Blogs from Peronne, Picardy, France, Europe

Back in the saddle again!! After a delightful but moving day yesterday, it was back in the saddle again today for the ride from Peronne to Marquion. The day started with the transit of a couple of locks and then we offloaded the bikes and headed upstream along the Canal du Nord, pausing briefly on a bridge to take photos of Elodie as she passed beneath us. The riding today was at a very pleasant pace and the weather was kind, with light winds and scattered cloud. Temperature of around 15C. We rode through picturesque village after picturesque village. Very quiet as it was Sunday. Henry found a café open for morning tea and we stopped in a lovely picnic location in Moeuvres for lunch. We made such good time that we arrived at Marquion at ... read more

A good drive up from the Loire today on a route we’ve never used before. Pretty directly North avoiding motorways and going through some nice towns and villages along the way and round the ring roads of others where the town centres looked a bit inaccessible to Tandy. Some towns looked worth a visit but those were generally the ones we had to drive round rather than through. Through the extensive forest of Fontainebleu then due north until we picked up the N104, the 3rd outer ringroad of Paris. That one was a challenge, manic but the traffic did keep moving. We did try to stop twice at services and followed the caravan signs for parking but oddly there was nowhere to park and we found ourselves back out on the road again. Quite a relief ... read more

Suzy was on the last legs of her journey from Verdun and Peronne. It was an uneventful journey with really nothing to report. We found our campsite the Port de Plaisance quite easily although the towns around it were strangely empty. We felt as if we were in another world and that all the population had disappeared. I kept thinking "Beam me up Scotty" as everywhere were like ghost towns. As usual the reception was closed until later that afternoon. This seems the norm in some campsites. A notice was pinned up to say pick your spot and come back later to pay. Our plot was quite a small one but we chose it because it was fairly dry and we were able to park up without fear of getting stuck in the wet and mud ... read more

Today is a rest day. After six days of riding I think everyone is ready for a day out of the saddle?! Breakfast was at 8.00am as usual, but we then had about an hour to finish getting ready to leave the barge rather than the half an hour we have been getting between finishing breakfast and heading off on our bikes. We were due to be picked up for our tour of the Somme battlefields at 9.30am. We wandered up to the bridge over the canal at about 9.15am and Brian arrived in the minivan at about 9.20am. We headed first to the Australian National Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux. The memorial is an imposing white stone monument that was unveiled on 22 July 1938 by King George VI. It bears the names of 11,000 Australian soldiers ... read more