The convent was really a remarkable place to stay. I think it had contained monks (I think in French, like Spanish, the words convent and monastery don't necessarily refer to the sex of the inhabitants). Anyway, it was built on a large Roman site, recently excavated but fenced off at present. And it had a very sweet graveyard containing some padres and frères, as well as a dozen German soldiers buried there in one week in 1944. The graves were being recycled, with the most recent burials (2012) on top of the older ones (1912). It was a gorgeous sunny evening yesterday and I wandered around the gardens and woodland tracks and thought the landscape probably hadn't changed a great deal since the Romans did the same.
When I checked out this morning I was given a Mozart CD. Apparently the convent's current incarnation is as a centre for the promotion of music.
I left in a great mood on the most glorious morning, sunny and breezy. Had a quick cafe and croissant in Sarrebourg and then set off across country, past an enormous war cemetery. Google maps cycle routes (**in beta, use caution**) sent me down some cracking dirt tracks so the first 10k was quite slow. Horace handles them fine but I can't help fretting that it ups the wear and tear on him, the panniers, racks etc.
Finally I hit a beautiful paved path along a canal. There's a headwind but it's really beautiful, almost like a gorge with the canal half way up and a road way down below me. I see absolutely no-one for a while and am thinking 'this is the life'. Then I see the eight foot metal gate barring my path. Oh bugger.
Some 'gentlemen' on the other side of it just give me a Gallic shrug and suggest I turn around. Instead I find a tiny set of steps leading down to the road below. Well, most of the way down... I unpack Horace and in several trips we make it the fifty or so feet down without incident. Phew.
After that the day passes quite peacefully, with the exception of a bump-induced flying-off of my handlebar bag- this happens fairly often, but this time my iphone went for a dramatic tumble - and survived!
In total I did 60 or so k straight along the canal which crosses from Lorraine to Alsace and eventually loops into the top of Strasbourg. Part of Eurovelo 5 (London to Rome) it was all extremely pleasant, loads of cyclists, and one guy in a pedal-powered white rocket who stopped to ask me the way. As usual, whenever anyone hears my halting French they start talking to me in rapid German!
I had no expectations of Strasbourg but it's actually lovely. I guess I thought it would be all modern but the centre is old and beautiful and the cathedral just blew me away. I think I have a new favourite cathedral - a hotly contended category this year!
It also has a genuine camping shop that sold me some more gas. This has been a massive saga: we thought we had found some about a week ago but it turned out to be the wrong top and have failed in about twenty shops since.
Early evening I found myself outside a cinema that helpfully had English films showing, so I popped into the first one that was on. Enjoyable but very strange story about a woman who agrees to drive three insane women home across the prairie from Dakota to Iowa. Apart from anything else the heroine kills herself part way through. Put me in quite an odd mood for a Saturday night!
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The perfect canal - before blockage...
Plan B: you can just see the road shining at the bottom
Today looked pretty French...
The strangest cycle-machine yet
Strasbourg touristing, including watching a 'celebration of European Celts' -- ever more bagpipes!
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