In Paris you can spend four hours waiting in line to go up the Eiffel tower, half a day waiting to get tickets into Musee D'Orsay, or the Louvre, pay $20 for a bad coffee on the Champs Élysées and crowd around the Arc de Triumph for an obligatory photo. And you should, it's what Paris is famous for and you don't take a 24-hour flight to miss these and several other amazing experiences. But there's a reason to come back to Paris each year, whether it's the shopp...

Riding into Paris is guaranteed to be adventurous and a buzz. There will be numerous wrong turns, questionable directions and necessary detours. As you'd expect the arterial roads get thicker and the traffic seems faster. The closer you get the further away you feel. You'll find yourself on major roads with no shoulder and an exit plan consisting only of the grassy verge running adjacent. You will be scared, frustrated, happy, angry, desperate, smug and eventuall...

Summer arrived in the north of France today at exactly 11.49am. By 1pm it wasn't just warm and sunny but scorching hot and dry. Oh how easy it is to b**** and moan about the weather twice in one day. This morning's 11 degree start was foggy and cold and the 35 degree finish was too warm. Life is enjoyably tough as a tourist isn't it? With the sunshine and clear skies came the bugs. Tiny little midget-like things that love the taste of suncream. Hundreds of them w...

'I notice no one else is here on bikes', good observation Wobbly Wheels, but what does it matter when there are plenty of other Aussies paying homage to their hometown heroes of WWI? I am not a history student, nor do I take much (any) interest in war. However I found Villers and the Commonwealth cemeteries around Somme moving and humbling. There are 1000 war cemeteries and 2000 civilian cemeteries in Belgium and France marking the graves of about 750,000 Commonw...

Wobbly Wheels knows schoolboy French, but given his last name, penchant for croissants and the city of Paris he'd have you believe he is French. Those that know him also know he is no shrinking violet so with that in mind it will come as no surprise what happened yesterday. Riding from Le Cateau, it is early on Saturday afternoon, we are riding through back roads as several glorious French villages go whizzing past. There is a distinct lack of activity, and I me...