Tour de France Day 40-41
Day 40: Belfort
Today was a 134km journey to Belfort. We stopped at Mulhouse at the Cite de lAutomobile car museum. The museum was well worth the visit as it has the most extensive collection of Bugatti worldwide. It included three sections: the history of the automobile; a collection of Bugatti and a collection of formula one cars. During the afternoon, after the visit to he museum we biked along bike trails beside the canal that joins the Rhine and the Rhone. This was beautiful riding with holidaymakers travelling on river boats crossing weirs and lovely smooth cycle tracks. At times the pace was very fast and up to 40 kms an hour. It was a fast arrival into Belfort and we stayed at Hotel Les Capucins which we later learnt had a Michelin star restaurant. We arrived in plenty of time to enjoy some shopping and also to visit the town centre which had an enormous lion carved on the side of the hill.
Day 41: Bourbonne Les Bains
Aside from cycling in Paris it was decided this would be the final stage of cycling as it would be too much to do the final stage of 148kms as well as the 180km bus transfer all in one day to Paris. We had all biked the equivalent distance of the tour on the respective days, and we were very pleased with our achievement. This was a day of rolling hills with forest and lovely countryside. It was a fairly fast pace and difficult to maintain at times. The scenery was gorgeous and at one point I saw a wild fox. The scenery on the trip has been rugged and extremely varied. There have been days when signs have indicated deer are around. The signs have looked like reindeer. I was fortunate to see a deer on the side of the road at one point. We ended the day with lovely rolling hills descending into Bourbonne. It was ironic that it should rain in the last minutes of this final stage given the extremely sunny weather we had experienced throughout the trip. Interestingly the actual Tour de France has experienced extremely bad weather during the tour this year-we have been incredibly fortunate. As we biked into Bourbonne we stopped at a bar 500mtrs from our hotel. This was a fantastic opportunity to toast our accomplishment and celebrate the journey we had made. The owner of the small local pub couldn’t believe his luck when approximately 40 cyclists arrived thirsty and hungry to celebrate the achievement of biking around France at his pub. We then made our way to the accommodation and had a lovely dinner of duck followed by speeches and the presentation to each person of a medal symbolising their achievement. It was a great evening and each person had reached a significant achievement and overcome significant challenges to finish day 41. It was a wonderful feeling knowing we didn’t have to be up early biking the next day as we had our bus transfer to Paris.
