Silver Wheel Trek: On the road with the bikes.

First day turned into 95 kilometres due to a wrong turn and some dubious directions from Google maps. We spent a lot of time in farmers fields running over roman paving stones and sometimes just in the fields. Some of the google roads looked like they were made from broken glass but we made it over with out a flat. All the towns have been abandoned by their residents due to summer vacation. You can't buy a bottle of water in a closed convenience store. We managed anyway and when we got to the wrong end of the wrong turn road we got a pile of food and water and directions. Pierrefonds is a nice looking town with a lake, a chateau, hills, and a campground with friendly people.

This is us just about to leave. A Japanese tourist took our picture for us and lots of pictures of us for himself, maybe were famous e in Japan.

This is a road that google found that looked about a thousand years old. It was hard on the butt.

Here is a load of baguettes and there is some water on the other side.

Here's Al relaxing with a bottle of Gatorade because it was 36 degrees at times on the road.

Second day was 80 km as planed. Stupid plan! We ran out of water and had to beg for some in another ghost town. We were still thirsty from the day before when we were riding in 37 degree temperatures under the blazing sun. The roads are not as flat as the appear from outer space via google maps. We saw a few cyclists on the road and campground and met a very friendly guy next to our site who was cycling solo.

For the most part it was cloudy and cooler and it help following the paper map. We only rode for 7 hours. We are having us a time!

A church

Yoly zooming down the road.

Yoly on the road beside a war memorial. There are starting to be more and more memorials as we go north.

Third day rained cats and dogs all day. Never rode in that much rain before. In the end we and everything we had was wet. We were still smiling though. We only made it to Cambrai and decided to spend an extra day drying out. We also looked around Cambrai and found it to be a charming town. It looks like the stampede is coming to town but they are setting up midway rides on the side walks and narrow streets. There is no parking anywhere in France but some how they pull it off. We made friends with the fruit vendor and he gave Yoly free fruits both times we went. We bought a new stove and gave away the one we bought in Australia because it is too hard to find gas for it.