Showers on and off all day, 16-20deg, 5km, (train 125km) ride tot. 1005 km. Got half a dozen spots of rain as we peddled into the railway station at Reims. It was nice to watch the droplets of rain run across the train window instead of down your face while on the bike. The train from Reims to Saint-Quentin departed spot on time at 7:35am. Because we have bikes we need to catch local trains, not the 300km/h TGVs. The local ones get along at a respectable 120km/h ...

Cloudy with one or two patches of drizzle, 14-20deg, 185km but only 10km of that from motels to railway stations counts towards the total of 1,000km. What a way to bring up the 1,000km! Had an early start to catch a 7:08am train from Metz to Reims which departed on time to the second. Our bikes went in a special spot, hanging from the front wheel in the first carriage. We virtually had the train to ourselves until other stops when more passengers got on. Arrived ...

Fine and sunny, 12-28deg. No riding. Beaut day to be out wandering around this interesting NE French city. It was worth every dump in the path to reach Metz, the place is magnifique, to say the least. It has a 3,000 year history and lucky for us they kept plenty of parks, gardens and open spaces when it was planned and built 100s of years ago. Being fairly close to the German border it has also changed countries several times. We started at the 13th century St St...

Fine and sunny, 14-25deg, 72km, av. 15.5km/h, tot. 990 km. Great brekky in the motel again and cycled away at 8:00am. Soon onto a lovely sealed canal path, which wasn't to last unfortunately. After 10km it became a Le French Le s*** goat-track. We expected more between two major tourist cities in the middle of the Moselle Region and in the Land of the Le Tour de France. It wasn't till the 52km mark that we picked up a decent path again. However we stayed positive...

Fine and brilliant sunshine all day, 12-27deg, 83km, av. 16.3km/h, (tot. 920km). Weather wise it was a perfect day. We left Sarrebourg at 8:00am after a good in-house brekky, and arrived at Nancy at 2:30pm. Ibis Motel to Ibis Motel. A well-signed, smooth, cycle path greeted us first up and this lead us to a lake-side path. The lake is used to 'run' the nearby canal, which, we imagine would be tricky to manage considering the amount of water each lock uses each ti...