Laon

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Last night's dinner was, as predicted, pleasant enough but overpriced. The cheeseboard was, however, sensational. We did get four courses for the money though neither of us could finish the crème brulee.

Today was the first cool and not very sunny ride since we left the UK back in early June. It was cool enough to wear gloves, the first time I have worn riding gloves since Italy on the way out. I have learnt that after almost 4 weeks of sweating into leathers that any clothes worn under them are no longer fit for wearing afterwards. I am going to need to find a way of getting the leathers smelling like leather again and not of four weeks of stale sweat. Hilary's jacket, on the other hand, no longer smells musty - it's been worn open most of the time (but closed today).

We did not ride very far, as far as Laon. It was pretty much picked by the pin in a map method, somewhere in about the area we wanted to end up in. Laon turned out to be a small rather well preserved medieval walled town on a hill. Given where it is (northeast France), the many battlefields and war cemeteries nearby, and the wars which have been fought through this part of Europe, it is nice to find somewhere which had not been flattened. We took some pictures. The cathedral has cows on it. Apparently it also has rhinoceros and hippopotamus but the cows are easier to recognise. It is a fine piece of gothic architecture.

It is evening now, the day has warmed up from this morning. No doubt there will be some great food and decent wine. We have found a restaurant that has an interesting menu. I plan to have a few beers first.

The GPS on my phone is turning out to really useful, more so here since we planned for a specific hotel which I then needed to find. The only problem with the GPS through Google Maps is it eats battery, I may look at alternative software for the future. We have a planned hotel and destination for tomorrow, but this is a place where I will not need GPS to find.

Dinner, by the way, was good - half the price of yesterday though they bought us cider when we ordered wine and every course had the same salad. French flat cider is rather nice. The cheese flan was infinitely superior to the one we had yesterday.

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