Today, we headed mostly due west into the Burgundy Region of France.  We have not passed many wineries yet, mostly forested areas and lots of farm fields.  The roads were generally quiet with lots of rolling hills.

At one point we crossed this high speed train line.   Unfortunately we missed the train by about 5 minutes.  We heard it before we arrived and got a glimpse of it between the rolling hills.  Even from about a kilometer away, it sounded like a jet airliner and was moving like a bullet.  I have tried to photograph them before but by the time you hear them coming and when you pull out your camera to shoot and image, they are gone!

More quiet roads for you.

As we approached this little town, there were lots of people gathered around the roadside then suddenly a bike race broke out.  This was a pretty serious race with full road closures, lots of motos, race officials in cars, a peloton of at least 150 dudes, and then a caravan of team cars.  I was pretty convinced that we had a serious continental level race happening…… When I got to our hotel in Dijon, I googled up races in this area and studied all the photos I took.  I actually think this is a masters race.  Welcome to France!

We had a nice section of about 10 kilometers of gravel through the forest, this would have made my buddy Tad very happy!  Luckily it had not been raining.

I’m saving this series of images for last.  About half way through the ride, we came across a few kilometers of cultivated trees.  The light was stunning here with the clouds and relatively low sun angle.  Over the course of this section, it took us about an hour to go 3 miles and I ended up shooting about 100 images.  Here are the best of them.