What a day! Paris-Chartres (train) - Chartres-Chateaudun 105km

I was awake early in anticipation of what the day held. After many trips up and down 70 stairs, I had relocated my baggage to reception to be packed onto the bike. I had a good breakfast and a few too many coffees to get me on the road. The Hotel de la Porte Doree was amazing. So helpful throughout my stay and storing my bike box until I return. Thanks Freewheeling France for the tip!👍

Despite my recon yesterday, my offline maps and google maps let me down. Perhaps it was the operator but I was hopelessly lost! I didn’t care other than catching the train I had booked but I was cycling a little faster than I normally would. I went with my gut and eventually found my way albeit many more kilometres than necessary. I arrived at Montparnasse only to find the elevator that was working perfectly yesterday, now out of order. 😩My first escalator was a disaster. I couldn’t hold the bike so we were both laying on the steps. More bruises! 😳Second escalator a nice French man provided assistance and I stayed upright! Phew!

I only had ten minutes to spare to validate my ticket and find the right carriage! 

Good thing I’ve done this before! The train trip was uneventful until I arrived in Chartres and realised I was going to have to unpack the bike and ferry my gear up and down multiple stair cases! Along comes ‘arsehole’ who picks up my pannier that I’d ferried to the second set of stairs. I yelled! He stopped! Mumbled something that I didn’t care about! Eventually someone from SNCF came to help. I assume they were having a laugh watching all this unfold when they realised this shit was real! 

I wanted to revisit the Chartres cathedral and light a candle for my trip so I walked the few hundred metres uphill to be greeted by an elderly local couple who lived in the town and had been to Australia. They wanted to tell me about cycling the Camino St Jacques. How does this happen? Out of nowhere a memory that I share! I guess this will happen for the rest of my life! A daunting feeling. 

I was confident I knew the way out of town because my internal compass is pretty good. I used google maps to be sure and that worked fine. The cycling was beautiful. Quiet country roads shared with tractors harvesting the wheat. It was hotter than I expected and I found myself quite sunburnt at the end of the day having underestimated the midday heat. 

I found my way to Chateaudun without any trouble. The day was much longer than anticipated and was made longer by a walk along a chemin that was a short cut to the supermarket. It wasn’t a chemin! I returned to the campground the get the bike to take the longer but more practical route. In my haste to get back to the campground to eat, I somehow left the only protein I had purchased in the basket at the supermarket so dinner was potatoes, cheese, nuts and tomato and of course a nice French red to wash it down with. I was quite dehydrated after such a long day so consumed a lot of water as well. 

A lovely Flemish couple in the campground provided me with some medical assistance to dress the blister on my hand. It is quite irritated from such a long day on the bike and I have another long one today. 

I need to do a couple of adjustments to the bike, my rear panniers are not holding on to the rack strongly enough at the bottom so I need to fix this as it is annoying hearing them rattle around! My speedo is also not working so I need to fix that! 

Day one done and dusted albeit a little worse for wear!