It was a good day: sunny but not too hot, mostly flat roads, and much more scenic—or as we fluent French speakers like to say, “très jolie.” That’s largely because I spent most of the day cycling along the Doubs River through a beautiful valley, rather than beside canals.
I made a small detour to Besançon, birthplace of Victor Hugo, whose books I read in my adolescent years.
As I continued along EuroVelo 6, I saw many cyclists going both directions. At some point, I got tired of saying “Bonjour!” and downgraded to just a nod… and eventually, a flick of the wrist on the handlebar did the trick.
Today was supposed to be a short-ish ride—“just” ninety kilometers—but somewhere along the way I decided to extend it. I ended up in Montbéliard, 25 km further. It’ll cut that much off tomorrow’s ride, so no regrets. The only issue: my left knee started acting up. By the time I stopped, it was fairly inflamed. I might have accidentally raised my saddle too high, which is known to cause that kind of pain. Tomorrow I’ll lower it slightly and hope it helps—I still have three cycling days ahead, with around 250 km left to go.
Montbéliard is a quaint little town—or maybe not so little, but I only saw the old center. There are plenty of shops and cafés open, which was a nice contrast to, say, Montbard, which felt like a ghost town at the same time of day.
Since I want to leave very early tomorrow to avoid the rising heat, and camping always takes me at least an hour and a half to pack up, I booked an Airbnb. Or maybe I just needed an excuse. Either way, tomorrow I cross into another country: Switzerland. I haven’t been there in years.
Today in numbers:
119 km – distance cycled
1397–1793 – Montbéliard belonged to the House of Württemberg (now part of Germany), making it a Lutheran-Protestant stronghold in Catholic France
1810 – the Peugeot family began manufacturing steel goods here—everything from saw blades and coffee grinders to crinolines
1769 – birth of Georges Cuvier, a native of Montbéliard and a founding figure in comparative anatomy and paleontology