Day 51- Amiens to Arras

The last couple of nights at Amiens I have been sleeping on the couch which is okay but it makes for broken sleep rather than a full night of sleeping. Don’t get me wrong as we do take it in turns to sleep in less than ideal situations such as on the couch, on the top bunk or on the floor with the air mattress. I must admit so far we have done pretty well with booking 3 beds in a hotel or hostel so the less than ideal situation has only occurred occasionally.

So to today…. Up early again at 5.30 am and after packing and breakfast we made our way to the Amiens train station where we could have coffee and a croissant ahead of starting the ride.

Today I was navigating so I needed to have my wits about for the day.

The ride out of Amiens started with light showers then a heavy downpour which lasted for about half an hour. We continued on in the rain as the weather forecast had the rain easing by mid morning. Despite the rain we made good time….

The country was rolling hills with crop farming. In the pictures you will see a crop which has just been harvested but it was lying down in the sun to dry the seeds…. I don’t know what this is???

We came across a war cemetery on our route which was interesting as it contained the graves of about 80 persons who died in WW1.

The ride was punctuated by 2 shortish periods where we were on unmade roads… both were interesting as they started out with a firm surface but quickly deteriorated into a muddy bog heap! It made for interesting riding and walking the bikes. On both occasions the wet weather had made the surface very muddy and it caked up all over the bike wheels and gears! Yuck!!!

After reaching the end of each unmade road we managed to find a local resident/s to loan us a hose to clean out bikes. We did try cleaning them in the puddles with some success but the hoses worked a treat!

In both cases the locals were very helpful and were very keen to know what we were doing and our travel plans. They were thoroughly impressed with the distance we had covered so far and what our plans were for the remaining time of our trip!

We managed to find a cafe at the 40 km mark which was ideal for lunch. I had a cheese and ham baguette with a cool drink.

The last part of our journey was on a rail trail and bike path which made the trip into Arras pretty easy.

We arrived at the Premier Classe hotel at about 3.15 pm which was quite good for a 70 km ride. It was interesting to note that we climbed over 400 metres over the day when there was only 1 classified climb. The rolling hills certainly make the climbing add up.

The weather today was very good for riding despite the morning rain. For most of the ride the temperature was in the mid twenties.

The

Pictures today are:

The route

The war cemetery we visited by chance

Interesting crop here…. I don’t know what it is but we saw a lot of it

An interesting name for a town!!!

The first family that helped us wash the bikes

The second family that helped us washing the bikes….

Home for the night….Premier Classe! It is a bit above the Formula 1 chain of hotels