Our first night of camping was in short - horrific. I woke up after a few hours of sleep to discover I was essentially lying in a puddle. The constant rain had caused the outer tent to stick to the inner tent and consequently a lot of rainwater had leaked into the tent. After a freezing cold and sleepless night, we woke in the morning to realise the full extent of the leak. The inner tent was practically flooded, our blanket and panniers and our sleeping clothes were all soaked too. And to make things better, it was still raining. We then had to spend over an hour trying to separate the soaking wet stuff from the drier stuff whilst inside our tiny tent.
Our mood was not good. We were shattered, cold, soaked and everything was aching. Nonetheless we made a swift but well behind schedule start. Soon however the wind and the increasingly heavy rain and hilly terrain took its toll and we really began to slow. Conditions were poor and we were in bad condition after the horrible night. As we pulled up around 35 miles later we were surprised to be met by a familiar face..more than 70 miles since we had last seen him. As the guy rolled up next to us, he proceeded to fall off his bike and we realised it was the same guy we had met way back in Dieppe. We rested and chatted for a while before setting off on a supposed shortcut. This shortcut actually ended up in us getting lost for an hour before finally finding our way back to the route. By this time it began to dawn on us that due to our late start and time lost due to conditions and losing our way, the number of hours left to go compared with the number of hours left in the day were not in our favour. Our tent was also soaked through making it uninhabitable and we had no plans or ideas of where else to stay in Paris. The prospect of wandering around Paris at night looking for somewhere to stay did not seem like a good idea.
However we ploughed on and eventually managed to reach the Seine. Not long after we bumped into that same guy again (making it the 5th time on the trip!) and after chatting about what was best for us to do next, we decided to stop for the night in a local hotel. This was a really difficult decision to make but in reality we didn't really have another option. We checked in and hung all the wet stuff out to dry in the hope that our tent would be habitable by the morning.
For the first time since we had arrived in France, we finally saw blue sky! We woke up to find a sunny morning and that our stuff had (mostly) dried. We set off on our final 25 miles a little bit more encouraged after the nightmare of the previous day. Cycling through pretty forests and making a short visit to Versaille (before we were promptly kicked out by a security guard) eventually led us up the steepest hill we have ever seen (yes, we walked up it) to the outskirts of Paris; Parc de St Cloud.
The Eiffel Tower was now in sight and after navigating across the busy roads over the Seine we found ourselves on the cycle race track around the Hippodrome on Rue de Longchamps. Winding down through the city we eventually arrived at the tower where we treated ourselves to a well deserved ice cream and relaxed on the grass, relieved that we had finally made it!
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