Across France to the Alps…

My very good friends, Khalid and Marie-Helene Kaab wish me Bon Voyage...

I bid my French friends goodbye at 8.00am this morning… It was hard to believe that we had met in Khartoum in the Sudan, just six weeks ago, and then spent the next few weeks traveling through Egypt together, and had now become firm friends… I sincerely hope that we will meet again one day…

The 635 kms from Castels to St Jean de Gonville took me almost 9 hours… I avoided all the major highways and cruised through the countryside instead, enjoying rural France and the small villages I passed through. It drizzled for the first few hours of my ride and the temperatures were a lot cooler than those we had enjoyed back in Castels…

I rode through the town where the previous afternoon Khalid had taken us to a Moroccan restaurant to enjoy a traditional meal from his home country…

The couscous based meal was huge, and I struggled through the various delicious dishes that were served with it… I had sat back at the end of our meal, thinking again about the fact that I had missed out on visiting Morocco… I was now even more disappointed than I had been before…!!

We headed due north toward Limoges, the bike handling the wet surface much better than it had done on the way up from Andorra… Perhaps I had managed to adjust to the conditions, but still it wasn’t easy… The roundabouts in the towns and villages slowed us down, and were especially slippery, as the trucks tend to drop oil when they slow down to negotiate the turns, and the accumulation of this, combined with the rain, made for a few hairy moments…

Heading east towards Montlucon, the weather improved and I began to relax and enjoy the ride… After the long section through small towns and villages, we were now on a major highway, and I managed to make up some time, zooming past long lines of trucks and even long lines of holiday makers on their way back to Germany and the Benelux countries…

From narrow country lanes...

...out onto the highways of central France...

While in Castels, Khalid had helped me to sort out the signal problem with my head-cam, and I was now able to shoot some footage of the countryside without having to use my handheld video camera… Getting “hooked up” to all the cables took some getting used to again, as I had not used it since Ethiopia. I had to remind myself not to get off the bike before disconnecting the cable to my helmet, otherwise I would end up jerking all the connection loose, and would have to mess about getting them all properly connected again…

The Big Fella got a little uppity when I told him we were NOT going to Paris...

One of the strangest service stations I have ever seen...and the most expensive at €11.55 per litre...!!

Dark clouds gather as I head for Macon, ignoring that round sign with a 70 on it...

Brightly painted silo just outside Macon...

I left the highway in search of fuel, and in the little village of Villafranche, I came across a set of pumps in the road that ran through it… I had reached the very end of my range, and was relieved to have made it here without having to stop and use the 2 litres of extra fuel I was carrying… The pumps were part of a small store that sold souvenirs and a limited range of foodstuff, and I bought sandwich which the owner made up for me while I waited… Then it was back on the road again, and heading for Macon and Bourg-en-Bresse, where the road began to climb up into the mountains near the border with Switzerland.

I stopped at a large picnic spot alongside the highway, where trucks and other vehicles had also decided to take a break in the late afternoon sunshine, and sat on the grass verge watching families unpack baskets of food, take their dogs (and a white cat!!) for short walk, and then lie back on their blankets for a short snooze… All very peaceful and civilized…!! Try that where I come from and you will wake up to a missing car…!!

Before getting to my final destination, I crossed into and back out of Switzerland, wondering if I had the right co-ordinates set up on the GPS, but a short while later, saw a few of the road signs that Marie-Helene had told me to watch out for, and realized that I was not getting myself lost… We passed a series of small lakes, and then rode alongside the Rhone River for a short while, before turning north and heading down a winding country road that took us into St-Jean-de-Gonville…

The home of Chloe and Erwan, a renovated old building in the centre of the village... Outside may be old, but inside it is all very stylish...

I called Erwan to advise him that I had arrived, and could not find his home, and had parked in the grounds of a small church. In a few minutes he came walking down the road to meet me, and I discovered that I had stopped less than a hundred metres from his front door…!

Erwan and Chloe live in a renovated old building that has been converted into stylish apartments. From the balcony of their living room, you can see Mount Blanc rising up from behind a range of low mountains to the south.

The village is perched up on a series of hills that overlook Geneva, which is on the far side of a valley to the east… We spent our first evening together, enjoying a barbeque out on the patio, drinking wine and watching the full moon rising up into the night sky… We chatted about their own travel adventures, which had seen them travel through South America and Australia, before cutting their journey short and heading back to France… They would have liked to travel through South East Asia, but a family crisis back home prevented them from doing so… The urge to travel is still with them though, and I understood the wistful look on their faces when I spoke about my own future plans…

It was a great end to a long day, and the next day I was able to verify that my website had been sorted by Allan, and I could start writing a few posts again… It had been a while, and getting back into the habit of documenting my progress took a while… After my hosts had left for work, I spent the day updating the trip log and planning my next ride through Switzerland and France and into Luxembourg. Erwan was delighted that I had “put their village on the map” after I posted a brief message to let everyone know where I was…

The Croziflette waits for me to tuck in...!! A sumptuous meal out on the patio, watching the yellow full moon rise up over the Southern Alps...

Erwan and Chloe, my hosts in St-Jean-de-Gonville... The Big Fella rumbled with pleasure at Chloe's gentle touch...

We enjoyed another great evening and Chloe made a local dish called “Croziflette”, which has little blocks of pasta as a base, and is covered in large slices of cheese. She very kindly wrote down all the ingredients on a small piece of paper for me, which I have since lost !!! (Sorry Chloe…!!) I could not get enough of this stuff, and must have had at least three helpings during the course of the evening…

A Single Malt whisky eased the last of the tension I had from the ride the day before, and together with Jerome, a friend who had come to meet me and spend the night, we spent the evening chatting about our experiences on the road, and places that we had visited… Jerome had been up to Norway and mentioned that the Norwegians were not the friendliest nation on earth… This got my eyebrows up, as I was planning a very long ride through their country in the very near future…!! I hope his experience was an isolated one…!

We went to bed after midnight, and I lay thinking about the next 600 odd kilometres I would have to ride to get to Luxembourg… Another ten hours on the road lay ahead of me…

©GBWT 2010