Day 30 - Epernay to Reims

Avenue de Champagne is the place to have your "House" if you are a Champagne label as we found out with our earlu Saturday morning departure from Eperany here in the heart of Champagne country. As we rode up the Avenue one label after another had their House there and at the bottom of the Avenue is an information Board giving the details of the history of the Avenue/Region since the 18th centuary - the Houses are beautiful as is the Avenue. Here there is 110 km"s of tunnells that contain over 200 million bottles of Champagne! Once we left Eeprnay we were riding through vineyards on both sides of the road at times and even for a non-drinker as I am, I still recognised many of the Labels. The vineyards are quite different to ours at home in that the vines are smaller and the rows are a lot closer together so clearly they are still reliant on a ot of manual labour for work out in the vineyards, We stopped at a town with a lovely bakery for morning tea and then rode on in to Reims beside the canal for about 12 km's. As we entered Reims we detoured off the canal path and went to Veuve Clicquot for lunch. I had to go there as many years ago I won a very large bottle of their Champagne but didn't realise the significance (or cost) until some friends pointed it out to me. Dare I say it but at that point I had to own up to having a second bottle of it in my wine rack! I certainly didn't buy it but had no idea who had given it to me! So after that little slip up on my part all those years ago I had to make a point of visiting the winery. Why is it, at flash places like this here and at home where you could spend a lot of money on a quality wine and have the choice of many different vintages to choose from that they completely ignore the non drinkers and the only juice available is crap? I just don't get that. We then popped into the centre of Reims as my GoPro battery has stopped getting recharged and I thought I might try for a new battery but didn't have any luck getting one. Then it was on to our Formula One (F1) hotel and tonight I've drawn the short straw and have my own room.

Comments

  1. Anonymous24 July 2024 at 21:18

    Now that's a posh day touring, I had very enjoyable long weekend in Epernay in about 1990. Great pics!

    ReplyDelete

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