May 22: Day 25, Bourbonne-les-Bains-Lunéville

Sadly my breakfast croissant was served in a little basket, not from a buffet, so there weren't three of them for me to eat. I did eat everything else in sight at the buffet, including cereal, yoghurt, fruit, and went back for seconds, so I can't complain.

On the way out of town I stopped by a Carrefour, which was so disproportionately large for the small town it's in I can only guess it's undercut and starved all independent competitors. But they did have Lucozade so I picked up five bottles; that should be enough for two days.

The weather was cloudy but not wet, the sun was barely visible. So it was a good temperature and visibility was good - a good day for cycling.

The first part was on a B-road, which ran in a straight line - up and down hills. Maybe this sort of design was fashionable back in the day? I prefer roads with a constant incline, and it seems like more modern roads prefer it too.

Anyway, there was another person going the same way! I could see them in the distance, heading up a slope, and when I got closer it turned out to be a gent on a nice new bike in the lowest gear working hard to get up the hill. I guess all this training and biking has some benefits, because this didn't feel that steep to me, and I swept cherrily past with my 20kg of baggage, in a midrange gear... thinking some deep thoughts about the difference a few weeks of intense exercise can bring. I lost 5kg while training, and I'm sure I've lost a bit more on the trip - I'm now using a belt hole four smaller than usual. Might have to do a trip like this again ...

Today had a lot of small climbs, which added up to over 1000m. For some reason the route ran through a string of small villages, but they were quite small and often struggling. Google Maps said there were no boulangeries or cafes to be found in any of them; I kept an eye out and sadly they were right. Probably not a healthy sign. Many houses looked closed up and uninhabited - easy to imagine that people leave rather than return.

From left to right: boisson isotoniques. Foggy morning, with a great downhill. More fog. Traffic lights for roadworks. Map showing all the villages the route passed through.

At 1230 I'd passed the last of the villages, with no lunch options. I didn't want to take a 10km detour to a boulangerie, so I opted to have lunch with what I had with me. I've got trail mix, a bag of cranberries, nuts, some museli bars, and a can of Pringles, so I did not go hungry.

After that Komoot tried sending me off up a gravel track, when staying on the road was more direct and quicker. A bit further along it sent me down a gravel backroad, and this time it was unavoidable. It does prefer backroads to asphalt sometimes; looking at the map now I'm still not entirely clear why it chose this route. Because it ended up going through a forest, and the route went from gravel to tyre tracks to ruts to guesswork. At one point the route became a muddy stream, as far as I could tell... so (with a bit of map consultation) I followed another set of overgrown and historic tyre tracks. There were tree trunks to go over, mud potholes, waist high grass - it had been quite some time since those tracks were made.

Thanks to GPS and online maps it was not as dramatic as it could have been; I was able to find my way out of the forest and rejoin an actual road with no problems.

From left to right: Just tyre tracks. Forest track - it’s not clear but the track disappears in the background. This is the actual track, once it left the forest - wish I’d had the presence of mind to take photos in the forest. Rejoining asphalt; I came through the field on the left.

From there, there were some more climbs, but all on asphalt so I can't complain; and then it merged onto a canalside path. All good! The estimate was 7 hours and I was making rather good time, maybe I'd arrive close to the estimated time - and maybe before 5?

Unfortunately not, it began to rain. There had been some rumblings which sounded a bit like thunder for the last hour or two, this wasn't a thunderstorm yet, but it was a rainstorm. I sheltered under a tree for a few minutes, then figured it wasn't too heavy and I could probably just keep cycling, so I did; I didn't even need a raincoat.

The route stayed by the canal for ten kilometers, and then peeled off for the final 20km to Lunéville. Still looking like I would arrive before 5, which I haven't done this trip...

And then the thunderstorm showed up. A four second gap between lightning and thunder, so not close. It went from light to heavy rain in seconds: I pulled over and got out the raincoat, but there was no shelter so I might as well keep going. The rain ramped up to monsoon strength, and the route joined a busy road - so I stopped under a tree in someone's driveway. It was raining so hard that my phone was wet and I couldn't unlock it to take pictures.

So you'll have to take my word for it. After a while the tree stopped being useful shelter, raindrops were coming down underneath it nearly as much as elsewhere. No other shelter around; traffic seems lighter - so I headed back out. Visibility was awful and there were some heavy trucks on the road, so I used the sidewalk as far as I could, then the roadside path. That was dirt, now mud, and the spray meant the panniers were now dirty instead of wet...

When that ran out I switched to the road shoulder - which was generous and wide, thankfully. The next few kilometers were tense, riding a ruler-straight line down the shoulder. The wind picked up and started to drive the rain in from the side so hard I couldn't really see out of one eye. No trucks though, for which I'm grateful; and drivers recognized that since I was out in such awful weather I was clearly unbalanced and gave me plenty of space.

Because of the rain I couldn't easily unlock the phone: with wet fingers the fingerprint recognition doesn't work, and water on the touch screen seems to be treated like touch, so entering the passcode has problems. So I kept the phone stashed in a pocket and relied on the audio directions. This is a pretty good solution, on the whole - it means you can focus on the road.

Biking in the rain in traffic is pretty grim, so let's skip over it. The drivers were considerate, I used pavements or roadside paths whenever they were available; eventually the rain started to fade, and I got into Lunéville.

I was pretty wet. My shoes and all my clothes are wet through. (Except for my shirt - the raincoat works well!) The bike got parked inside, but when I rolled it over the welcome mat the wet tyres picked up handfuls of pine needles. I quickly brushed some off but I did not get them all, and I think the cleaner will not forgive me.

From left to right: old road is straight and hilly, new road is curved with a good gradient - I took the new one. Canalside path. The rain starts - see splashes in the water. It’s now a monsoon; the photo has filtered out the deluge of raindrops, but it was so bad there was no reason to stay under the tree.

Except for the rain at the end, it was a really good day! I matched the Komoot time estimate for most of it, which is a development I like - if that happens regularly I can plan a little less conservatively. Tomorrow's route is mostly on cyclepaths, so hopefully that means no surprises or complications and an on-time finish...