Day 28 : Heading Ouest

A comfy night’s rest and up earlyish. Sent on my way with a couple of organic cereal bars and a fruit juice. And borrowed their track pump to get my tyres up to ‘hard boiled’.

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Ai, 50% of my fab hosting team

Besançon is a really interesting town, so I spent a bit of time wandering around. I started by finding a cafe to have a small coffee at the counter, local style!

They’ve only very recently introduced trams. Here’s one going past the cafe I was at.

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One of the new trams. The previous day someone had got hit by one of them.

It has a citadel at the top of the town.

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The citadel is listed as a UNESCO world heritage site

Film buffs may recognise the town as being the birthplace of the Lumière brothers. In fact they were born in this house:

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Birthplace of the Lumière brothers

And just half a century earlier, 20 meters away on the other side of the square, Victor Hugo was born in this house:

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Birthplace of the excellent Victor Hugo

It’s a large and interesting town. I reckon I could spend some holiday time here very happily. I’d never heard of it before and it’s a great discovery for me.

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A tiny part of Besançon

Then back onto the river path. I had lunch at a small village restaurant. Pâté starter, fish in white sauce with ratatouille and rice, then a cheese course. Served with a small carafe of wine and a bottle of chilled water for €13.

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Another river picture. Nice though, ain’t it..

I cycled on in very nice weather until I felt I’d done enough miles and spotted a campsite.

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No doubting which swan is in charge here

The campsite was pretty basic again – a place to pitch my tent, and use of the shower block and outdoor sinks. Although this one had toilet seats and toilet paper in the cubicle, which was a nice touch..

I got attacked by mosquitoes whilst bending all my tent pegs trying to get more than an inch of peg in the ground before hitting rock. Some mossies paid attention to the Jungle Formula repellant, the others were sadly terminated upon detection.

For dinner I cooked the mozzarella ravioli that had been sitting in my bag for a day. Early night, but due to a covers band playing an outdoor gig 500m away along the river I didn’t get to sleep until late. The bit at the end of Roxanne which repeats ‘put on the red light’ was very amusing as the timing was completely off. There wasn’t any clapping or cheering at the end of any of the songs. More practice perhaps.

Saw a big snake today. Ran away before I could take a pic, soz!

And I’m heading west to the Atlantic coast, because, why not?

Besançon to Saint-Usage, 97 km. Total so far = 2,477 km.

5 thoughts on “Day 28 : Heading Ouest”

  1. Cet histoire très bon et très intéressante et amusante. Qui a couru, tu ou la serpente J’essai d’ecrit en français parce que c’est bon pour mois et peut être bon pour tu. Je sens que tu n’as pas un problème avec la langue. J’ai suivi votre route et c’est intéressant de détermine ou tu irai le prochain fois. Je pense que ma française n’est pas très bon mais j’espère que tu comprends. A bientôt. D

    Reply
  2. Isn’t it irritating when you can see the campsite just across the river but have to ride two miles or more to get to it! I was there in the summer with my orange Brompton.

    Reply
    • Exactly that, and today the EV6 route took me over a km in the opposite direction to cross a bridge. It’s good exercise at least 🙂

      Reply

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