Randonnée!

If Mr Perkins can be woken from his slumber tomorrow, today would be our last full day in Paris for a time, so we thought we should spend it tidying up, doing odd jobs and generally getting ready for what will be the beginning of another few months of steady travel.

Immediately after that we thought that a few hundred metres from where we are moored, the Paris Rando was about to start and since we didn't feel like doing any of those things anyway, what better way to gently  round off our morning, and in fact our time in Paris, than to have one last intimate stroll through its streets of Paris, thoughtfully closed for the day along a twelve kilometre circuit.   

The Rando is an interesting, completely non competitive event.  A walking course weaving its way in a loop through twelve kilometres of roads, bridges, parkland and everything in between.   Maps and information about the route are provided, as are apples, caps and bottled water.  The roads are closed for the morning, and the whole event is gently managed to ensure that as many people as possible will get to the finish, and to make sure that no one gets lonely along the way, the circuit is shared with thirty thousand others who start and finish as nearly as possible to the same time.

We started somewhere in the third ten thousand as far as we could tell, and even though the first kilometre was a little like walking through sideshow alley on people's day, once we could assume our normal comfortable walking pace we were clearly travelling faster than many.  So fast were we travelling, that by the half way mark we were very close to the front, although that is no indication of any sort of athletic superiority as among our midst was a blind person, a girl in high heels, and a donkey.

Returning to the boat completely enthused and invigorated, we immediately set about doing nothing at all, before heading off to a long and arduous evening with Joan and Peter, swapping stories we'd swapped before, which presumably means we now have our old ones to tell again.

Tomorrow we must away, first thing!