Day 9a: Dammartin to Paris (66km)

The sunlight is streaming through the window when I wake up this morning; the sky is blue and cloudless and it looks promising for a nice day's ride. It's cold, around 8 degrees, but I know (from my ride to dinner last night) that the first thing I get to do today is ride straight up a long hill, so that will warm me up.

Morning sky and planes

My route takes me right under the approach path to Paris' main airport, Charles de Gaulle (CDG). Both runways are in use and there's a constant stream of landing aircraft passing overhead. It's Sunday morning and it's a busy time for arrivals into Paris; there's a plane arriving around every minute. The sky overhead is criss-crossed with contrails. I stop briefly to watch the planes passing low overhead; the magic of 300 tonnes of aluminium being able to float in the air never ceases to impress me, even though as a (private) pilot I understand the aerodynamics behind it. I still find it amazing.

The cyclists are out in force this morning. I guess Sunday is a big cycling day. There are some lone riders, but mostly it's small groups and the occasional large peloton of identically brightly Lycra-clad riders. All the riders are stylishly dressed in brightly coloured Lycra suits; it seems more like the Sunday morning fashion parade, which perhaps for some it is. I notice that the younger riders seen to favour black (with matching bikes) while the older riders tend to go more for the bright colours, although that's a generalisation of course. Clearly the French extend their sense of fashion to cycling apparel and it's a big deal. It strikes me that virtually all the riders are male - the girls are jogging and the boys are riding.

Waiting at a road crossing, I see an old Mercedes approaching, driving quite slowly considering the speed limit in this area. It's a late 1960's model. The couple inside are dressed in their Sunday best; they're going for their Sunday drive I imagine. They look like they may have owned the car since new and they have aged together with the car. I imagine them taking this same Sunday morning drive every week for decades.

Not likely to win the tidy town award

Along the roadside near the villages I pass there is now often a large pile of rubbish, wrecked car parts and so on, indicating that I am getting closer to the less salubrious outskirts of a large city. Paris is getting closer!

The route joins the cycling path along the canal de l'Ourcq. It's teeming with Sunday morning Lycra cyclists. Many are Mamils (Middle-Aged Men In Lycra). As I've already noted, cycling tends to be an overwhelmingly male sport and there's a lot of middle-aged and older riders. Then I realise that I am, in a sense at least, one of them. It's a thought that is a bit sobering, so I put it aside and ride on. I'm not quite ready to consider myself as a Mamil just yet.

Later on the cycle path runs alongside a jogging track. On the bikes are the men and jogging on the path are the women, often in pairs, ponytails swinging in unison above Lycra bums of the sort some people want banned but personally I don't have any problem with at all. At times I find myself riding behind pairs of swinging ponytails and Lycra bums and sometimes it takes me quite a while to ring my bell to alert them to my presence so I can pass.

Approaching Paris - a lovely ride along the Canal de l 'Ourcq

Later the joggers and riders are all on the same track. I ride behind one and clock him at over 18 km/h, not a bad effort! A bit further on, there's a steep climb and he easily overtakes me. I am taken back to a comment a walker made to me on the Camino last year: "When I'm going downhill I'd rather be on a bike but uphill I am glad I'm walking; when you see the faces of those cyclists struggling up the hill, they look so angry."

Metro wagons - I'm really in Paris!

Suddenly I see a metro passing on the tracks beside the path and I realise with a bit of a shock that I am almost in Paris! I've been here many times but I've never cycled into the city and it's a strange feeling. Soon everything is unmistakably Parisian, even though I never do get to see a sign to tell me I've actually entered the city, which is a little disappointing because it's a lost photo opportunity; how often do you get to ride into Paris, having come from Holland?

I'm in Paris now, weaving in and out of traffic like a local. I'm glad it's a Sunday and the traffic is light although the downside is that the pedestrian traffic is heavy making for show progress at times. There's also quite a few people out on the Velib free bikes and they can be very unpredictable. I've stopped to take a picture of a graffiti image on a building. Behind me are three women, from the sound of their thick accents, all tourists. "What do you think the meaning of it is?" asks one. "I don't know. Normally I can understand these things. I'm very intelligent you know. I'm hyper intelligent, but I don't understand that one." The intelligent one turns out to be Argentinian, the other two are Americans. Only in Paris, I think to myself.

Self Portrait in Paris

I'm getting overwhelmed with the many things to see. As I ride along there are so many things to observe and write down: The tramp sleeping in the doorway of a school. Another tramp sitting on a bench, head bowed down, while next to him three Korean tourists are taking pictures of their brightly-coloured shoes on the cobbled street. The woman in a fur-trimmed coat (it's a warm sunny day) and high heels riding a petrol powered scooter (not a motorbike, but one of those platforms on little wheels you stand on).

The trusty steed at Notre Dame

I've stopped at Notre Dame to take a photograph. At the same time I'm eavesdropping on the explanation a tour guide with an American accent is giving his group. He's explaining French history and what caused the revolution and he's doing a pretty good job of making a good story out of it. Then two French guys I happen to be next to start a conversation with me about the Chemin de Compostelle. Obviously they have noticed my scallop shell. "My wife and I did the journey last year" one says. 'It was hard, we did too many kilometres each day. My wife made me do it, we did 148km on the first day. It was crazy." Everywhere you go you come across people who have either made (some of) the journey, out at least know about it.

I am riding to the tourist office (there are several branches in Paris, but only one is open on a Sunday) when a young woman on a bicycle passes and notices my mirror: "Ah c'est géniale!" she exclaims as she rides past me.

The route I am following through Paris becomes a sort of trip down memory lane. First it goes past rue des Ecoles where we first lived when we moved to Paris in 2003. Then I ride past the apartment on Boulevard Brune where we lived when we came to stay in Paris for the first time as a family in 1991. Then suddenly I am riding past the site of the Schlumberger offices where I first worked in the early 1980's. And finally, the friend's place I am staying at tonight is close to the offices in the southern outskirts of the Paris where I worked for 7 years. Lots of reminiscing today.

I lived near here and never realised the significance of the street name