In Search of Pavé - Riding Paris-Roubaix

Oct 24, 2009 02:49





Sometimes I even find the decisions I make concerning the way I do things questionable.

So I'm hanging out in Paris. I have friends in Amsterdam. I email them, asking if I can come visit, they say, "Come 'round." Perfect, since Paris is a hub of transportation options to get to somewhere like Amsterdam. The most obvious being by train - or even take a plane.

I take out a map, I go, "Hmm"... a little and say, "Well, I'll ride a bicycle to Amsterdam, instead". Knowing full well that it is now Fall and Fall means it's cold and bicycle rides of such distances mean, for me, Camping Savauge. Camping Sauvage means simply exhausting oneself of functioning whilst riding a bicycle, to retire to finding a quiet, out of the way patch of secluded land to discretely lay a tent down and snore for a while.

You may also call it, being a complete bum.

And - that's what you must look like: a bum. You're on someone's property, having your way with things, just sleeping as if the world doesn't turn when you're nodding off and then, you just get up, whenever you feel like and keeping on going. It sounds inherently dangerous, but, it isn't. There are secrets, I guess to successful Camping Sauvage.  We will not get into that, in this essay.

The day before I'm supposed to leave, I visit the local camping store. Stores. There's many, as is la mode in Paris, where many different boutiques are established under the same name, since storefronts are just designed that way. I go to the pots 'n pans, stove + fuel magasin for some fuel and the books 'n maps magasin for a map of Northern France -

And what catches my eye? But a guide through the route of Paris-Roubaix!

To the uninitiated, Paris-Roubaix is a one-day professional bicycle race, known to be extremely difficult, since the race follows a route that tries, as hard as possible, to use the sketchiest, oldest cobblestone roads that can be found and is also known in the same circles as a complete joke, not even a race! - for the exact same reasons.

The cobblestone sections are now somewhat well maintained, since there's just not that many any more to be used. A much different story, when the race was first ridden, over 110 years ago. What makes this all the more hard is that it's raced on road bikes - $10,000+ carbon fiber super bikes (these days) and not mountain bikes, of any sort, which would make such terrain castrated.

I'm holding the guide in my hand and I decide to buy it. It sounds like a good adventure, since it fills many of the necessary requirements:

* It's literally, off the beaten path
    * It's not something I need to do
    * I really have no true interest in the subject

The last point needs some explanation.

I like bicycles. Quite a bit. I don't really love bicycle racing. I've done a little bit of it myself, but it's not a passion. I like roads too - but nothing really about cobblestones makes me get up in the morning, to start a new day.

What does spark my interest is having to search for something so benign - a road! A road that may be very old, that's not used very much, that you need a guide, to even find!

The stretches of cobblestones in the Paris-Roubaix race are only dozens of kilometers long, under 50, I'd guess. The entire race is 260 km. What this means, is that what you're looking for, isn't even most of your ride - the cobblestone sections are split up in a few dozen (again, around 30) different sections. It means that there's a lot of things to find and what you find is fairly diminutive.

It comes down to the act of the journey being the most important part, not what's to be found. Like I constantly remind myself, there's nothing I can do, to transport you the places I've seen and more importantly, the feelings I felt, while doing this course - and afterwards, to Amsterdam.

What follows, though, is a small photo essay on what I did find, as well as a few notes of my travels.

My ride for this adventure was going to be my trusty Surly Cross Check, known to me as, Marserena III. What makes this somewhat interesting is that the bike is not set up with multiple gears - I had basically just one. One is fine on a beach cruiser, but for touring, well, I've never done it before. Things get a little problematic when you face something like a hill. But going to Amsterdam, I really wasn't expecting much of that, so - whatever.

When I was planning on writing this all out, I was going to emphasize the components being used, as single speed and fixed geared bicycles are certainly in style. Touring on such a beast, mostly used either on an actual vélodrome, or as city bike seemed to me, as quite the hipster thing to do - we could even coin the term Hipster Touring for such a setup, but we run into one impassible problem:

If you're that much of a hipster to be touring with a single speed/fixed gear bike (fashionable bike, in other words), you wouldn't have the interest in actually pursuing the tour at all, since there's nothing really ironic about spending so much time to get something done. In the end, it's just riding a bike, once again. End of story.

I left Paris on Tuesday, around 9:30...ish. Much later than I wanted to. I asked my ever-generous host, which way out of Paris and she told me to take, N17, which turns into D117, otherwise known as La Route de Flandre.

Basically translated to, "How to get to Belgium"

Since we're on the subject of, "Roads", one must think about the history of this little path, how/when it started and the changes it has gone through, since its inception.

The route, sucked.

Construction all the way to Compiègne - the contemporary start of Paris-Roubaix. Construction was partnered with fairly heavy traffic and modifications needed to my route, since the construction literally closed the road itself and I had to scramble to find alternative ways to get to Compiègne.



This is my guidebook. The sections of the route (red) that are dashed are the parts that are cobblestone. The time it took to finish the ride to Roubaix is quiet extended - as you can see from this page. The race route isn't straight, it turns all over the place. It also doesn't follow the main routes. This page shows just the start of the route - it gets worse, the closer you get to Roubaix. A good part of one day was spent in the same 10 square kilometers.




Hôtel de Ville, Compiègne. This is our starting line.




Even though I made it to Compiègne by the first day, and started the Paris-Roubaix route shortly after, I did not hit any pavé the first day.

To give you an idea on the speed I'm moving, I can generally cover 100 - 200km/day. 200km is sincerely pushing it, since there's just so much sunlight, I'm on a bike that only has one gear and I'm packing some serious baggage. As well as the camping gear, clothes, toiletries, camping food/stove, I brought two cameras, many books (mostly French books) and a MacBook Pro.

Bum, indeed.

The route from Paris to Roubaix is over 320km. It took me three days to cover it - once I hit the Belgium border, I kept going.

From Roubaix, Amsterdam is another ~270km. I did this in two more days. This, of course, does not take in the countless times I got lost trying to find these small patches of cobbles.

So, I did about 100 miles/day for 5 consecutive days. If you map this route, you'll find that it's generally a lot less in distance than what I'm saying. Your mapping will not take into consideration the Paris-Roubaix route (twisting) and my wanderings (many).



Secteur pavé #26 de Quiévy à Saint-Python



Sectuer pavé #25



"Pedestrian Path"

The guide I got was actually about walking the Paris-Roubaix route and doing so, in about nine days. I couldn't imagine something more boring.






Taking a break from riding on Day #2. I was awaiting a pizza being baked in a van in a random parking lot, in a random town, near Secteur #21 in Verchain-Maugré. The pizza was OK and I kept riding, well after midnight - probably until 2:00 am, or so.

This would have been extremely dangerous, but the route followed small, local roads, with little or no traffic. The few larger roads I was forced on all seem to have bike lanes. Appreciated.

Funny things happen on the pavés during the night. This is relatively flat country and these are relatively unused roads. Sometimes, you find a car, parked on it, for what seems, no reason. I got up close to some of these cars, only to find two teenage heads bobbing up from the back seat. Cracked me up.



Horses near Secteur #20 in Quérenaing. Thought I'd try the, "I have some food in my mounth fake-out"



Success!



Secteur pavé #20



Secteur pavé #17 - la trouée d'Arenberg

The nights were very cold.



Secteur pavé #16 - de Wallers à pont Gibus, à Hélesmes

Camped right off of the pavé. Woke up very very cold. Notice the frost on the ground.



Secteur pavé #15: de Hornaing à Wandignies-Hamage

French towns next to nuclear power plants always seem excruciatingly depressing.



Secteur pavé #7



Secteur pavé #4 le carrefour de l'Arbre


Secteur pavé #3 de Gruson

Another short day was drawing to a close. Still, a few hours to the finish and well away from Amsterdam



Secteur pavé #2 de Hem



Secteur pavé #1 Roubaix Espace Charles-Crupelandt

The last piece of pavé is actually in between the two sides of l'avenue Alfred Motte. That big arrow points to the entrance to the velodrome in Roubaix - the current finish of Paris-Roubaix. Being after 21:00, the velodrome was certainly not open, so that was the end of my little trek for Paris-Roubaix.

I still had the problem of getting to Amsterdam. In the next few days. And I mean days: two, at maximum. Pushing ahead.



What Belgium looks like, initially.

Belgium was somewhat of a blur - I didn't take many pictures. It was somewhat forgettable. I sauvaged in a very small patch of wooded land, next to a cow pasture and, as I realized when light hit in the morning, someone's back yard. Whoops. There's not much free land left. Another depressing thought. Whatever really - another notch in the, "countries I've visited" headboard.

Amsterdam was reached around 22:30, on Saturday Night (I initially left on Tuesday, 930am). I stayed only till Monday and then off to the small city of Nijmegen.

You'd think that Amsterdam would be a perfect city to be a flâneur in - and you'd be right, but I never really got myself together to take too many pictures.

Actually, you may just want to give me (Maybe I mean, I may want to give myself) a break: I just spend three days searching for, and photographing, roads. Talk about the ultimate flâneurusation. In Amsterdam, I was more interested in hanging out with my friends and their child, resting and recovering from a marathon ride through some backwater towns and generally, well, eating. More pictures does not necessarily mean better. And, I'll come back.

Autoportrait at the FOAM museum:




Well, the bathroom, anyways. Good exhibits. The joke is that it's a photography museum and I have a photograph in it. Ha ha.

I traveled to Nijmegen after Amsterdam - this time, by train. I'm not comfortable taking trains anywhere yet - they seem like such a weird idea. It's the American upbringing I guess. I went to Nijmegen to meet someone I met in New Zealand in the spring. She had some city bikes and we went for a bike ride through the countryside,




My Friend, and I




My Friend:




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