This morning was very cloudy and it felt like it was about to rain at any time. With a short 50kms to Noyon, I decided to enjoy the morning and relax
Municipal campgrounds in France are cheap and the facilities are usually really good. This one was no exception. I charged up my phone in the common room while I made some breakfast.
I was underway by 10am and straight into a hill out of town. For the uphill part, there were two lanes and very little traffic, but at the top, the road narrowed and plenty of trucks rumbled past. This was the only road I could take for the first seven kms and I hated it.
Komoot insisted I continue but pretty soon, I came to a turnoff and worked out a less trafficked way. Like yesterday, it was farmland and villages most of the way and another enjoyable day ensued.
I climbed the steep hill to a ruined (in the first world war) chateau at Coucy le Chateau Auffrique. It was the middle of the day and very hot, so I had a look around and continued. There was a supermarket near the bottom of the great downhill but as usually happens, an exhilarating downhill completely wipes my memory. By the time I got to the bottom, I’d forgotten about the supermarket and food and lunch and everything else.
Reality dawned on me a few hundred metres further on so I turned back and found the local Carrefour. I ate a sandwich in the shade over the road and headed off again.
I was heading into territory made famous in the first world war, and two days later at the Australian War Memorial outside Villers Bretonneux, I saw mention of a number of the places I rode through today.
Things were pretty easy and I was unsure as to what to expect in Noyon, but it’s another nice place that I would never have thought to visit. There’s a huge old church as well as some ruins of the previous one, a nice pedestrian area, the usual cobbles – in short, plenty of nice old stuff 😁
