For Day 6 click here.
After 3 big days in a row I was looking forward to an easy day, billed as my rest day with only 80km. My sister asked me when my rest day would be and was taken a bit aback when I said this was it. Understandably.
Mentally this day was harder than it should have been on paper. I was hoping for a relaxed day and failed to be relaxed although I did have a latish start setting off from Dun sur Meuse at 9:30 am slowly riding up the Meuse and along the Meuse Canal, mostly along the canal actually as the canal has the towpath.
There are a lot of World War 1 memorials in this area and the day’s halfway point was the town of Verdun which is known for the longest Battle of the first World War which lasted from February to December 1916 and cost over 300000 lives.
I had originally planned to stay in Verdun for the night but lengthened the plan for my bike ride by a day and changed the towns I was staying int to Dun and St Mihiel. The selection of my overnight stops may look very random with a list of completely unknown towns. They came together as follows:
– Places where I could book something to stay
– Places where I hopefully could find something to eat
– Places that roughly fitted into my planned daily mileage which was somewhere between 110-150 km mostly
Later on there were 2 fixtures in the plan that made this tricky. I was staying with friends at the end of day 9 and day 11 which put a fix on mileage getting to those to an extent and in part led to me not being able to include a complete rest day.
With today being an easy day, I also seemed to stop a lot, for a rest here, a snack there. When I got to Verdun I had a bimble up to the cathedral before sitting in a restaurant by the river for a nice extended lunchbreak. It was all rather chilled.
For it being a short day though I was being frustrated by the day’s headwind, the flatness of the day (no freewheeling) and for the first time I really noticed how much my hands hurt from putting pressure on the same spot constantly and the same could be said for my bum.
Later that day I made a bit of a change to my saddle which did seem to make a difference for the rest of my ride and from that day on I wore both pairs of fingerless gloves I had with me for extra padding. It helped a bit. (My hands have still not fully recovered after nearly a month though but they are getting there).
Scenery wise there was nothing really exciting but it was a nice day weatherwise. Verdun was nice and I slowly rode down to Saint Mihiel. Accommodation for the night would be the station hotel (no station there anymore but I was riding along the disused railway line to get there).
The hotel added to the not very excitingness of the day: there was no one at reception except for a pile of keys and a list with room numbers and names and a note to take your key and find your room. I’d read something before booking about bike storage but couldn’t find it anymore and as there was no one to ask the bike came to my room with me.
The next morning, there was no reception staff either, I only saw a couple of other guests and the cleaner. All a bit odd.
The town was having there town fete but was nearing the end of that as I wandered in around 4:30pm so there wasn’t really anywhere proper to get a drink or something to eat adding to my frustration for the day. I finally found somewhere and dinner was an uninspiring pizza but with it being Sunday evening numerous restaurants weren’t going to be open at all so I was quite happy for the pizzeria being open.
So my relaxing day seemed all but that, but at least I was another 80k further towards my goal. Onto Day 8.
Planned Distance: 82.3 km
Actual Distance: 85.3 km
Trip Distance: 881.89km
Ascent for the day: 460m
Ascent for the trip: 6971m
Riding time: 4:40:53 hrs
Riding time for the trip: 44:05 hrs
