Cycling the Canal du Rhone au Rhin, I’m aware of the water lilies. Actively looking for the resident loud squelching green frogs, hoping to catch one in a classic cartoon pose atop a lily pad.

Patchy cirrocumulus clouds cause the light to change, at any moment reflected back from the canal’s oiled watery surface.

Claude Monet, known as the father of impressionist art, spent his life painting outdoors in his attempt to explore a new way of seeing with immediacy the ever changing natural reality. Capturing fleeting glimpses of the ethereal nature of life, the essence or ‘impression‘ of his subject. Monet spent the last 20 years of his life painting lilies.

We continue cycling West across France in the direction of the Atlantic coast, but may yet venture south to Bordeaux, via the inland route.

We set up camp at the Municipal Campground outside the City of Besancon, with its brooding 12 century Citadel which dominates the skyline. Besancon is the birthplace of Victor Hugo (1802-1885), who became France’s most loved novelist. The author of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Misérables. We cycled the wicked ‘tunnel of love’, the Veloway carved through rock beneath the citadel that leads us out of the city on to the river Doubs and onto the Euro Velo 6 route.

Riding an old tow path beside the fast flowing wild river, we are soon cycling into the ancient city of Dole. The birthplace of Louis Pasteur, the world famous French Chemist, whose discovery of the process of ‘pasteurisation’ saved the lives of of an estimated 250 million people, according to the World Economic Forum.

Our journey cycling through rural France is a fleeting impression of how we find it, not as it might actually be for others. Seeing the world from the seat of a bicycle, moving slowly through the landscape, amidst a patchwork of medieval rural villages, nestled beside small mixed farms with their Charolais white cows working canals and mysterious forests, where the ancient world sits cheek by jowl with the new.

Often times in camouflage, at intervals located along the canals, fishermen stand earnest in their pursuit of northern pike or European perch. Suddenly, visible in full sun, a school of several massive European carp break the surface, each a meter or more in length. An impressive sight as the carp twist then turn side on to look up at us, looking at them.

A young fawn breaks cover and runs straight past us. Then, further on a badger crosses the trail ahead.

Its hay cutting season. Opportunistic whistling kites work in unison with European stork. Together, they follow closely the whirling blades of the farmer’s tractor, seeking mice and morsels flushed out in the mayhem.

Nature is everywhere.