Seurre Along Euro Velo 6

After a 1 hour drive in the car we park near a small harbour full of boats, prepare ourselves and our bikes and then set off along the edge of the river, past the town and a group of people setting up a fishing competition.

We are following a cycle track and it is quiet. Clouds cover the sky and there is a slight chill in the air, but it’s early and the day will heat up.

We see some swans on the opposite side of the wide river. What a contrast their white feathers are against the smooth dark water. We see another preening on an island edge.

I hear some frogs and smile.

‘It must be a lake,’ he says and we cycle on.

The ‘lake’ is long and not a lake at all. It is a river.

How can this be? We’ve not crossed a bridge and the river is too large to have gone underground.

Did the pesky bursts of wind pick us up and carry us across without us noticing? There have been a few small tornadoes in the region and the sky is showering us with small drops of rain to keep us cool as the day heats up!

Wait. The river is now on our right.

Ah. Two rivers. And a photo opportunity. 

The cycle track winds through woodlands full of wildflowers, birds, and swarms of tiny flies that feel like rain on my arms until I look and see them trapped in the hairs. Martin catches more than me.

‘Could this be an old railway?’ I ask martin.

‘It could be.’

We continue on and are soon convinced it isn’t an old railway as there are a few sharp corners and swooping dips.

It’s even quieter on this track than the EV6. No fishermen here.

I’m happy to have it to ourselves as we experiment with taking videos and photos from different angles.

I wonder if we missed some important news. It’s a Sunday and usually these types of tracks are buzzing with people, but not today.

Even the roads through villages are quiet. Is there a new quarantine we don’t know about? But that can’t be it as the café was full of locals and the town quite busy.

Maybe it is the weather forecast that has put people off venturing out. The skies are cloudy and every so often they drop their heavy load, but only twice do we need to stop and put on our raincoats.

My bike makes a strange noise, but I think its debris picked up from the tracks and we continue.

‘Oh look.’ Martin points to an information board. ‘It is an official cycle route.’

We venture out of the woods and through fields of crops, sunflower, corn, hemp, and rapeseed and then as we swoop around a bend there is a troll in the field next to us.

An old, gnarled, tree stump, with gaping holes and tufts of greenery on the top. I stop and walk closer to take a photo and smell blackcurrants. Fields of blackcurrant bushes packed so tight I wonder how they harvest the berries when they are ready to be picked. Not by hand like the bushes in our garden, I guess.

Back on my bike we climb a short hill, so rare on this trip its quite a shock to our bodies, and at the top is a view. Not of mountains and snow but still beautiful. There are fields of crops stretching far into the distance, with clumps of trees dotted across the landscape. We see a group of walkers enjoying a quick break. Ah, so not everyone has stayed inside today.

After cycling through a couple of villages with grand manor houses, we are back in the woods. All the villages we have passed through have been clean, tidy, and well kept. We cycle alongside one manor house and pass a weir. There is no sign of a mill though, not even a ruin, but the weir is pretty, a waterfall of sorts, rare to find in the flatlands.

And then as we cross a road in a village something lands on my nose and hugs it tight. I think it is a bee and pull over, calling to Martin. I really don’t fancy being stung on the nose.



It’s not a bee, its bird poo, a large dollop of poo on my nose. What a shot. What a large splat of luck. I swear I hear the birds laughing.

I wipe my nose and we turn into the woods again.

There are lots of buzzards circling and calling above us. One flies close to us and lands on a wood pile. We are puzzled by the size of its beak until we get closer and realise it has something in its beak. It watches us as we pass by. 

We grin, looking up at the green branches above us.



Soon we are out of the woods and cycling through villages again when our stomachs rumble and it starts to rain. We stop and have a picnic under the shelter of a small building next to a sports pitch. The light rain stops, and we eat with satisfaction not aware of the strength of our hunger until we started eating.

We may not be climbing mountains, but we are clocking up the kilometres and our picnic is demolished quickly. Food always tastes so good on a cycle ride.

We don’t linger as clouds are building up again. Our legs get back into cycling stride and we pass through more quiet, clean, villages until we cross a bridge and are back in Suerre.

Eighty kilometres cycled and we could’ve carried on.

It’s so different cycling the flat lands to cycling in the mountain. More relaxing and a passing of time than breath-taking and exhilarating.

We like both.

The mix of canal, riverside, villages, farmlands, and woodlands today has been fun and the cycleways were easy to ride.