What a beautiful day to ride in France

Today rates as an excellent cycle touring day. The weather was brilliant, the route fantastic, and we both felt really good.

Charlie (Trek Checkpoint SL7) and I are bonding and I’m nailing my gear changes and changing from big to small chainrings far more intuitively today.

The route today continued to follow the EuroVelo 6, which is well signposted plus has occasional interpretive panels, per below

Taken today, I am pointing out where we were at.

Before I get too far ahead of myself, I need to wind the clock back.

When we arrive at accomodation touring, once we have secured the bikes we want to know only a few things. The wifi code and most importantly, what time breakfast is!

Our hotel this morning has breakfast between 6 am and 10 am. 6 am on the knocker we presented, ready and eager. We were first there. We often are!

It was a great breakfast spread – a quality offering with a range of cold meats and cheeses, wide range of breads and pastries, a few hot food choices, yoghurts, fruits, mueslis and coffee!!

I thought this was cute – it was a lemon favoured yoghurt

The weather forecast was for another warm day. I took the next photo seated at our table looking out the window.

We retraced our route into Montbeliard to head out. It was about 730 when we left, and the city was reasonably quiet.

Looking back towards Montbeliard as we crossed the canal.

We followed the canal ( du Rhone et Rhine) for some time, then this was interspersed with le Doubs (River).

The following photos are the canal and show the serenity. It was a beautiful time to be riding. The temperature was 9C, the air crisp and clean.

This is one of my favourite photos today. It was a magnificent wooden boat, well cared for, and what a reflection.

At around 30 km stopped at L’Isle on the banks of le Doubs. Coffee and …, well it was a boulangerie…read between the lines!

This photo is looking across le Doubs, and in fact, we rode down that side of the river shortly thereafter. The river was clear and seemingly clean.

What a wonderful bike path. We only encountered one section of gravel today in a section that was being prepared to seal. It is great to see the continuing upgrade of one of the most popular EuroVelo routes.

The further we followed le Doubs, the cliffs around started to increase in height.

Around a bend and we arrived in Laissey. We saw a bar with seating outside being used by cyclists, so figured we should stop. We had a light lunch of the most beautifully light quiche.

An advantage of stopping at places such as this is that you can use their toilets, plus they happily fill your bidons with cold water.

We descended from Laissey heading back to le Doubsand passed this old car.

This is Tony’s favourite photo today, with the tree canopy and river. i am taking the opportunity to grab my bidon.

From the same spot, looking back up,the river at a canal boat. The couple had a few bikes on board.

One of our last river views before arriving into Besancon.

Besancon is located in a horshoe section of Le Doubs. It is dominated by this old citadel that was built from 1678 to 1771. It has had a variety of uses over the years, saddest being German occupation during WWII and the site where they exterminated 100 or so locals.

Today it is a peaceful place housing a number of museums and a zoo. The first photo below Tony took as we neared Besancon.

The second photo is borrowed, and shows how extensive the fortification is.

Arriving at our accomodation our bikes were stored away securely then it was time to hit the shower and wash our kit. This is a Yaxley ( and touring cyclists in general I guess) to be inventive in how to dry your clothes.

Many accomodation places have those useless coat hangers with no hook. Tony has cable tied them to the railing to access the sun. Within a few hours all clothes were dry.