Ewen

After the solemnity of yesterday's visit to the Verdun Memorial, it was back to the joy of cycling with like minded people today on a route well marked, through villages decked out for the occasion of the Semaine Federale.

We did have that horrendous hill again at the beginning, but his Lordship did a good job of shepherding me up it at a pace I could sustain and not having me as usual attacking it with such force and pace that I am in danger of dying at the top.The problems involved in having to deal with a corpse on holiday is too much for him to contemplate.

The wooded area on the outskirts of Verdun gave way to corn fields and haystacks, with cream cows grazing in the fields, and then we were riding high above the river Meuse through more woods and climbing again gradually until suddenly we had a downhill of what seemed like miles of good tarmac road at 35 miles an hour with the wind in our faces down to the river valley at Dieue for the 'accueil' for lunch.

We exchanged our coupons of various numbers of euros for bananas and fruit tart while we sat and people watched.

The cycling fraternity on the continent is so very different to what you find in the UK. Everybody , young, old, fat, thin are all dressed in colourful outfits regardless of bulgy bits and saggy bits, and are not at all self conscious. There are young boys with expensive bikes dressed like their dads, couples on tandems, and parents towing children in little carts, or if they have no children, the omnipresent small dog.
It helps I suppose that the temperature here is warm enough not to have to wear several layers, just to stop frost bite.

There are pelatons of lean superfit young men all dressed alike, flashing past with a 'tenez la ligne' before they overtake so close that you feel that if you wobble you will have them off their bikes.
But it is the number of much older people cycling that most impressed me, and some of them I would class as obese, but there they were flaunting their wares in clingy lycra and not giving a hoot. Oh to have that confidence!

Back in Verdun at the official welcome site we fortified ourselves with a bottle of wine and some cheese before cycling, maybe a bit erratically, back to hotel for a shower and a rest.

I wonder what I can have for dinner tonight? Just as well we're home on Monday, I could get used to reading menus.

The blip is of Ewen, one of the Edinburgh contingent who manages to look like one of the continental cyclists