Reims

This weekend Rob came to visit me and we decided to do an outing to the champagne region of France. We booked a train to Reims for Saturday morning and to come back Saturday night. Unfortunately we got off to a rocky start because we both slept through our alarms. We quickly tried to make it to the train on time but to no avail, we missed it. We debated about calling it quits, but we decided to rebook and we got into Reims around noon. We quickly got our bike rentals and hung out by the cathedral.

After spending 20 or so minutes there we decided to hit the road. We booked a short wine tour at one of the vineyards outside of the city. Google maps said it was 25km, so we had 2.5 hours to get there, more than enough time.............. so I thought. The beginning of our journey was quite pleasant.

But then things got a bit sketchy. Google maps took us on pure mountain bike trails through the middle of the park. We did not have mountain bikes, but very heavy road bikes with front suspension. It ended up taking us 2.5 hours non stop to get to the vineyard, so we were quite worried about making our train on the way home. We were also quite tired and thirsty when we arrived at the vineyard.

We then did the tour.

Pinot Noir

After the tour we slammed our wine tasting so we could get back on the road to catch our train. We had 3 hours but we were worried. We ended up trying to stay on a major road this time, even if it added an extra 8km to our route. We stopped at a small shop to buy a bunch of sugary snacks as we had not eaten lunch and were certainly going to bonk without it.

We ended up doing the 33km in 1:45 which was good time. Overall it wasn't a crazy amount of biking for any cyclist, but A) we aren't cyclists, B) we mountain biked a significant chunk of it, C) The bikes were far from high performance road bikes D) we were wearing khakis and polos.

Here is a picture of us arriving back into the city.

All in all it was 4:15 on a bike, which was alot, but it was an incredible way to see the region. When we got back to Paris we went to an indian restaurant and we had a feast. It was a great trip.