Days 41 and 42. Chateaudun to Chartres on Thursday November 21st through a raging blizzard: the toughest day of riding, EVER. Chartres to Paris to Toronto on Friday. The fabulous end of a fabulous trip.

Both of us were awake at different times during Wednesday night (November 20th) at the Brit Hotel in Chateaudun, checking the weather apps and the increasingly alarming storm notifications – official “Code Orange” – from the French government on European news sites. You’ll see from the screenshots below that the outlook was not good.

In fact, at one point, rather than our current Plan B* to cycle from Chateaudun to Chartres, put the bikes into storage there, check into a swanky hotel and then take a train to Paris on Friday morning, John researched alternatives. (What did people do before the Internet?)

For example:

Plan C: Maybe we and our bikes could fit into a taxi-van from the Brit Hotel to Chartres, so John had the very accommodating and anxious-to-help hotel manager phone a cab company in town. No go: the best they could do would be two separate trips (40 km. each way) because the bikes are so big, and not until midday when the snow was supposed to be atrocious.

Plan D: Maybe we could put the bikes into winter storage in Chateaudun, hunker down, stay off the roads, spend another night at the Brit Hotel, then take the early morning train from Chateaudun directly to Paris on Friday.

Sounds easy, right?

Mais non, nos amis: trains from the Chateaudun region were scheduled to be on strike on Friday. D’accord. It just figures.

Exhausted and kind of discouraged, we agreed to look at the roads and weather in front of the hotel in the early morning and make our call then. We did not want to miss our noon hour flight back to Toronto out of Paris on Friday but this freakish storm was confounding us. In the meantime, John took a hard look at the Chateaudun-Chartres route we’d planned to cycle, and routed it away from any busy highways that might be likely to be travelled by trucks. Cycling in rain/hail/winds/snow is hard enough without the nerve-racking presence of a truck’s headlights flashing at you in your rearview mirrors. Bottom line, our proposed route went from being 42 km to 49 km, but on much safer roads. It was a compromise we were happy to make.

On Friday morning the roads were clear, there was only a light drizzly mist in the air and the temperature was around 4 degrees, i.e., above freezing. We snarfed down the hearty hotel breakfast, threw the gear on the bikes around 8:30 a.m. and after the staff took our photo in front of the hotel we started. (A photo at their insistence: they couldn’t believe we were going to brave the storm, “mais ils sont canadiens, ils savent ce qu’ils font”, said with Gallic shrugs.) John’s revised route on country roads between farmers’ fields was indeed much quieter, very few cars, even, and not hilly. The wind was mostly behind us – a huge blessing – so when the rain and hail and snow started (!!!) it wasn’t as brutal as it could have been.

Still, it was brutal.

The temperature dropped. The hail was coming sideways at a fierce clip which was extremely painful on the old eyeballs despite strategic angling of our baseball hats’ rims; sunglasses, or even goggles if we had had them, would have been useless in those conditions. Luckily we had the mitts we’d bought at the hunting store in Amboise, they kept us warm until they got wet. The handkerchief tied around my baseball cap served a double function in keeping the wind out of my ears and in keeping the hat from blowing off in the wind. We were both wearing every layer we had available; I had leggings and rain pants, but John was wearing only jeans.

By the time we stopped to swap out my battery, neither of us could feel our fingers or toes. I started to calculate how long fingers can be frozen before they have to be amputated. (So dramatic.) All you can do is keep going, so we kept going and around 11 a.m. – with great relief – we pulled into the HomeBox bike storage facility in the outskirts of Chartres. By now the snow was about 2 inches deep on the roads. The desk staff were aghast when they saw us pull in. The snow was piled high on our panniers, and our frozen faces were beet red. John changed out of his wet jeans, socks, shoes, shirt and coat (all of which were so wet that the staff gave us a plastic bag to put them in), and they insisted on giving us hot coffee and cookies to warm up. John busted out his best French to them: “C’est la meilleur café de ma vie.” They were charmed.

We rolled the bikes into the storage unit, laid out all of the wet items that we were leaving there so they would dry over the next six months, and photographed the contents so we can refer to that when we pack for the next trip in the Spring. One of the women called us a cab – it took 45 minutes to arrive because of the snow. We didn’t care, we were just grateful to be warming up and know that the bikes were safe.

It was a 30 minute cab ride (damned snow) to the simply gorgeous Hotel Jehan de Beauce which John had chosen because of its proximity to the train station. Next up: a long soak in a hot bath, and hot tea. The front desk happily accepted our bag of wet clothing to put into their dryer, and since we would not be able to use the Friday morning breakfast we had accidentally paid for on Expedia (train at 6 a.m.) we traded them for a plate of charcuterie from the hotel bar. I bailed on my ambitious plans to walk over through the falling snow to Chartres’ famous cathedral for Vespers. There’s a good chance all services were cancelled anyway because of the weather. We repacked our panniers and put any remaining damp clothing into one very heavy bag, and went to sleep. That was a huge day, and a huge hurdle to get over, and we were happily tired.

Friday morning we minced our way 200 yards to the train station over frozen ice. There’s no way we could have ridden the bikes on those roads!!! We were a half hour early for our train, but there was a train waiting at the platform so we jumped onto it, and – ACK – immediately, it started moving!!! Luckily, that train was also destined for Paris Montparnasse Station.

In Paris we both had technical difficulties with train tickets we had purchased online the night before but mine was particularly stressful because the agent at the gate insisted that I had purposefully short paid my fare and wanted to fine me 100 Euros. Other agents finally intervened, the situation was explained in broken French and English, and we made it to the airport. We checked our pannier full of wet clothes. I hit the Duty Free for a few edible souvenirs. The plane boarded – Adrienne Clarkson and John Ralston Saul were in the same row as us! – then we sat on the tarmac an hour because of additional winter storm related delays. (More time for movies!)

We had the final difficulty of our trip home with John’s Presto card on the UPExpress (easily solved) and rode back into Toronto with a bunch of Swifties on their way to see Taylor Swift at the Rogers Centre. It was packed but sequin-y and joyous on that train. I loved it! At Union Station we got a cab right away, and boy oh boy oh boy was it ever great to walk down our driveway and be greeted Rob Mee who had been looking after the house while we were away. (Thank-you, Rob!) Twenty-four hours later, everything was put away, the Christmas lights and tree were up and we were having potluck family dinner with Will and Anna, and Rob and Ned.

Summary:

1587 kilometres cycled. You can open Ride With GPS to see where we were. The long red line from Cordoba to San Sebastian, 1588 (!) kilometres, was done by van with the bikes stowed in the back. (Its distance is not included in the kilometre total.) Thankfully we were able to turn the van in to Enterprise in San Sebastián vs. Valencia as originally planned. (We wouldn’t have been able to return it there anyway, you couldn’t get to the rental office because of roads that had been flooded out.)

31 different hotels. Some of them were absolutely spectacular.

This, our fifth trip, was the watery-est trip so far. We rode through absolutely torrential rains on the very first day (Lisbon to Setubal), did a complete re-route mid-trip when floods ravaged Valencia, and rode through a freak snow blizzard on the last day of cycling to Chartres.

The second event, i.e. the “DANA” flooding in Valencia, was definitely climate-change related. It’s scary.

We had some very rough rides, but they were definitely outnumbered by spectacularly beautiful days. The warmth of the Portuguese people was beautiful to experience. The mingling of Moorish, Jewish and Catholic cultures in Spain was fascinating to learn about. And then there were the completely indulgent and worth-every-Euro meals we shared in France. Over and over again we met people who were curious, helpful, enthusiastic and encouraging. We also met many Americans who were reeling from the results of the election, wondering what will happen to their country. We wonder, too. I’m glad we live in Canada, but I’m worried about our own political climate.

Where will we go next? Right now we’re talking about going from Chartres (I want to see that cathedral and hear its famous organ!) to Amsterdam, possibly ending with a train trip to Copenhagen. Who knows!? It’s all open to negotiation. Now that we know that we can pivot on a dime…

Thanks for being such swell travelling companions, Blog Readers!

Patti and John

*Plan B: remember, our Plan A had been to cycle along Spain’s warm, southern coast into Montpellier, France, take the train to Paris and fly home from there. Those plans were all thrown out the window when Valencia was ravaged by DANA floods. When that happened, after much deliberation and consulting of roadmaps that indicated multiple road closures we decided to drive the van directly from Almeria on the south coast of Spain all the way to the north coast, and resume cycling from San Sebastián into the Loire Valley. That drive on November 3rd and 4th made John’s birthday one of his most memorable birthdays ever!