The Route

Marc here. I am nominally in charge of routing. When you go for a 40/60/80 KM ride at home you know exactly what to expect. But cycle touring is different. We can plan to do 60kms but it's rough to say how long that will take. 

It's always nice to roll into a campsite at 2 or 3 PM but often it's impossible. It's too cold to leave the tent until 7:30 which means we roll out at around 9:30. And then the fun begins. The factors are: distance, elevation, wind!, surface quality, our energy level, daily shopping requirements, navigation. Any of these elements can work for or against us. Not to mention other random things like DIY ferry crossing!

We try to take this into account so that we are not feeling rushed which means we fail to enjoy the actual day.

We spent a couple of hours last night designing next week's route that heads into a more remote ' provincial park' in Burgundy. The area is much more mountainous and depopulated than than the Disney Ride we have been on along the Loire. We'll see how it goes, stay tuned.