The Heat Is Killing Me - Bikepacking France Episode 2
It's day two of my bike packing trip through France, and it's time to level up this adventure a bit I'm finally out of the worst part of the suburbs of Paris and get to encounter a varied set of roads and trails. Everything from gnarly single track to wonderfully designed bicycle highways. It's all part of the adventure I guess! And the sites along the road are nothing to sneeze at either. Castles, picturesque towns and lovely bike paths along the Seine river makes up the scenery on this day. This seems to be a fantastic day here in France! [Music] [Music] Good morning and welcome to a fantastic day here in France. I've totally forgotten
about the rant that I made last night. And looking forward to new opportunities here on this second day. I think this should be a lot better. I'm hopefully out of the worst traffic south of Paris. I've been looking at the map and I think we have some some great things to see today. We have a couple of castles coming up here and, yeah just
hoping for a really nice day out on the roads here in France. The sun is just coming over the mountain here and I've pretty much packed up everything. So let's hit the road [Music] This is some lovely sing here in the morning. Basically no cars at all. Maybe a car passing
me every 5 minutes or so. Kind of feels like I'm back home in Sweden again. I found this lovely road along the river. And there's a lot of trees shading me from the Sun as well All the rants from yesterday are completely gone and this seems to be a fantastic day here in France Well isn't this great?! Look, here in France they even have a bike lane in the roundabouts The cars actually give you some leeway, so they are quite respectful to cyclists here. I've never felt
worried going into one of these roundabouts. Usually they they take it pretty slow Maybe in Paris it was a bit crazy but out here in the countryside people are generally a lot more considerate And all of the sudden we've entered a single track section. I guess my Kona Unit X would have been a better weapon of choice on this stretch. On the map it seems like this is
going to continue for maybe in the next 10 km or so. Well it's all part of the adventure I guess Oh, sorry! Merci! So as you can probably see the road quality here on the la Scandiberique really varies a lot Sometimes you go through single track sections. And sometimes you have a wonderful road like this one that I'm on right now where they've pretty much taken half of the road and made it into a bike lane. So the cars have to drive really... But there aren't any cars actually. But
the few cars who are driving here have to take it very carefully and us cyclists are kings! I finally found a supermarket that's open, so I'm going to go in and get some breakfast. I'm really really hungry. I haven't basically eaten anything substantial since I ate lunch yesterday, at about 2:00 p.m. I'm just taking a little breakfast break here in a nice little park in the town of Melun. And look what I found when I was sitting there enjoying my breakfast In the park they have this white box stocked with old used books. So I'm guessing the plan is when you've read your old book. You can just
go down to the park leave it in the white box here and grab a new book. Pretty smart thing here France I've now made it to Samois-sur-Seine. It's considered one of the most picturesque small towns here in [Music] France [Music] We're approaching the first Chateau or Castle on this bike packing trip, Chateau Fountainblue And it's definitely one of the most impressive castles in all of France This is one of the places where you're not allowed to ride your bike. But you can walk it
along here in the park. And feels just as nice to take a stroll for a while and get off the saddle If you lucky when you're bik touring in France you might stumble upon one of these camping bivouac or aire, I think they're called. It's a sort of a free campground with water I'm going to fill up my water bottles now I have only couple of drops left in them. These are not that common, but if you find them it's a perfect place to pitch your tent at the end of the evening. They're usually located by a trail head to a hiking trail. I have to admit I'm quite beat right now. It's about 2:00 p.m. and we're approaching the warmest section of the day
I was so glad I found this cold water because I'm in desperate need for some energy now I think I have about 10 km left until the next major town. So I'm probably going to find something to eat there because I'm feel like I'm in a dip. I need some some energy in my body right now. I think I've done just over 50 km and the goal of today was to make
about 115. I have to admit I think I was underestimating this journey. I thought it was going to be super flat. Well it is super flat if you follow the the Eurovelo, and that is along the river. But I've made a few detours to go over to watch the castle and so on
Those times I find myself using komoot to get back on the track again. And usually that means having to go a bit off-road. I had to even make a bit of a hike and bike back there. That really takes on your on your energy sources. Let's make it to the next town and refill our our energy Oh, so nice to get into the shade again! I'm so beat right now I hardly can't even speak to you. according to my Garmin it's 35°C now, and I've just come into the shade here on the right side of the of the canal. And I just found this this sign of of the Eurovelo or La Scandiberique. That's the route that I'm following
In the morning we started... I believe it's up up here and I followed the Seine for a while Then sort of took a day tour towards Fountainblue and as sort of zig-zagged my way down to the route again. And I've now been following it for the last 30 km or so. I'm in a town called Chateau-Landon now and the new plan is to make it to a town or a city called Montargis That is about 20 km away from here, and that would make it about 105 km for the day I think that is a pretty reachable goal. I'm quite, I'm quite beat. I, I'm not really used to to the heat like this. Where I live up in Northern Sweden, we have a couple of these days per summer. But I'm certainly not used to cycling in heat like this for for many days to come
I think I'm going to take it a bit slower. I feel a bit of fatigue. Well, on to Montargis The road quality along the river was very varied. Sometimes you rode through uneven sections of hard packed gravel like this one. And 5 minutes later you encountered super smooth asphalt like this We're approaching Montargis and I'm just going to go through town And start making my way to the campground right away. I think it's
about 2 km away from the city center. It's up a little hill here. My legs are fine, I feel a lot more refreshed now than I did when I spoke to you about an hour ago [Music] so I made it to the campground in Montargis and it looks like the reception is closed until 7PM I'm actually here quite early for being me. It's only just before 6 p.m. now I interpreted it as you could go in and choose your own pitch. And then go to the reception at 7PM
So, that's what I'm going to do. Now I'm going to pitch my tent and maybe have a shower. I'm in desperate need of one. Just take a look at my legs after a day out on the trails here in France. I need to go back into town to find a supermarket and perhaps get a nice bottle of wine and some food And according to the price list over here I think this is one of these Camping Municipal campgrounds that are run by the local municipality. So they're usually quite a bit cheaper than your ordinary kind of family oriented campground. According to the price list I saw, the price for me, my bike and a tent, plus electricity was about €8. Which I'll take any day of the week! This is also what I meant when I said this is my type of Campground. When you get a nice picnic table
like this. It's basically unvaluable when you're on a bike. Because you can like spread everything out in the morning when you when you're packing up inside of your bike bags.Aand there's also an electricity hookup right here. And some nice drinking water as well. Oops! For those of you who haven't been camping a lot in in Europe. And by Europe I mean like France, Germany, Spain and Italy and so on. You need to have one of these like adapters for the electricity hookup. Because this
isn't your usual European socke. It's one made for RVs and Caravans and so on. So you need to plug this in and then you can put your cell phone, or power bank, or whatever you're charging in it I'm back from the super market now. And as you can see I'm pretty happy that I didn't take the shower before I went there. I'm just as sweaty as I was when I arrived here. When I go to the supermarket, both like for lunch and now in the evening. I bring along this one this since my my bikepacking bags are essentially full. So I need somewhere to store the stuff that I buy from
the supermarket. I have this collapsible backpack, as you can see here. When I collapse that down, it fits in the palm of my hands basically. It's perfect when you need some extra carrying capacity for just a brief moment. So let's have a look what I got at the supermarket.
Tonight's dinner consists of a big box of sushi and we have a glass of white wine to go with that. And I promise you I'm not going to have all of it. I think half of this will do for me. Otherwise I won't be able to go at 8AM like I hope I will tomorrow. And I also got some some potato chips. I really feel like I need to get some salt in me. I keep chugging down water but I kind of drain all the salt out of the body, so this is usually the trick when I'm out on a bikepacking trip. That I, not every night but every other night or so, I buy something salty. Either potato chips or some nuts or something
Just to get salt balance back together. And for those of you who wonder why I'm not wild camping, like I do when I'm home in Sweden or Norway. Well those countries are Sweden and Norway, and you have endless of possibilities to to pitch your tent anywhere. Plus here in France the campgrounds
are much closer to each other than up in Sweden. Where you can go for basically a day without seeing one. And I've also come to the point in my life where I figure that 8 Euros is worth having a shower having, a picnic bench by your tent and having access to running water and electricity and so on So for me it's not a tough choice. And I also think this improves the videos because I
have power right by here. I don't have to stress about finding power or bringing a solar panel, or stuff like that. I rather just pay those few Euros to to have access to power throughout the day. What I usually do is I bring two battery packs with me. So I'm usually charging one of them during the night, and charging all of my gear inside of the tent with the other one Believe me, it's a lot of things that needs to be charged during the night. My Garmin, batteries for both the GoPro and for this camera and my phone also needs a lot of batteries. Because I
use it mainly to to navigate throughout the day. So everything is charging all throughout night Cheers! It looks like I got the family size of sushi. But that's the problem when you're going to the supermarket after you've been cycling for a whole day. You're so hungry you could basically eat a horse It was either this one or a really small one . So I figured I would be able to eat most of this
One family box of sushi later and I'm pretty full! Well, I've got a lot of new subscribers here in the last couple of weeks. Or when you're seeing this maybe a month ago thanks to a very kind and wonderful person called Ryan van Duzer. Who I did a short but sweet bike packing trip with a couple of months ago. And for those of you who are new to the channel, you might have not seen all the trips
that I've done earlier. And I've actually done a trip here to France a couple of years ago, when I went to the Provence region. You can watch that whole series. I think it's about 10 episodes or so. By clicking the link up in the corner here. Otherwise, until next time have a good one!
2023-10-26 17:30
