I can vouch for France anyway when I read the headline – Extreme heat grips Northern Hemisphere. It is very hot here in France, 36C has been the highest afternoon temperature we have had but what’s most unusual is that it is still extremely hot throughout the night.

We set off early again to avoid as much of the hot sun as possible and cycled 102km from Chalon-sur-Saône to Rochefort sur Nenon.

I’ll bore you with how beautiful the countryside is.

Veloroute 6 is also known as the rivers route. Today the Veloroute first followed the river Saône and later the Canal du Rhone au Rhin. The latter connects the Rhine and the Rhone and thus the North Sea and the Mediterranean.

I smiled at this church in Labruyère. Instead of a cross or something religious on top of the steeple, there is a rooster – well it is one of the emblems of France. Speaking of steeples, they really play a big part in our cycle – a steeple in the distance tells us we are nearing the next village/town, they really are wonderful landmarks for us. And when we get into town, we just follow the steeple for centre ville.

Swans going the same way as us!

The bridge at Dole

When stopped for lunch today we booked a hotel for later in the small village of Rochfort-sur-Nenon which would give us the right distance for the day, (we’re aiming for 100 km per day this week). Plus the Veloroute goes through Rochfort-sur-Nenon so we wouldn’t be adding to the journey. We’re using booking.com for booking many of our accommodations. We decided to call the (very small i.e. seven rooms) hotel directly believing that it’s better for the hotel to get a telephone booking rather than through one of the bookings website. I called and the gentleman, who spoke good English, said the hotel was full.

I then immediately went back to the booking.com site and booked that exact hotel!

Our confirmation said arrive anytime, We arrived at 4pm to see a note – reception didn’t open until 5pm. (Though when I relooked at the confirmation email it said both – arrive anytime and arrive after 5pm!) Nor was there anything else open in the village. We sat on the terrace of the closed bar and played scrabble while we waited, we were very happy to be off the bikes and relaxing.

People at a nearby house spoke to us and said the hotel was now closed and didn’t take guests, this unnerved us a little. After cycling 102 km we did not want to have to cycle a single one more – this was the only accommodation in the village. At 5pm we went to the hotel and the owner was there and checked us in. I later mentioned that someone had said that the hotel was now closed. He asked “who said that – was it a small woman – I bet it was my ex wife – of course we are open”. There’s a lot of big and small politics in France these days!

The hotel had a little of the Fawlty Towers feel to it and though basic it was very clean. And we had a very good dinner in its restaurant, the only restaurant in the village.

Maybe we’ll change tactics tomorrow though and look for somewhere a little bigger than a population of 565.