Dieppe to Nice - Part One

Friday 13th August 2010

Day one of my trip to France. I arrived at Dieppe Harbour at around 4.30am having had 4 hours’ sleep. One of the problems of ferries is they get you up out of your seat very quickly from your sleep to disembarkment and you have to leave.
So I found myself in Dieppe in the early hours of the morning having to start my bike ride. It didn’t seem like it was going to be a long day but I think I may have miscalculated the number of kms that I had to do. Although at the time the ride felt fine.

The weather was quite warm in Dieppe but as I progressed through the ride and I went towards Arques La Bataille I could feel it getting colder and for quite a while I felt quite cool, especially as there was a morning mist that was hanging over Normandy for a large part of the morning.

So I sailed through the places I’d been to on previous occasions like Arques La Bataille, St Saens and Buchy.
At Buchy I stopped for a coffee where the man was looking at me quite strangely. Maybe he wasn’t used to seeing cyclists at 8am all in full gear asking for coffee!

I continued on and went to the favourite part of my ride for the day at Vascoeuil, in the Andelle region. It was also the gateway to the Forest of Lyons, with the main town being Lyons-La-Foret.
I would really recommend this area. It’s very pretty with lots of forest around. You could probably even do mountain biking in this region.
Lyons-La-Foret is an old medieval touristic town and very picturesque. I took quite a few pictures there.

I then went on and did an alternative route to Gisors, which I was glad about as it was a more scenic route than what I’d originally planned. I went through Morgny, Longchamps, Heudicort, and St Denis le Frement and then finally into Gisors.
I arrived at Gisors a little bit later than I’d anticipated. I’d expected to get there around 11 or 11.30 but I got there just after midday and I was expecting to get on a train from Gisors to Paris almost immediately or within half an hour, but to my surprise they said that there are no trains because in the middle of the day they only do replacement buses and they’d be happy to take my bicycle. That was good news, however the bad news was that the next replacement bus would not be until quarter to two, meaning I’d have to hang around Gisors for more than an hour and a half before I could get on the replacement bus!
So I used the time to have a lunch in the main square, which is quite nice. But it’s not quite as picturesque as the other place I’d considered going to, which was Les Andelys.

So I got on the bus at 1.45pm to go to a place that I assumed was quite close by. It was a place called Boissy L’aillerie which I thought was a 20 minute bus ride away. In fact it took over an hour to get to. It was a torturous journey and I was feeling really tired and the effects of a lack of sleep began to catch up with me. In fact I could barely stay awake.
Finally we arrived at Boissy train station. I assumed this really isn’t far from Paris so should probably just take half an hour to get to. In fact it took over an hour to reach Gare St Lazare.

By the time I arrived in Paris I wasn’t too pleased. I’d originally thought I’d arrive in Paris at around lunchtime, but in fact it was after 4pm when I arrived into Gare St Lazare.

It was a quick ride across Paris through the Friday afternoon traffic to reach the Youth Hostel, which I somehow managed to find, even though the last time I was there had been quite a while ago.
Paris as usual was very picturesque, though it was very crowded. For some reason I’d always thought August was a quieter month. Maybe it’s quieter in the residential areas, but in Chatelet it was absolutely heaving with the world and his wife.
Nevertheless it was still good to be there. I managed to get in some rest at the youth hostel so tomorrow I’ll get on with the second part of my trip – which is to reach Dijon.


Saturday 14th August

I am now in the Formule 1 hotel at Dijon, which is just outside Dijon. It’s on the North side near an area known as Le Toison d’Or. I must admit that although I didn’t get lost looking for it I was surprised how much further out of town it was. So as it happens I haven’t been to Dijon town centre yet. I don’t know what it looks like, but I have seen the main Centre Commercial shopping centre of Le Toison d’Or – not really much of a tourist attraction but I suppose it’s useful to know.

I can’t say what my impression of Dijon is because I just haven’t seen enough of the city. It would be good if I could get abit of time to ride around the central area and get an impression.
I understand that the main landmark in the centre of Dijon is the Palais des Duques so I will see if I can get a photo of that before catching my train tomorrow. I’ll see how things go tomorrow in terms of the weather.

The forecast for tomorrow is not good. It seems to be showing rain for practically most of the day and in fact there are certain areas where they have a weather warning for rain and this area is included in that.
Ironically this area has also been subject of a hosepipe ban as they’ve hardly had any rain all summer. So it’s just typical that the day I arrive from England I bring lots of rain with me!

Things today were not as straight forward as they could have been – just like yesterday.
Again it was down to the trains. I arrived at Gare de Bercy this morning only to find that there is a train strike on the Burgundy regional trains so the 10.20am that I was meant to get to Auxerre was cancelled and after looking at different options I decided to catch the 13.20 to Montbard.
There was a train at 11.24 which I could have got to Montbard but that was a TGV which would have cost 50 euros and I just wasn’t ready to pay that much so I chose to wait two or three hours and get a train that was going to the same place at half the price.

So the consequence of that was that I arrived at my destination at around quarter to four and that was when I started my ride. First of all I didn’t actually stop at Montbard in the end because I realised that that was going to be a along way to ride – almost 50 miles to ride starting at 4pm, which I didn’t want to do. So I stayed on the train to Laumieres-Alesia.

After a lot of faffing I set off riding from Laumieres.
There were signs to get up to a place called Alesia. I think it was the Palais of Alesia which was on a hill. It looked really nice – a medieval town. I wasn’t ready to ride up there and I felt that time was going so I just stayed in the valley and admired it from where I was!
I would recommend it to those who have time to get up there – perhaps I’ll visit it if I’m here on another occasion.

I must admit that I was using a smaller scale and the problem with that is that a lot of the place names mentioned on the sign boards were not names I had on my map. There were probably also roads missing from the map too. So a lot of the time I wasn’t sure where I was going.

In the future I’ll get a 1:25000 map for this area just to check out what I actually did.
I got to Dijon ok and I did the mileage which I was expecting, but a lot of the towns I passed through I just didn’t expect to see them and I couldn’t locate them on my map.

One thing about this ride was it was lumpier than I’d expected and it’s probably a good warm up for going into the Alps. There were a lot of ups and downs. There wasn’t much flat at all and there even roads that were alpine in style with lots of switchbacks that went on for maybe a mile or so with say 8% or 10% gradients in and there were some huge descents which made it quite interesting.
It was a good sporting ride.

It’s a shame that I was riding it so late in the evening and everything was late. So although I got up early this morning my day has finished late because of the issues with the train.

The plan for tomorrow is to go to Bourg en Bresse and hopefully things will be more straight forward and the weather won’t be too bad.

Foot note: The notable sites of today

In Paris, because I had a couple more hours to spend there than I had planned I actually took photos of Bastille.
I must admit that in all the times I’ve been to Bastille I don’t think I’ve ever approached it from the Avenue Daumesnil side, and approaching it from that side you get a full view of the Bastille column and I was able to take some good photos, especially as it was a nice sunny day and I got some very clear photos of the column.
I’m looking forward to uploading those photos. I’d recommend when taking photos of Bastille to look at it from that section rather than the normal angle that I look at it from which is rue du Faubourg St Antoine or Rue St Antoine when coming from Le Marais.

The other thing I’d recommend in Paris is the Promenade Plantee which goes above the Viaduc des Arts, another nice place. It gives a very good view of what’s going on in the streets below. It’s very pretty.
There are even free toilets which are in good condition and clean!

There is also the Jardin de Reuilly which for me was a nice place to be especially because it was an area where I had lived many years ago, near Montgallet Metro station and in those days it was quite run down with not a lot going on.
In fact it’s all been refurbished with nice gardens, a swimming pool and local shops. It’s just been transformed into something quite picturesque.

As for the ride into Dijon I think the medieval town of Alesia would be a good place to visit.

I also got a nice view of a town I passed through called Seine sur Abbaye. That was pretty. The town itself wasn’t touristic but the nice thing about it was the view from the top of the hill and you can look down and see the village right below.
I’ve seen that at times when riding in the alpine regions of Italy but I haven’t seen it so much in France and that actually looked good.