After the long day yesterday and the ridiculous amounts of meat for dinner last night, we slept very well and long in the chateau (we were also the only ones staying the night, it is mostly used for weddings). After a hearty breakfast with croissants, a chausson aux pommes (merci Délphine!), and, of course, a pain au chocolat, we set out to rejoin EuroVelo 3 along the Canal de la Sambre à l’Oise, a shipping canal. The weather was also looking to be great today.
After yesterday, we routed a short 61km route to Compiègne where we had booked a guest house in advance. With the nice, flat cycling path along the canal, we made very good progress so that we took a little detour in Noyon to check out a bike store for some additional gear. The store did not have what we wanted, so we went back to the canal, where we got conflicting info from our planned route and the sign for EuroVelo 3 that was pointing away from the canal. We insisted on our route, and landed on another dirt road with high grass. We used the opportunity of being a bit more remote along the canal for a great picnic lunch.
So we can still improve on checking road conditions while routing. And we should probably trust the EuroVelo 3 signs more than the route we are following that we found online from a third party.
And that is what we did for the remainder of the route: After lunch, we decided to switch to freestyle road routing instead of the bumpy dirt road along the canal. On the first road we took, we randomly ran into EuroVelo 3 signs, which we followed all the way to Compiègne. And the official EuroVelo 3 took us to some great roads, see the first picture above.
Already at 16.00, we arrived in town where we still had to wait until 17.00 to check in. No problem with ice cream on a nice town square, though! After a shower, we went to a nice bistro for a great, non-meat-heavy dinner and then went back to watch the final 30 minutes of Portugal vs. Spain in the world cup. Pretty amazing goal by Ronaldo for the 3-3 tie!
Total distance/elevation to date: 2064km/12’158m
Rest days: 5
Day 26 Route and Stats
The 1948 Tour 
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