June 4, 2011

Still no sign of the rain – we have bright, hot sunshine but it is humid, making hard work of riding the bikes as we start the day.  We continue along the road we enjoyed so much on our way to Vesoul, accompanied only by the sound of bird song (no clicking and no muttering in the background).

As we approach Besançon, a large city, we need to join a busy road into the centre.  Riding on main roads never adds to the pleasure of cycling, but although obviously slightly riskier than riding on smaller roads, it is just normally a noisier and more hectic experience.  Not so in France; here it is a life-threatening experience.  Within metres of joining the busy road into Besançon, Ken has been pushed off the road onto the grass as the traffic races by with horns blaring, neither slowing down nor moving over.  Cars race past at 90 to 100 km/hr with only inches to spare – one gust of wind or wobble and that will be the end.  This is a repeat of the experience we had in France when we were travelling north to the UK – something we have not experienced in Spain, the UK, Holland or Belgium. 

We quickly get off the road at the next turn-off and consult the map.  There is no way into the city except on busy roads so we set about trying to find our way around it on small back-roads.  Not an easy task – it takes us a frustrating 2 hours of twists and turns, stopping and starting before we find ourselves south of Besançon.  With no camp-sites to be found we check into a hotel and re-plot out route out for tomorrow on the map using only back-roads roughly parallel to our original route.  Looking at the map we can see that from tomorrow the climbs start to get serious.