The day started with a nice breakfast with fresh orange juice and some more petting for Baya, the owners’ cat. We also adapted the route a bit based on the advice of the owner who cycled a lot in the area.
Then we cycled back into town to check if the local bike store has some nice water bottles that we could use with the empty second bottle cages that we mounted in the Netherlands to add to our water carrying capacity for the hotter days ahead. No luck.
Food-wise, we were more lucky, as we ran into the local market where we bought cheese (Comté and Mimolette), lots of delicious cherries, and some peaches for lunch later.
The route out of town took us up a nice climb to a plateau with forest and more wheat fields. I was also happy to have my legs and body back at their usual power – the day of abstinence and lots of sleep helped.
In one of the forests up on the plateau, near Dixmont, we passed a memorial stone for André Dussault, a guerrilla fighter (Maquis) during WW2. He was a sentinel for a small encampment in the woods and was killed, only 21 years of age, when German soldiers launched a surprise attack on the encampment based on information that they “extracted” from another Maquis from the same encampment that got caught. The situations that the war put such very young men in are sobering to imagine.
After descending toward Looze, we cycled through wide-open farmland. We passed some large fields of hemp that smelled nice in the early afternoon sun. Soon after in in Migennes, we crossed a shipping channel and started looking for a place for lunch.
We found a great spot in Seignelay, overlooking the main square of the city. While filling our tummies with cherries, Liz fantasized about converting a nice building near the square into a hip coffee shop.
Not much after lunch, we started climbing into the land where the grapes for the famous Chablis white wine is produced. We deviated a bit from Anne and Reece’s original stop for the night, Vermenton, for the oenological advantages. I know, I know, I just recovered from the wine pairing, and here we are cycling into wine country. But 1-2 glasses of Chablis cannot hurt.
In Beine, we found the winery Goublot-Longhi offering tastings, which, after we explained that it would be difficult to carry wine on the bikes and we likely won’t buy any, would still let us try their Chablis and oak-barrel aged Chablis. The nice lady also explained that all Chablis is made purely from Chardonnay grapes and the differences between Petit Chablis, Chablis, Premier Cru, and Grand Cru (basically the type of soil and how much sun they get). We tried the Chablis first, and it tasted quite sweet to me. When I remarked this to the lady, she said that no, all Chablis is very “vif” (dry, lively) and that all the sun and cycling must have influenced my taste buds (probably true, the Chablis later in town was indeed dry).
We checked into the hotel, showered, and went for probably the best French dinner so far in the Bistrot des Grands Crus (and had a glass of Grand Cru, of course).
(Public) French TV only bought the TV rights for the French World Cup games, so we had to get creative to see the second half of the Serbia Switzerland game. The university VPN and Swiss TV amazingly worked and we enjoyed seeing Switzerland win in the last minutes of the game. Hopp Schwyz!
Total distance/elevation to date: 2392km/14’749m
Rest days: 7
Day 31 Route and Stats
The 1948 Tour 
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