine, but we decided to keep the day short and sweet. This gave us some time to chill, write a post, and to go back into Chalons town which looked very pleasant, later on for dinner!
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| Unsealed road through more fields. |
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| Food for thought? |
