Day 4 – Chalon en Champagne – Dijon
193km
Great sleep, occasionally waking up to a starry sky and the odd satellite. I was in good spirits but I knew straight away the day was going to be tough when I could hear and see the tops of the trees to the south of me being buffeted by the wind. Sure enough, every time I emerged from behind any hedges lining the road, I was hit by a wobble inducing wind. I cracked on until I found myself on a high plateau overlooking the vast fields of wheat and sunflowers that went on as far as the eye could see, with the occasional copse or tractor providing the only sense of scale. Of course being on a plateau meant that I was exposed to every bit of wind that, now, warmed by the sun was flowing past my mouth and stripping out every bit of moisture in a matter of seconds. A good day for drying. Any attempt to keep my mouth shut and avoid ‘dry mouth’ resulted in panting about 30 seconds later.
I stopped off at a supermarket in Brienne le chateau about 25 miles into the day and by the time I came out the weather had transformed and it was cloudy and chilly. I sat under a tree and had first lunch of the day before it started drizzling. The next hour went something like this.
“Its raining but it’ll probably stop soon, I won’t bother putting my jacket on”
Rain gets biblical
“OK it really means it. Better put jacket on”
Rain stops
“I’m too hot. Jacket is coming off”
…and repeat… about 10 times.
Eventually the clouds cleared and I was under blue skies again. Riding through picturesque villages nestled in between small hills. I was grateful not to be exposed to the headwind for the first time for the day. As I rode through Dolancourt I could hear the screams of people at the nearby theme park called Nigoland, but I couldn’t see any sign of it, which was mildly disturbing.
About sixty miles in I stopped for lunch on a hay bale and sent a picture along with my location to the guys back home. I was way ahead of my myself already. Getting to Dijon today would be more or less a day earlier than I assumed. I rode through many more small villages until I got to one and saw a huge group of people standing around. Kind of weird I thought….before realising it was a funeral. I guess when a community is that small, everyone turns out for such occasions. It would explain why most people were in tracksuit bottoms. Now, I had a dilemma. Do I say bonjour to the attenders? “good day” seems like an odd thing to say In these circumstances….I opted for a solemn nod. I got a few back.
Minutes later just when the wind was really starting to get on my nerves, I spotted a bird hovering in the field next to me, head twitching around on the hunt. It’s one of the moments you hope to remember forever but probably will not. Shortly after this I found myself on a rural road that wound along a valley not dissimilar to the foothills in Wales and I was absolutely loving it despite not being entirely sure it was the right way. It wasn’t on my map, the garmin had froze so was useless and my phone had no signal. I carried on regardless knowing south was all that mattered. It was some of my favourite riding ever, with lots of twist and turns through trees, and eventually after ascending a brutish hill from a small village, I emerged back onto the road that I was supposed to be on, with an awesome view of fields with golden hay bales all around. The change in landscape mile after mile seems bizarre. Constantly switching between flat expanses of fields to hilly twisting roads through forests. Although I supposed it’s logical that people would have made the flat bits into farmland.
As I progress towards Dijon I could see the skyline become forested again and somewhat hilly. Is this the start of the big Jura stuff? Nope. I got an unexpected and awesome surprise just before Dijon, when the long straight forested road suddenly turned into a series of fast downhill straights linked with surprisingly tight corners. This is what I expected the mountains to be like, not a random road in mid France! At the bottom of this exciting descent I turn to the east and for the first time in the day had a tailwind, which I took full advantage of to get to the nearest town for supplies before heading south again towards Dijon and found a nearby field to stay the night, with another beautiful sunset.
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