A Day Trip with REAL Bikers & Preparing For Our Next Week-Long Trip

As recounted before, David has been taking week-long bike trips with friends each Spring for the past five years.  He has not done any real bike riding since childhood, so a bit of training was necessary before doing the first one.  Most of these trips involved mostly level ground, down the rivers and canals of France, but pedaling a bicycle for 5-6 hours a day is a challenge if you have not done it in a long while. 

There are people in our age group in Lyon who are much more serious bikers than David, as he found out a few weeks ago. One group, including Roger and Gerard from the annual river & canal trips and about eight others, all in the same age category as we are, invited him to participate in a day-trip around Villars-les-Dombes north of Lyon.  This group does weekly day-trips, weather allowing, consisting of a 30-40 minute train ride out of Lyon, a 50-70km ride with a stop for a sack lunch or sandwich purchased at a village boulangerie.   The one David went on was fairly level, but the pace set by the group at about 20-22km per hour was quite an eye-opener.  David usually does about 16-18km/hr and the faster pace was a challenge that found him consistently bringing up the rear of the group.  By the time we had finished the ride, he was exhausted, even though everyone was very helpful and would very kindly wait for him to catch up.  He will need to improve his fitness if he wants to continue to ride with this group!

It was an interesting trip as we passed through several small villages, stopping to eat our snacks and sandwiches at a road intersection where there was a small grassy hill with an old church on it, all by itself.  It was not a very impressive edifice, but some of us walked around it and tried to look inside, but the doors were locked.  David found a small wooden sign saying that the church had been built in 944!  It had been rebuilt several times, losing its original bell tower in the process, but was in excellent condition, being maintained by a group of local volunteers.  

Real Bikers in Front of the 944AD Church

Across the road from the church was a farm field with some very curious goats.

David and Friends

After about 75km in about 4-1/2 hours, we rode back to Villars-les-Dombes about 4:30 in time to catch our train back to Lyon.  Luckily the station in Lyon is only about a quarter-mile from our apartment – otherwise Anna would have had to come and help David home!

Our bike trip this year was to be the Canal de Bourgogne, about 240km plus side trips starting at the east end of the canal, 30km east of Dijon. 

The late 18^th-early 19^th century period was a time when several countries undertook canal-building projects to connect various river basins with each other and to connect large inland lakes with the ocean.  They were conceived as a way to greatly expedite the movement of goods and people and were very successful.  However, by the late 19^th century, the advent of railroads made many of the canal systems obsolete and they fell into disuse, except for pleasure boats. In France, many of the tow-paths have been improved and converted to pedestrian and bicycle use. 

David, Gerard, and Roger held a short planning meeting the week before, with David charged with coming up with a preliminary list of sights we might want to take time to see along the way.  We had planned to spend a couple of hours in Dijon itself, once the capital of the powerful Dukes of Bourgogne, who ruled an area larger than the area ruled by the King of France.  Gerard again took on the task of finding accommodations for us – and again he found a number of nice, interesting places for us to stay.