Diary written by: Bernt Pölling-Vocke ( bernty@gmx.com )

One week on the road and more than 700 kilometers from Cologne it´s time for the first break of the day after roughly 30 kilometers. Cycling-wise the tour is getting better and better, the risk of rain seems to be decreasing day after day and only a handful of clouds move along the sky at the moment.

The landscape continued as it had stopped the day before. Even though we followed a very hilly and busy street for the first 7 kilometers today things were great due to the fact that we moved to a much flater street near the river in the valley after those 7 kilometers (which took us about 30 minutes with all the climbs). The last 23 kilometers until now only took about 65 minutes so we are picking up quiet some speed again and it´s also very comfortable to cycle on the almost car-free road down here at the river.

When one takes a look at our further route today it is also easy to see that the hilly terrain should end sometimes during the afternoon even though one real mountain-stage will take place before that happens. Quiet some observation-points are marked along the road we will take so it might be a lot of fun on a bike. More about that later...

2nd entry of the day:

...way later by the way, it´s 10:40 pm, Frank is taking a bath and reading a book and just unbelievable things happened between the last entry and this one. But let´s start right at the beginning:

The climb I was scared about many hours ago happened after 46.2 kilometers and just 1.2 kilometers after the point where Frank projected it. The fun started right after we passed through the city of Besancon, a very interesting looking town which would deserve more time than we invested into it. There are also some interesting looking castle-like buildings on a hill above the city but with more than enough hills on our regular route already we didn´t really care about a look. If you happen to travel through here by any other means of travel than a bike I would recommend at least a short visit.

The climb itself lasted for 6.8 kilometers and wasn´t even that tough, it just took a while to get up there and the bigger problem was the traffic as we had to take a main-road out of Besancon and up the mountain. Suprisingly nobody got killed by a truck or one of the hundreds of cars, fun is something different though. I also lost quiet some time on Frank during the climb, after 3.6 kilometers I already crawled 45 seconds behind him and I am sure that I lost 2-3 minutes until we reached the top. At least we had a nice descent of 9.8 kilometers afterwards where speeds of 30 kilometers per hour didn´t require a lot of physical work.

After a rather long break with cheese-baguettes (nice change to the baguettes with marmalade that we had for breakfast) we finally passed the last hills after 70 kilomters and had a really flat part of this planet right in front and around us, at least if you kept the area behind our back out of it. The wind also changed and we finally had some nice tailwinds and all of the sudden dumb thoughts circled through our heads. In the extremly dead town of Mont-Vaudrey (well, I didn´t know how dead towns can become and with the 10:40 pm-knowledge I would have considered Mont-Vaudrey a city that never sleeps) we talked about the possibility to move into striking distance of Lyon today. If we would manage to get close enough to get there by tomorrow evening we would have gained a whole day on our ambitious schedule and the thought was really inviting even though we started to feel the 80 kilometers we had cycled so far by now. It was also already 6 pm in addition to that and so the decision was a tough one but in the end I am the one to blame for our decision to continue. Louhans became our new destination, 60 kilometers were left to cycle.

Just 20 kilometers into the 60 kilometers we both started to feel that it might just not be worth all the stress and the tough cycling. There wasn´t really a reason to gain a day from our schedule, it was 7:30 already and we would still be nicely ahead of our schedule if we would just take the next hotel and make our lunch-stop at Lyon 2 days from now instead of trying to get there with all force by tomorrow evening.

So, let´s find the next hotel then but wait, what the hell is going on in this part of France? Almost nothing as it turned out. A few houses here and there along the road were the only signs of civilization to be found, dogs barked at us from everywhere and some wild dogs turned into a constant danger. I still had the dog which attacked Frank some days ago on my mind... One farmer also had to chase his cows across the street right in front of us and besides some small villages here and there nothing could be found besides some abandoned buildings where some Cujo-dog would probably kill us if we tried to stay the night.

After 125 kilometers we finally rolled into a larger village again. The sun also started to descent much faster than we had anticipated and luckily Frank quickly found the only hotel in town. To my suprise the owner told us that all rooms were booked, the parking lot was absolutly empty but maybe people still travel on horses in this part of the world, I don´t know. He offered us to stay the night in the living room for free, the only thing we would have  to pay for would have been breakfast. Frank was close to accepting it but when I asked him where he wanted to take a shower tonight he agreed with me that we could just as well cycle 11 more kilometers to the town of Bosjean. The owner of this hotel also told us that we wouldn´t have trouble finding a hotel there so we got back on our bikes and back on the street...

At 8:50 pm right during a nice sunset another spoke broke on Frank´s rear tire. I couldn´t imagine any worse timing than this but Frank was able to repair his bike pretty quick so that we still ended up with some daylight in Bosjean where we, well, were plain simly shocked. I didn´t expect any Holiday Inns or anything of that kind but I also didn´t expect an absolutly dead village with about 125 inhabitans who probably still consider it normal to marry within the family. A graveyard, a dog and a church were the only interesting things to be seen besides some farms, no cars and no pedestrians at all. Hey, you cycle through a lot of nothing until you have 125 down, then end up in front of a full hotel with no cars of potential customers around at all and then you get told that you will find something in the next town and end up in something that just reminds you of everything you passed through for the last two hours and where you will find nothing but a lot of nothing? This is getting fun but at least we were only 17 kilometers removed from Louhans by now which looked big enough on our maps to have at least some hotels, stores and maybe some inhabitans. Suprisingly we were both still in good shape after almost 140 kilometers, on the other side there weren´t too many choices so we just kept on going. The sun had already gone and here we had our first night-stage, off course I didn´t have any lights on my bike (didn´t take them with me; too heavy and we never cycled during the night before..., I know how smart that seems!) and Frank was rather night-blind.

Out of desperation we also rang some bells at some farms and asked the people if they knew of any hotels or hostels around. We also hoped that they would be nice enough to allow us to stay at their houses but everybody not only told us that there is nothing around but also that they didn´t need any strangers around their house. Actually nobody told us to get the f___ of his property but we also didn´t ask anybody directly, just tried to lead the conversation in the right direction by pointing out that it was almost impossible to see the own hand in front of the face and that we also didn´t have any good lights on our bikes (or none at all...).

And we kept on going, going and going. As it had gotten rather dark by now I also saw that each small village we passed through had a greatly illuminated public phone on it´s town-square or in front of it´s church (if too small for a square, nothing is too small for a small church and a large graveyard around here). I don´t know how many cows all the majors had to spend for those high-tech-facilities in their towns but it was easy to see that nothing else came close to the level of illumination of a public phonein any of those towns. Watch out for the first internet-cafes in 2050...

After we had cycled until 10:25 pm we finally arrived in Louhans with new records for total distance travelled (150+ kilometers) and total time travelled (7+ hours). I had also never cycled in the dark with my bike before and even though a lot of obstacles had been on our way we finally found a very nice hotel where we immedeatly crashed into our room after the local prostitute had given us some very accurate directions (I am not sure about the "prostitute" but I also can´t come up with any other reasons why a 16-year-old should stand around on a heavily used road around here at 10 pm (heavily used being the equivalent of two cars per hour). The hotel also had pretty tough rates with 350 F per night but after this stage I really wasn´t in the mood to search for any cheaper hotels anymore. We also arrived just in time as the hotel closed at 10:30 and if we wouldn´t have taken this room I am sure that we would have ended up in some abandoned building with some of those Cujos that run around everywhere.

Frank is snoring in the bed by now (11:40) and for me it´s baguette with marmelade for the 2nd time today. Baguette with marmelade won the day 2:1 vs baguette with cheese today, if our food would be as exciting as these stages right now, oh well, I just hope we will find some good food in Lyon again and we actually ended up in striking distance so I am already looking forward to that town tonight.

Shortly after our arrival I also had to promise Frank that we would never cycle such a stage again. He already said the same after our 130 kilometers on the 2nd day and I am very sure that I will hear that sentence a couple more times on this tour. Stay tuned and good night...

Chess statistics:        Bernt vs Frank         1:9