Next Sunday I got a "bike": it can be made to leave earlier than the boat. And the river-bank is more interesting than the middle-stream.
From Rouen to Sahurs the right bank of the Seine is bulwarked by a traversing limestone ridge, clothed with forest. But the river-side is escarped and precipitous, thrusting out its whiteness beneath the forest crest and, as a foil, casting up the châteaux and splendid _maisons_ on the river level, with their embracing gardens and orchards.
This rich accumulation of colour--deep forest, gleaming cliff-side, red roof, grey mellow wall, and blooming garden and orchard, and white river road--is unforgettable, and perhaps unexcelled. Nothing finer you'll see in the whole Rhône Valley; and that is a bold saying.
The especial charm of a cycle is that you can stop and look. You can gaze as long as you like (as long as is consistent with the fact that Sunny Jim is at the other end of the journey) at this quaint half-timbered, gable-crowded _maison_ standing in its graceful poplar-grove; at the sweet provincial youngsters playing on the road. You can lay up your machine and enter the rambling Normandy café squatting on the river-bank, with its groups of blue-clad soldiers _en permission_ making the most of things with the bloused and pantalooned civilians and with their cider (_cidre_ is the national drink of Normandy, as wine is of most other provinces) and you are greeted, in such a house, with the delicious open French friendliness which is so entrancing (by contrast) to most Englishmen. After their own national reticence, this is pleasant beyond description. Of some it is the undoing. The soldiers greet you, and you are adamantine if you don't sit at their table rather than alone. The girl who serves welcomes you like a brother. Quite sorry you are, at rising, you never came here before.... You push on with your wheel. On the slopes of the other bank they are getting in the harvest on the edge of the wood--some old men and many women and a handful of soldiers on leave who have forgotten the trenches.
There are soldiers with their families fishing on the bank beside you at intervals. You stop to talk to these. You can't resist sitting with them for a spell and kissing the little girls who nestle up. The basket that contains other things than bait and the catch is opened; you're a villain if you don't sip from that yellow bottle and take some bread and a handful of cherries....