The description for our next leg of the trip read: “This will remain one of the hilliest sections on the Avenue Verte until the old railway is converted to a traffic-free trail between Gournay and Beauvais”. It goes on to describe the terrain as “plenty of hill-climbing on perhaps the toughest section of the Avenue Verte”.

You can imagine the sheer delight I felt when we got just outside of Beauvais and found that the rail trail was indeed open, and that most of the day would be spend on dedicated cycle ways with very small gradients. Just what the doctor ordered.

The route itself was rather non-eventful, with the exception of the theme park we came across, complete with themed toilets.

We travelled about 40 km and then turned off the route to find a campsite for the night (around 10km away). It turned out to be the weirdest place. Someone had got the bright idea to try and make a go at creating a holiday destination in their backyard. There was a saloon style snack bar and accommodation in tepees. Needless to say it didn’t really work. The infrastructure had seen better days, and the snack bar no longer served any snacks. A group of French cyclists arrived at the campsite straight after us, and I think we were both a bit relieved that there was some other people staying in the place (which apart from some weird permanent residents in caravans was otherwise deserted). However, the showers were warm and the ground flat, so we were happy enough.

We settled in for the evening, better prepared than we had been some other nights (in that we’d carried a decent quantity of wine with us), and had a really nice picnic meal of fruits, breads, cheeses and tapenade.

The next day we got moving early, with the intention of trying to make it to Dieppe in one hit. Most of the route followed the actual Avenue Verte (green way) – some 40km of dedicated cycle way, and for once the route went in a more of less straight line in the direction of Dieppe (the route closer to Paris did a lot of weaving following different rivers).

We put our heads down and chewed through the miles, arriving on the outskirts of Dieppe in good time and sufficiently tired (having travelled almost 80 km). Much to our pleasure, we were then met with a slog up a rather long steep hill to get to the campsite. After setting up the camp, we then hopped back on the bikes (…groan…) in search of food – and headed down to the sea. We found a place on the harbour and had our first moules frites (mussels and chips) of the trip (hopefully not the last). We shared a bottle of wine to anesthetise our sore limbs, and climbed back up the hill to our beds.
Today was beautifully easy. We slept in, brought a breakfast of pain au chocolate from a pastry delivery van that came through the campsite, packed up and rolled down the hill towards the harbour. Somewhere between the trip for food the night before, and the roll down the hill this morning, both our trip meters clicked over to 400km. Not a bad effort for our first week.

After a snack of café and crepes, we sauntered over to the ferry terminal and enjoyed the four hour ferry ride to Newhaven in the UK. We swapped over to a train and headed for London. We hopped off at Victoria Station, and cycled the 5km through London to Toby’s house.