Day 5 Soissons to Chalons en Champagne

I've always thought that cycling might be the key to happiness, I was having serious doubts about this during the first days of the tour but now we are all fit and working again I'm sold. We've started getting up at disgusting hours (5am) to miss the heat of the day. Spent most of the day winding through the vines in Champagne, slept in a park by a river whilst the washing dried (we looked like a right bunch of old tramps), all very nice. We are staying in Formula one's throughout France, they are all in business parks on the edge of town, we are far too tired most days to make it into town in the evenings. Last night we ate at an amazing place, from the outside it looked like a little chef, inside it was a temple to high modernism (it looked like a cross between Prove's maison tropicale and the set of Tati's Playtime - industrial design here has style). Through my rose tinted cycle specs I've started to fetishise the concrete jungle of the business park, we are off to drink champagne there now.

Kirsty