July 12th 2011
The first stage of our journey has
ended in the lovely house of my sister and her husband in a hamlet in
the Morvan. It took us 10 days and app. 670 kms to get there. The
house is an old farmhouse restyled into a nice and comfortabel
holiday house, a real second home. In the large garden fox passes by
every night, as well as a family of badgers that even has their
latrine there. (Quiet clean, no odours). We watched this wildlife on
the films that our brother in law made with an automatic camera
during the night. During the day all kinds of butterflies fly from
flower to flower and birds are singing all the time.
The name of the hamlet is Savault, some
20 houses and part of the community of Ouroux-en-Morvan. The Morvan
is a really mountainous region, the house sits on 480 altitude. In
order to reach it we followed the river Yonne and the Canal du
Nivernais, that is built beside and many times in the same river,
from Auxerre southwards. This was a welcomed route as we had a good
100 kms of flat cycle lanes. What a relief! The only climbs we had to
make were the 2.5 meters at every lock in the canal (I guess we
passed some 50). This canal is part of the former transport route for
timber and other agricultural produce to Paris. It comprises a number
of rivers that are interconnected by this type of canals. They all
end up in the Seine river.
When we left the banks of the Yonne and
turned east into the Morvan we had a hard time. In 30 kms we had to
do 700 altimetes. Tough, especially as the climbs only started after
this first 66 flat kms. You can imagine how nice it was to be warmly
welcomed by our relatives after such a day.
We will stay here for a day to take a
rest, to do some laundring, change the oil in one of the Rohloff
Speedhubs and to talk.
Tomorrow we will continue eastwards and
we hope to reach the village of Avoudrey in 3 or 4 days. Here we will
visit Christian and Marie-Claire. We met them a good 2 years ago in
Cambodia, where we cycled up with them for a couple of days. Reliving
old stories again.
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