Bike Touring The Sâone and Loire Regions

Bike touring along the Rhone river

We left Monique and Norbert Friday evening and passed unending cornfields on our route, which reminded me of our cabin at home in the Delaware Valley of Pennsylvania, where I spent the summers of my childhood. Perhaps it was only the summer sun that reminded me of the happy days I spent along the Delaware River, but then again, there was also the rolling hills, the farmhouses, and of course, the cornfields. The only thing that was missing was the river, which we found sure enough not long afterwards. We followed the river through small villages until we joined more cornfields and found a spot to set up our tent for the night. We watched the setting sun over the river, the first night that we spent along after leaving the last of our friends and family at Limonest.

We continued north the next morning, winding our way through small villages which evoked images of ghost towns. Ghost towns in the sense that they were dead – deserted. We passed not a single living soul. Everyone had left on vacation. France is known to come to a standstill during the month of August. People often leave for their five weeks of vacation, heading either to the coast or to the mountains. It gives you a bizarre sensation. Even in the capital of Paris, if you walk the streeets in August, you are more likely to run into a tourist than a Parisian. In the countryside, it is even worse. The bakeries close, the butchers close, the markets close, the doctors leave town.

It was in passing through one of these small deserted villages that I had my first real lesson in survival. In France, if you are in dire need of water (as we were in this deadening heat), you can always find fresh water in the cemetaries. As the cemetary is never far from the church, and there is a church in every village, you simply need to look for the church steeple in order to locate your next stop for water. After realizing this, I was looking forward to every cemetary along our route. Kind of ironic that our favorite hangouts would become the cemetaries of France «photo».
It was in the 105° heat of midday that we saw a sign for a lake. We made the detour straightaway and just the thought of reaching a body of water made the hills easier to climb. It is hard to describe how happy we were when we reached the clear blue water. So happy, in fact, that we stayed for two days. We spent the weekend swimming and avoiding the sun.

We spent the first night camping in the woods nearby. The second night, the owner of the campground situated near the lake offered to let us stay for free. There was a party at the lake that night – a Brazilian band and dancers, complete with an impressive fireworks display.

It was with a small twinge of regret that we left the lake on Monday morning and headed back into the hot sun. We headed towards Châlon-sur-Sâone, which we reached Tuesday night. Still have some administrative paperwork to finish before we left France, we decided that it would be easier to spread everything out and work in a hotel rather than under the tent, so we took a hotel for the night. Not without some measure of regret. We slept barely a wink. The thermometer still registered over 100° in the early hours of the morning, and there was not even a hint of a breeze. We realized that we slept better in the woods because there was at least a tiny bit of air which passed through the tent.

Situated along the Sâone River, Châlon was a pretty town. The architecture was very different from that which we had thus far encountered. The houses and store fronts, made of wood and showcasing flowers at every window, reminded me very much of what I had seen in Germany and Austria. The main street of the old quarter, which housed the townhall and several bars and stores, made me think irrepressibly of the make-shift sets mounted by Hollywood for old Westerns. Perhaps it was the façades of the buildings which were so flat and painted or perhaps it was the fact that the streets were deserted. Whatever it was, it was a feeling that stayed with us while we visited the town.

We left Châlon on the day of the “Toussaint,” a national holiday in France that literally shuts down the country. Just as a funny sidenote, I’ll re-count my experience in France on August 15th two years ago. I flew into Paris that morning after having spent time visiting my family in Pennsylvania, and I had a surreal experience. I arrived by train from the airport into the largest train/metro station in Paris around 8:00 AM in the weektime. Almost every metro line and regional train connects into this station, Châtelet-les-Halles, and depending upon if you have a long transfer to make, you can easily pass thousands of people. Especially during rush hour in the morning, when everyone is hurrying to get to work. Well, this morning, I had quite a distance underground to walk in order to change to my connecting metro line. The eery part was that after 20 minutes underground, where I would normally pass thousands of hurrying Parisians, I passed only three (it was still too early for the tourists to be out and about). When I reached my metro stop and came above ground, I passed not a single person on my walk home and only two cars. All this at 8:30 in the morning, when the street is usually bustling with people. I couldn’t imagine what could have possibly happened. Could the city have been evacuated for some reason? When I reached home, Stéphane reassured me: no, it was only August 15th, a national holiday during the month when the towns are already strangely silent. Voilà, for my story of how the 15th of August works in France.

Anyway, to come back to August 15th of this year, we spent a large part of the day cycling east through the countryside of the Sâone region. We passed seemingly unending stretches of cornfields. What struck us was the fact that everything was so very dead. The landscape was a dry brown and the corn was a scorched black, burnt to a crisp by the seering sun and pointing down towards the earth as if utterly defeated. There was hardly a sign of life, neither in the towns nor in the landscape.

(See the News Update on the heat in France)

After our longest day so far of biking, Stéphane had the brilliant idea at the end of the day to ride to the top of a summit in order to have a panoramic view of the valley below when we woke up the next morning. Nice idea, but I was hardly in favor of the idea after a long day of cycling. After all, we haven’t been cycling for that long, and my legs feel most every steep hill that we climb. Despite my dissent, we rode to the top, and I wasn’t sorry for it the next day. We had a beautiful view from the top of Mount Roland and we could hear music coming from inside the church nearby. I took a nap in the protective shade of a Maple tree while Stéphane explored the area by a cycling path.

Last paperwork while camping in forest

After a peaceful afternoon, we finished the day looking for a place to sleep in a forest. I generally prefer to find a place to set up the tent before night falls. However, this night, we were a little late and it was dark by the time we found a suitable place. It’s funny how the woods can appear so innocent by the light of day and so sinister in the dead of night. I had never had that feeling before. Perhaps it was because we usually picked out our place when there was still some daylight left, when you could see what was around you. Perhaps it was the approaching storm and the wind rustling the leaves that made me hear unfamiliar noises in the night. I felt homesick for the first time. I resolved to call home as soon as we had set up the tent and had a bite to eat. I kept thinking of the movie “Blair Witch Project,” where three students disappear in the forests of Maryland. I was thinking that they must have had the same feeling when they were lost in the woods at night. Quite silly, really, because I’ve never actually seen “Blair Witch Project.” I’m still childishly afraid of these movies, but Stéphane’s told me about it enough times.

Five seconds after we were safely inside our tent, the first drop of rain fell. Then another, and another. The storm broke loose. I called home…no one answered.

The bright sunlight of the next morning made my midnight fears seem far away. The woods we were in were actually quite pretty. The dense forest was a dark green and the sunlight which passed through speckled the forest floor. We had our first outdoor shower by a water container that we hung from the branch of a tree. It worked quite well. We could even adjust the water pressure so as to conserve water.

Kevin called in the afternoon and made my day. Stéphane played “Jammin” for him and made his day! Thanks for the call, Kevin, and good luck on your move to Bethlehem next week!

We pulled up camp at the end of the afternoon and decided to bike as far as we could that evening. We didn’t get very far when I said to Stéphane that we should start looking for a place for the night because it looked as if another storm was approaching quickly. We weren’t as fortunate this time. Just as we found a spot, the storm descended upon us. Large raindrops soaked us through in a matter of moments. The wind blew the leaves from the ground and off the trees with such force that it was difficult to see. Even though we were drenched, we had prayed so hard for rain during the past several weeks, that we had to be happy for it in any way that it came. Maybe it would be cooler tomorrow…