Henley To Paris by Penny Farthing

 Day 5.  What looked like a 32 mile cruise was anything but.  We began with a leg-sapping descent in the Parisian rush hour, at the bottom of which was a traffic accident, bin men, gendarmes and cobbles to negotiate. That was the warm up.   Our route took us on to what seemed to be part of the Parisian motorway system. Further along we encountered incredibly narrow and overgrown roadside paths, although no match for the pith helmets. We also rode up long climbs in beautiful parks and one of 13 percent which almost destroyed us. Meanwhile Dave was battling with technology which couldn’t apparently distinguish bike tracks from motorways from cul-de-sacs, as he valiantly managed our rendezvouses. We stopped for lunch in Parc de Saint-Cloud with a six-mile glory leg to go, only to be told by the manager that the exit from the park we were due to take was closed due to subsidence. Thus, operation Escape from Saint-Cloud commenced. Bill took on one switchback descent too many and without a h