Place Émile-Combes

After breakfast I returned directly to the center of town, which was far easier to find than the various obscure suburbs I had been seeking the previous evening.

After yesterday's shenanigans locating accommodations in Montpellier, it was nice to have a chance to look at the place afresh. Montpellier features many grand municipal buildings, parks, a very modern tram system (if that isn't an oxymoron). It's square, bordered almost exclusively with bars, restaurants and creperies and populated by busking musicians playing accordions. This plays into all of the French stereo-types; a fitting end to my bicycle journey.

Having taken a quick ride down to Gare St-Roach, from where I would depart that afternoon (to assure my self that I knew its location), I returned to the central square and found a cafe'. I captured a little "bike's eye view" footage of the town on my camera https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju0bpC-MXtE .

I sat, relaxed, fielded some questions about "La velo avec le troi roues" and my journey. I continued to read a few of Grimm's fairy tales from my set of classic books on my eReader, before moving on the Odyssey. I also got in a crêpe; I've a weakness for crêpes.

I went down to the station nearly 2 hours ahead of my departure, so I expected to be quite bored waiting around. The reality was I needed every minute and could have done with a few more besides. The platform for Paris was (naturally) an island platform, accessible only by stairs or lift. This part of the trip threw up a particularly large anomaly resulting from taking a trip planned for two alone.

I have a /lot/ of gear, for one person. The lifts at the station were too small for my bike (even without the trailer) and were in high demand. Had there been two of us, it would have been a simple matter to send gear up and down the lifts in manageable chunks (one person sending whilst the other receives at the other floor). But being on my own though, the logistics (as well as the fact that there are men in camouflage, with automatic rifles who insist that one does not leave one's bags unattended) made this quite impossible.

There was also the matter that the TGV people insist that my bike be disassembled and bagged for carriage, so I couldn't use the bike to push my gear around as I would at a British rail station.

So having shoe-horned by bike into the lift (by putting it on end) to get to the upper level, I set up camp by the lift to the platform for Paris and set about disassembling my bike, and re-bagging my gear so I had fewer bags to carry (as 6 panniers, tent-bag, plus bike bag and trailer simply can't be carried by one person).

I got my 2 small and 2 medium panniers into the duffel bag which I had brought along (having removed a few key items from the medium panniers to my folding back-pack), leaving me the duffel, back-pack, and two large panniers by way of baggage. I then set about disassembling and bagging the bike and trailer.

My touring bike, with its various pannier frames, is rather larger than most bikes and even with it's handlebars pedals and saddle off refused to fit into the bike bag. I attempted to remove the rear rack (the front rack being too complex to consider removing in the time available) and found that something was awry with the top pair of bolts. I was able to remove the bottom bolts and pivot the frame such that the bike bag could accommodate it. I had fortunately retained the second bike bag (intended for Chris's bike) into which I packed all three wheels, and the tent. By the time all this dismantling had been achieved I had less than 20 minutes before the train departed.

This left me with a large duffel, 2 large panniers, one small day-sack, and two bike bags to try and carry. I managed it, just about; veins bulging out in a quite disturbing manner from a combination of exertion and the pressure applied by the various straps. I queued up for the lift, and just about squeezed inside with all my gear. When I arrived at platform level, I found I had to walk the entire length of the train to my carriage. By this point I was perspiring heavily under the weight of my gear (the bike plus the gear is close to my own weight), and the shape of the bike bag containing the wheels was such that I simply couldn't keep it off the floor. So I waddled down the platform carrying 5 bags and dragging one to many stares and feeling, frankly, a right plonker. I was assisted by a member of the train crew in making the last two carriage lengths, to my very great relief. But was newly embarrassed trying to find luggage rack space for all of the bags that I had just loaded whilst dripping with sweat.

So my helpful advice to anyone considering traveling on the TGV with a bike; have fewer than 6 panniers.

The TGV, once the harrowing ordeal of boarding was dispensed with. Proved its advantage over flying quickly. The broad windows afforded great views of various fortified towns and chatauxs as we headed north, through (what in cycling terms are) the median-mountains of the Central massif.

The journey from Montpellier, on the Mediteranian sea, all the way to Paris in the north of the country (a road distance of 733Km, according to my satnav), is around three and a half hours by this high-speed rail link. If one factors in the time that would be spent in airport transfers that makes it easily quicker than flying in practical terms, and about half the time needed to drive the distance.

I made use of the on-board power point to ensure my laptop and GPS were fully charged. My parents had been good enough to book a hotel in Paris for two nights, as my power and connectivity issues had prevented me from doing so.

My satnav system, fortunately has an extensive list of locations for hotels, including the Hotel Maubeuge Gare du Nord for which I was headed. (Irritatingly it has no locations whatsoever for camp sites, so I rely on tourist maps and signage to find those). As much as I consider use of the GPS as cheating (I generally use it as an electronic map only, or to confirm my position if I feel in danger of getting lost up some mountain in poor visibility) I do dislike urban navigation quite a lot, and after yesterday's debacle I was in no mood to get lost in Paris, so I set up a trip from Gare de Leon to the hotel on the sat nav.

I took about a 40 minutes at Gare de Lyon to reassemble my bike, and then made a surprisingly straightforward ride up to my hotel near Gare du Nord. Paris streets though, can be quite frightening to ride on. In general French motoring seems to be a bit more of a free-for-all than I'm used to, and Paris is as French as it gets. I also encountered the semi-amusing problem of bicycle traffic. The latter part of my ride across Paris was on a single lane cycle track, upon which I became stuck behind some slow cyclists. With my long and wide bike I couldn't sneak past so had to just ride along behind.

I got to the hotel which has WiFi, power /and/ let me put my bike inside, so is by far an away the best accommodation I've had so far on those scores

In truth I'm glad to be homeward bound, as I'm rather missing my friends etc. I've a day in Paris tomorrow, under the circumstances I would rather proceed directly back to Epsom, but the complexities of changing my (and more to the point my bike's) Eurostar booking are too great.Read more