Day 2 on the Avenue Verte: 65 hilly miles to Gournay-en-Bray

The Avenue Verte turned decidedly rural on our second day as we continued our bicycle ride from Paris to London.

But first we had to reach Cergy. It’s maybe 6 or 7 miles past Conflans-Saint-Honorine, just not all paved. This university town might be an alternate overnight stop as long as you have the energy for a climb at the end of the day.

It’s also where you choose which of the two French options you want: along the Epte Valley in Normandy or the Oise Valley in Picardy.

We picked the Epte, which shortened our journey by about 40 miles. Had we picked the Oise, we would have soon biked through the town where Vincent Van Gogh killed himself. Later we would have gone through Beauvais, the town where Ryanair flights to Paris land.

After Cergy, we’re almost instantly in the Vexis naural regional park and stay there for the next 20 or so miles. The scenery is lovely and the hills are gently rolling … wait, what’s this? That’s part of the route?

On the other hand, there’s this fancy chateau with rooms for apparently under $200 a night. Wonder how they feel about bicycles?

But then I started getting hungry. The villages — if we even go through them — are small. Could I find something to eat?

The golf course with a restaurant in its own chateau? That looked too fancy. Google flagged another place — also fancy. If it was even open.

I was starting to get nervous … would we find anything before a restaurant closed for that gap between lunch and dinner? Thankfully we had turned onto a rail-trail in Bray-et-Lu so it was easy riding. But why has no one thought to put up signs on the trail to advertise their restaurant a handful of kilometers away?

Finally! Nearly 33 mile into our day, in Chateau-sur-Epte, a village of about 1,200 people, we found L’Etoile de Marrakech, a Moroccan restaurant about a block off the trail that had only opened two months earlier. That delicious lamb tagine fueled me for the second half of the ride!

Wait, what was that bus I could see going by with service to Vernon? Were we really that close to the Seine and Monet’s gardens? We had just biked the Seine a Velo route, and I had not realized that it’s about 9 miles and one modest-looking hill from Bray-et-Lu to Giverny. Maybe 13 miles from our lunch spot. A side trip to consider if you’re just on the Avenue Verte? Just know that there’s no place to store luggage at Giverny and that tickets to the garden sell out.

And what we hadn’t found a restaurant that was open? I’d have been famished by the time we reached Gisors, 9 miles further up the road. That’s a real town so plenty of choices there. Lesson learned: have a good breakfast! What can I say? I was relying on bakery items we’d picked up the night before thanks to my obsession with the Too Good To Go app.

Soon after Gisors … oh that one-mile climb. And then more climbing, just not as steep, for another four.

We’ve been seeing a few signs for Gites de France rentals — the longstanding French precursor to AirBnb and VRBO. This one, a 18th -century farmhouse in Amecourt, catches my eye just before we need to take shelter from a quick cloudburst.

An excuse to eat the croissant loaf, the last of the Too Good to Go bag from the night before.

Which raises another food question. With all of these rural gites, where do you get dinner when you’re on a bike?

Now we’re going downhill and then biking past fields until we reach Saint-Germer-de-Fly, where the Avenue Verte’s two options rejoin. What a beautiful old abbey and a cute village! There’s even a hotel with a restaurant. If we didn’t have a room booked at a hotel in Gournay-en-Bray, I’d be tempted.

And tourist information! Like everywhere else we have been biking in France, it’s such a pleasure to walk in and ask about area bike routes, knowing you will be offered several brochures with maps. Even a hefty one for the Avenue Verte!

Now we have only a half-dozen or so miles to go, much of it along another relaxing and flat rail trail. A detour to a supermarket to stock up on essentials like chocolate, cheese and pate, a ride through the center of town, and we reach our bike-friendly hotel on the outskirts of town just as it starts raining again. Bikes in basement (no shortage of bike racks there!), and we are soon eating in the hotel’s Indian restaurant.

Did you miss the Day 1 trip report? It’s here.