Day 34 - Beauvais to Amiens - ride total 2,684 k, 17,632 m

24 km's of today's ride was on a superb rail trail with a mostly -1% gradient and shrouded with mature trees with the undergrowth still damp from the recent rain - this meant we were out of the glare of the sun and covered in shade with a temperature that was only mid twenties as opposed to 30 out in the open. The boys found a couple of coffee shops however we needed to wait till we got to Amiens at midday to find a reasonable Boulangeraie.

I was quite pleased with myself today as I had a lovely conversation completely in French with a young French woman who was walking her dog on the trail trail. We both understood each other without the need to get out Google translate. Here is the conversation word for word. Me - "Bonjour Madam, du velo". Her reply "Merci". The conversation then ended with and exchange of smiles and a wave. 

A simple everyday translation is something along this line. Me - *Gidday, two more bikes coming". Her reply *Cheers*. 

As I say I felt pretty pleased with myself. 

Without wanting to bang on about it but again we had a challenge locating our apartment. You would think 1 Etage 134 Rue Jean Honoroe would be easy enough to find and yes our navigation system lead us right to where it should be - but ut wasn't. Numbers, 130, 132 and across the intersetcion there was number 136, but no 134 to be seen. Peter, as Peter does hits up a conversation with "Thomas" the Frenchman from a few doors down who comes back to the corner and confirms there is no 134!

Anyhow, long story short, after another Frenchman had spoken with the apartment owner on Stephen's phone we were given another address 2 km's away of another apartment and the good news is this one is on the ground floor!

So there was a bit of fluffing around yet again, but as per usual we are not still out on the street looking for a bridge that is not already booked out to sleep under - and we have a good roomy two bedroom apartment with full kitchen and our own outdoor courtyard - all very good as we have decided to spend two nights here to allow time for the Aussies to go and visit the huge Australian war cemetary that Peter and I visited on our 2018 ride - I'll spend the day exploring Amiens.

On the horizon from last night's apartment we saw a huge number of wind turbines and today we got to ride up to and through them - they are massive in size and there were simply too many to try to count, The good thing was from our point of view only a couple of them were turning around quite slowly and the rest were sitting idle. The last thing we want to see are wind turbines facing away from us spinning around at a great rate of knots as that means only one thing - it would be a headwind for us. The other alternative, of them facing us, as we are riding to them of course  means we would be flying along with a good backwind - as nice as that would be I was equally as happy with there being no wind today to speak of.

I've been looking out for an opportunity to photograph a poppy/s against a backdrop of standing golden wheat and today quite by accident as I stopped to take a pic of the wind turbines as I was about to get underway again there beside me were some poppys. Not sure yet if I've got the pic I'm after but at least I've got a couple of pics.