I’m a bit worried, because I’ve just cycled 140km and I can no longer feel my penis. It’s totally numb from being squashed in some funny angle of my bike shorts from the bike seat. It’s a pretty strange sensation, I hope it comes good by the morning!
None-the-less, I’ve made it to Amiens, after leaving Paris at around 9:30am, I rolled into town here about 9 hours later. With a stop for lunch, that’s about 8 hours in the saddle today, one of the longest days of the whole trip. Tomorrow is the same as I head towards Lille, but thereafter they get progressively shorter, and the roads flatter which I’m looking forward to.
It was a great start to the morning. I checked out of the hotel, saying goodbye to both the hotel workers whom I’d befriended over the course of four days in Paris. They were quite impressed that I was cycling to Cairo, and had a good laugh and wished me the best of luck. I’ll miss the Alfa Nation Hotel – will definitely look to stay there again if I ever go back to Paris on a budget.
The morning up until lunchtime was quite relaxing and I made good time. 60km before I ran into my first moderate hills, which weren’t overly bad either. But the killer was yet to come – a dreaded northerly headwind that slowed me down to a craw of 15km/h, even on some of the flat roads. I HATE headwinds! Can’t seem to get a break from them either.
Thankfully after a light rain shower in the afternoon, the wind died down, and after stopping at Lidl for lunch, I managed to pick up the pace a bit more again in the evening. But the damage was done – 140km is bloody hard work, and my legs were pretty stuffed for the last 50km. So I’m looking forward to a good rest tonight.
I’ve managed to find a host for the evening, which was worrying me until yesterday morning as nobody had replied positively to my requests on the Warm Shower’s website – a lovely little tool that is like ‘couch surfing’ but specifically for bicycle tourers. But in the end, I met up with a French guy called David, who is putting me up for the night. He has even cooked me a pasta dinner, and I’ve tried a specialty ‘rhubarb’ dessert – quite sugary so hopefully good to replenish the energy stores.
David and I have had a good chat about Amiens and my plans for the next couple of days. Tomorrow I head off to Villers-Brettoneux, Albert and Arras, which was a key area of the Western Front during WWII, and also has significant WW1 history.
Interestingly, David showed me some photographs of Amiens taken in the 1940’ which show that the entire Old Town area was completely levelled flat. Amazingly, the huge Gothic Cathedral remained largely unscathed, and today is a UNESCO heritage listed attraction, standing dominant over the town.
Thanks to David, I’ve got a pretty good idea of where I shall find some interesting history on the ANZAC troops who fought in the area during the war, so I can’t wait to hit the road tomorrow, after a short tour of Amiens with David, before I depart.
On the budget front – things are looking up. Without Hannah here to blow my budget out of the water, I’ve managed to only spend a respectable 6.97€ today – all on food and beer. If I can manage this until the end of the week, not only will I be in budget surplus, but I’ll have some extra dosh to burn on the hookers when I arrive in Amsterdam on Friday 😉 Excellent!
Ta ta for now…
