You get one on every trip when the route descends into hacking your way through undergrowth as the vegetation closed around you.
Last year it was the canal path out of Rheims which faded away to become a grass track, with fallen logs barring the path. I made it through, carving a new path for others and avoiding the dreaded "retracing you steps".
This time the sign for the Eurovelo 15 Rhine Route pointed away from the direction shown in my cycle guide. The guide route looked more direct, so I took that.
After about 2 km you get the "Route Barree" fencing. I set off into the woods to find a way around but the trail petered out. Returning to the fence, I find that French cyclists just ignore these barriers or tear them down. So I copied them, slipped through and cycled on.
Soon you meet more obstacles like a gravel storage depot with 100ft high mounds blocking the path and ominous earth moving equipment at work.
There was more scrambling and lumping with bike, down banks and across ditches, but eventually you find a real road.
Then the final obstacle, General Motors have requisitioned a 12 km stretch of straight road for vehicle testing and, in a classic piece of corporate requisitioning, blocked the way. If you slip past and carry on then you get approach and overtaken now and then by a new GM truck with flashing lights doing brake testing. You wait to be stopped but they leave you alone.
At the other end of the track is a locked gate, high fencing and the obligatory sign warning you off. But you lug bike over the fence to freedom and then see a Speedy Day Rider in full kit lift his bike over the fence going in the other direction.
Clearly, the straight testing track is very popular for bike training and you may not be the only illegal after all.
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