Day 3 Amiens to Soissons

At least it isn’t raining I thought as I set off from Amiens. The sun finally made an appearance once I had arrived at Soissons. The first part of the route was through familiar rural France. Little villages with their large unused churches and the well used “salles de fetes” and tractors everywhere.

After a coffee stop at Roye (pronounced roi) a pretty touristy town the landscape gave way to large rolling wheat fields.

The going was mostly flat and I was making good time arriving in Noyon at 12.30. I decided that since the temperature had crept up to a balmy 20C I would risk bread and cheese in the market square. Noyon was a very attractive old town with narrow streets most of which were one way. Cyclists can mostly ignore these restrictions and go straight to where you want to go.

Less than 20 miles to go I’d be there far too soon! Fortunately the map doesn’t show the hills. I spent longer in granny gear mode than coasting along as I had all morning. After Blerancourt it just went up and up. But what goes up must keep going up or so it appeared. I was soon out of water and no villages in sight. fortunately a lovely old couple working in their garden were happy to "remplir mes bidons" Merci.

Soissons is a lovely city. (it has a cathedral) It is built on either side of Aisne with walkways and watersports right in the centre. The Cathedral was more or less on my way so I decided to take a look. It looked – to be honest like nearly every other cathedral that I have seen in France. Judge for yourself.

Unfortunately my F1 hotel was about 5km out of town and after all of my climbing I was in no mood for a 10km round trip to explore further. Besides which I fell asleep about 5pm and woke up at 9pm just in time to get dinner in Restomarche ( an offshoot of Intermarche) which was 50 m away.

Yet again the F1 wifi gratuit was not functioning so this tale will have to wait for a wifi connection which works. It was a strange day but after three days in a row the bum is fine, the legs are not bad and I am enjoying it immensely.