Wednesday, 13 January 2010

News from France





By the way, a bit late perhaps, but welcome to the blog, Maldwyn! Glad the journey through the Time-warp was painless. I've had one or two bruises going through black holes from time to time!
Like in Blighty, we have had quite a bit of snow over here but most of it has disappeared, now that the temperatures have started to rise again. I saw 10 C this afternoon. Much snow was washed away this morning by pouring rain, but later there were blue skies and the sun.
I have done a little training. I even went out yesterday on icy roads - and fell off once, but only once!
I've had email answers from a few - but not all - tourist offices that I wrote to. Mainly they refer me to web addresses which were on their websites anyway. So we will have to start from there. Maybe, if I managed to fix just one night up for all of us (once we have definitely firmed up the dates), we would be able to see how easy (or not) it is, and use the same techniques to fix all the others. I'd rather not wait till we are there: it would be not too bad to be told that we would need to go another 30 km - and in the wrong direction - if we were driving, but on a bike ... !
I also had one reply, from Riberac, telling me how we can get publicity from the local press and radio!
I let the af3v people know about our trip but haven't had a reply yet. Sustrans is not mega-keen on us using up all the good will that they can count on from their contacts abroad, it seems. Perish the thought that I might have been considering scrounging off fellow cyclists in France (in fact, that was precisely what I had in mind), but we mustn't push our luck - I suppose that there must be quite a few people planning similar trips. On the positive side, someone called Jon at photos@sustrans.org would be interested in pics of French greenways being used by ordinary people going about their daily lives.
And now here is something I've only just come across in the last few minutes: the 25th Festival of Bicycle Travel at St Denis this coming weekend. I think it might be under canvas! Anyone game for this? See http://www.eurovelo6.org/actualites/25e-festival-du-voyage-a-velo
Back on English soil on Sunday 17 Jan.

No comments:

Post a Comment