Well if we thought Monday was hard,yesterday turned out to be the real challenge. 93 miles of grinding ups and downs. We left the hotel shortly after 9am and spent most of the day travelling through the most beautiful countryside (that was the upside).

We had, admittedly, become deeply suspicious when the lady at the restaurant on monday evening had declared that the road to St Dizier was a lovley flat ride. As that’s certainly not what our maps said. Was there another St Dizier indeed. NON – It’s just that Monsieur Barrett felt like giving us all a special birthday treat so took us the scenice route – and scenic and hilly it was. We lost count by mid morning. We still felt generous enough by lunch time to present him with a birthday cake however.

Lunch was halfway up a hill and boy were we ready for it!

The post lunch session turned out to be very hard work with several of us flagging (baguettes weighing rather heavy!) But we had a joyous lift midway when the Coopers reached their THOUSAND mile point since leaving Olympia. Congratulations to them. What a feat.

After a lovely mid afternoon coffee and icecream stop it was one final push up a monster and then downhill all the way to St Dizier.

70 miles today, mainly flat. Yippeee.