Biking Day 17

• Length ridden: 135 km
• Ascent: 400 meters, mostly flat
• Rating: 7.5 out of 10 - nice day, some deduction for the dull area around Paris
• Highlights: French hospitality (the sandwich in the morning, then a bottle of water and later a wine - with the possibility of camping out)
• Lowlight: The weather was not the nicest in the afternoon
• Map of the day

It was a good night's sleep that I had and at 7:30, a pleasant breakfast was waiting for me. The lady prepared a sandwich for my trip and gave me a kiss on the cheek when I left. I also bid farewell to the puppets on the corridor.

By 8 am, I was now on the road, looking forward to a nice day ahead. The first stop was in Lorris, a town with a wonderful church.

Something weird happened when I left. There was a group of workers renovating the facade and the roof of the church. They were scouting the roof of the church using a drone, looking at the view by a camera. I asked the one not steering the drone, the "pilot" looked up at me and in that moment, the drone got caught in the cross o the roof. I felt quite guilty, apologized for having disrupted them, they laughed it off, saying it was not my fault.

Well, I was not expelled out of town, not just yet. Next to the church, there was a market full in swing and similar to Châtillon, there was a covered market hall.

An hour or so later, I got to Bellegarde (this one is in the Department of Loiret, there are apparently 8 other Bellegarde's in France). The small town had an impressive castle (which was being renovated, but here I did not cause any disasters) and a church from the 12th century. Very impressive - especially taking the size of the town (roughly 1,500 inhabitants) into consideration - but somehow typical ofFrance.

Not long thereafter, I got to yet another chateau, called Castle Montliard, from the 16th century. It is not very touristy, as I am writing this blog, I tried finding information in English and did not find any.

In Boiscommun there was yet another highlight, an impressive church of Notre Dame.

The houses were wonderful - and so many flowers!

The next castle was at Saint-Michel (wow, this will be hard to Google, I assume...yes, I was right, all I could find was a one-liner). So I am pasting just one photo.

While the previous places I had visited were not too touristy, the next destination I got to was definitively a more visited one - and I, in addition to Victor Hugo, who admired this place, can understand why...called Yèvra-le-Chatel. A castle from the 13th century, in addition to ruins of a gothic church, were to be seen, flanked by narrow cobblestone medieval streets. Wow!

I got later to Pithiviers, with yet another impressive church and a nice, but empty, downtown.

Around 6:30, I was done by Burgundy and entered the region Ile-de-France, getting close to Paris. The opening ceremony of the Olympics was scheduled for the following day and I had no intention of getting to the French capital. I imagined it would be nearly impossible to ride freely - and sure, a day or two later I met a British biker who complained it took him multiple hours to get out of the city.

Now I was riding on small roads, with lots of agricultural activity going on - it was harvest time. This did not turn out to be my favorite part of the trip, but then I have seen so much beauty until then - and would see a lot to come - so I had no reason to complain.

My appreciation of the French people increased a notch or two when the following little story happened. Somewhere around 7 pm, I sat down at a bus stop to take a rest and was talking on my cellphone my young friend Oskar, who had just returned to Austria after half a year from Chile. An older lady came, she greeted me, I greeted back and she was gone. About three minutes later, she re-appeared with a large bottle of cold mineral water in her hand - she smiled, handed it to me and was gone...how very nice, merci beaucoup, Madame!

The last larger town was apparently Angerville (quite an interesting name...), it was there that I had some dinner at a McDo and took a photo of the church Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Eutrope, abbreviated as SPESE.

I left around 8 pm and still was up for riding. It was now really very small roads, practically empty - and soon I started looking for a place to wild camp, no hotels or campsites being in the vicinity. The harvest was still going on, at times all the grain dust from the tractors was blown in my face. I thought it would be better to find a roof above my head and Google Maps indicated a place to stay in a small village called Chatignonville. I got to a "gite" (French B&B) that was a dozen or so kilometers away, however, it was closed and the phone was not answered either. Opposite was a pretty stone house with some people in the courtyard and a nice green area next to the house. I rang the bell (reference to the Bible again) and the door was opened, explained my situation to the person who I later found out was called Bernard, with Spanish origin. He was a motorcyclist and told me of course I could pitch my tent next to the house, which was also protected by a large tree. He offered me a glass of wine and we chatted for a while before I took a shower.

That day, I rode around 135 kilometers, so it felt good to crawl into my sleeping bag.