A Tale Of 2 Cities – Metz & Nancy

Conscious of time and not able to do the long days I used to and also to stop giving myself a hard time about how far or not I have travelled I have rejigged my route. I have also changed my route so that it includes The Saint Bernard Pass – the Via Francigena walking route takes in the The Saint Bernard Pass – the Eurovolo 5 cycling route takes in a pass further to the east – based on my hill fitness at the moment it is debatable if I can cycle up either pass but I have opted to give the Saint Bernard Pass a go as I’d like to see the museum near the top. So I have abandoned the EV5 at the present time and taking a more direct route to Lucca where I’m meeting my Dad for a few days on the 13th of September.

Leaving Luxembourg – a good network of paths south but largely not signed so lots of stop starts to check the map so slow progress despite being on mostly easy ground and to be honest a bit of a pain in the ass at times. Then I finally met The Moselle River and the well marked V50 / La Voie Bleue route – well mostly well signed until I missed a junction somewhere and the only sign was along the lines of “peas in season this way”.

As well as well marked it was lovely easy cycling and I was starting to see more cycle tourists including 2 Danish girls on there first bike tour and had cycled from Denmark, using river and canal routes and generally as flat as possible – why didn’t think of that?

A few views along the River, including The Loch Ness Monster!

I hadn’t planned on stopping at Metz but there was campsite right on the bank of the river – I just needed to cross the bridge to the other side and at 3.30 I stopped for the day and pitched my tent along with a number of other tourers – 2 girls from Germany on their first bike tour who had just arrived by train and were going to cycle home and a German fellow who was cycling from Luxembourg to Lyon, amongst others – good to know I’m not the only nutter about.

Tent up and showered and wasn’t sure if I could be bothered going for a wander around the town but it was only 5pm and very glad I did – Metz is a lovely city with a nice atmosphere and felt quite compact and easy to see lots of stuff to and I went a bit trigger happy taking photos. The Cathedral was beautiful – grey bricked high vaulted ceiling that you would expect it to make it feel cold but had a nice warm air to it that I can only put down to the lovely glow coming from the many stained glass windows. There was also a live gig somewhere which I could listen to from the campsite and by time I got tucked into my sleeping bag a huge fireworks display went off – I couldn’t see them but I could certainly hear them and some of the dogs on the campsite and the local heron didn’t seem too happy about it.

Next morning I was the first of the cyclists up and away, partly because I don’t tend to eat breakfast until I’ve got a few miles done. I remembered that I hadn’t paid – I thought it strange that that they asked you to pay when you leave and what if walkers and cyclists did a runner?? – cars, caravans etc can’t because they need the barrier raised – not that I was planning on doing a runner but Clipboard Guy made sure I didn’t – if you’ve ever watched the film Chalet Girl you’ll know what I mean. Another good campsite and only cost £10.98 for the night.

Continuing along Moselle – zigzaging across river at various points. Dry when I left the campsite but soon it began to drizzle – jacket on / jacket off kinda of morning and I did wonder what possessed me to go with lightweight water resistant rather than waterproof but as I never zipped it up it wasn’t going to keep me dry anyway.

At some point I caught up with John, a cyclist from the Netherlands – he had started in the south of the Netherlands and was aiming for Lyon – we cycled together for a couple of hours and blethered about the usual stuff: family, work, cycle tours, etc. We seemed to be a similar pace on the flat, which we were most of the time, but when the canal towpath came to a road which it did quite frequently there was often a short but slightly steep up to get to the road, combined with making sure there were no cars coming, and often combined with a quick left or right turn or vice versa if the tow path changed from one bank of the river to the other – it quickly became apparent that John was much more adept at this than me, especially when the path took a sharp right turn and uphill, pretty much turning back on itself and also becoming narrower – John went up it no bother at all while I ended up getting off the bike and pushing Phil up – I learnt a new French word while watching the Tour de France on ITV4 (how am going to be able to watch it next year?? but that’s going off topic) – the word is “Souplesse” which is kind of how well someone handles the bike – it definitely doesn’t describe me.

Near a town called Epinal John continued south along the bike route while I made a detour to find food – at this point I checked the map to see there was a message from Karen saying the tracker wasn’t working – for some reason the record button seems to have been un-ticked so there is a very straight line between Metz and Epinal making it look like I’ve jumped on a train – I didn’t!

About 10k outside the city of Nancy and still on the Moselle River, there must have been a recent insect hatching – there was a solid cloud of wee beasties for about a kilometer and then intermittent clouds of them after that – I litterally cycled with my head down so that my face wasn’t getting covered in beasties – they weren’t big but it sounded like rain as hit they off my helmet – luckily they didn’t seem to be of the stinging variety – I was very surprised when took my helmet off, that it wasn’t covered in a coating of dead beasties.

I was forced to stop about a kilometer before I got to the wee hotel in Nancy I’d booked for the night I could smell waffles or doughnuts – certainly something sugary and tasty and just round the corner there was a stall, selling waffles and icecream and it would have been rude not to….

I couldn’t get into the hotel before 4pm – it was just little and not manned all the time. It was just off the main “Stanislas” square in Nancy so I abandoned Phil and all my belongings and jumped on the touristic choo choo train that was about to depart. I did a similar train trip in Luxembourg and it was geared for children and adults and was fun and interesting – the one in Nancy was geared for adults and I felt overloaded with too much information and have to confess to nodding off a few times – it did give me a chance to get my bearings though.

At 4pm I went to the hotel to get checked in and there were 2 older ladies from Belgium also waiting to get in but the door was locked – I tried phoning and we could hear it ringing but nobody picked up – I understood enough of the message in that it was advising us to phone a different number but despite listening to the message 3 times my french wasn’t quick enough to get the whole number so I emailed instead and a fellow on a bike appeared not much later to let us in and he was lovely and got everyone’s room sorted – mine was pokey with a tiny wee shower room but was clean tidy and at £43 and 2 minutes walk from the square it was perfect for me and Phil was locked up safely downstairs (although I’m not sure being chained up to the firecescape ladder ticked health & safety box but I was happy).

Glad I took the time to see Nancy – interesting city with great architecture but felt a bit more spread out than Metz and didn’t have the same vibe. It did have some lovely gardens though and I found a wee bar in the castle gate wall playing jazz music. If I had to choose one, I’d definitely go back to Metz.

Poured with rain during the night and at some point the electric cut out but it didn’t affect my stay and legs were fresh and ready for the next bit of bike ride.