Day 3 – St Quentin – Chalon en Champagne
150km
I slept loads and yet my eyes still feel like I’ve spent a night on the lash. Maybe it was those beers in Saint Quentin. I chowed down the remainder of cherry crumble and got on my way. It didn’t take too long to cover the flat 20 miles to Laon and I fortunately found the supermarket minutes before it shut early as it was Sunday. Bloody French. Laon has an old part that sits atop a hill in the centre of the city with the cathedral towering above it all, so I made haste up the convoluted hill and spent a little time wandering around the cobbled streets before heading on my way towards Reims which took me over a small set of hills before coming completely flat again for the next 20 miles to the outskirts of the city.
Just outside Reims it started drizzling so I tucked down under the wheel arch of an armoured car at an information point and ate a baguette along with my new find, camembert triangles!! Genius. Into Reims and to the Cathedral, with its impressive twin bell towers rising high above the square and an intricately detailed statues adorning the rest of the façade. Then it pissed down. Time to batten down the hatches properly. Waterproof trousers!!! I rode on in the rain, through champagne country, past the vineyards and dodging the odd bunch of grapes that seemed to randomly have found the road. Mile after mile ticked pass in the rain and I began to wonder if I was in for one of one of the things I feared the most. Having to find a spot to sleep and get in a bivvy bag whilst it was still raining. Surprisingly the day went really quickly and the landscape didn’t really change all that much.
As it happened the rain let up by the time I was at Chalon en Champagne and I sat in the town square watching some sort of French heavy folk band jigging away whilst supping on an espresso and eating a chocolate cake. It was time to find somewhere to stay so I headed on my way before quickly realising that a canal I had spied whilst route planning was right there!!! A perfectly flat, perfectly straight tarmac path took me a couple of miles alongside the intensely coloured blue/green canal water under a couple of bridges. I considered being a troll for the night by sleeping under a bridge. Guaranteed dryness but also the risk of being a nasty surprise to joggers! In the end I found a spot somewhere near an old lock and under a tree. Perfect.