The good weather finally broke this evening with an almighty thunderstorm here in the City of Metz, Lorraine, in north-east France. Luckily, Bob and Mark had arrived half an hour earlier and thereby escaped the deluge - if not the sunburn of the day's cycling.
With almost 80 miles covered today, after the noise of Florenville's early morning disco, the boys escaped to the silence of Villers-devant-Orval and its two abbeys.
Abbaye d'Orval
Soon after midday they left Belgium for the final time and headed south-east into France and Lorraine - one of the country's 'lost' regions following the Franco-Prussian War in the 1880's (not a lot of people know that).
This is a sparsely populated agricultural area and the villages and small towns often have no shop or bar. Banks and hairdressers of course, but in Mercy-le-Bas there was no mercy on offer in the form of cold drinks. Somewhere after Landres Bob sustained a slow puncture in his rear tyre, fixed outside the Boulangerie-Cafe in St Privat-la-Montagne. The baker took pity on the dynamic duo and as he closed up shop at 7pm, gave them each a fully filled baguette. Great 3 mile downhill section into Metz and once inside their two star hotel, Bob and Mark tucked into their freebie meal. Well, very little helps!
Bob mends a puncture
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