Pedalling for a Purpose

We had a very filling breakfast at Hotel Mondial in the heart of Tours and headed out of town on easy-to-follow bike paths. It's been another magnificent early morning ride through paddocks of fallow fields and some dead sunflower crops. The heads of sunflowers actually turn to follow the sun. Eerily, all the dead sunflowers faced the west, as if their dying moments were chasing the sunlight one last time.   The wind this morning was meant to be 20 km per hour and while this didn't eventuate, we still had a headwind whenever we rode on exposed ground. This was sometimes on the top of levees, and sometimes as we rode between acres of fallow ground. While riding through acres of barren, freshly ploughed land, we came across a murder of crows - I'd never seen so many in one place. As we rode past, they took to the air ... it felt like a scene from Alfred Hitchcock's movie, The Birds! We were often riding on gravel paths through forests ... and it felt like a boulevard of t...

We headed into the city area for breakfast and stopped at a bigot's cafe. I refused to eat there until the guys convinced me that it was the surname of the founder. The ride out of Amboise was on great bike paths and through parklands for the first few kilometres, then along a cycleway beside a quiet secondary road. There were a few other cyclists out and about. Then our world caved in ... sorta. We'd been having bike problems every day. Generally changing tubes, having valve issues, one replacement tyre (which should last more than 1,000 km), one patched tyre (which we hope lasts the final few days), and one change of axle. Today was the biggest challenge to date. David's front wheel axle and bearings imploded. We spent about 45 minutes trying to sort out a fix to get us the 23 km we needed to get to Tours, but in the end, we opted for safety. I argued for David to just keep riding but the guys like him. Habibe was the first, and only, Uber driver to respond to our distres...

A bit of a sleep-in this morning before heading into town around 9.00am. The historic centre of Amboise is about a 15-minute walk over 2 bridges from our accommodation. Breakfast consisted of a quiche with a chocolate eclair chaser. Exquisite. We then began a tour of the town with the first stop, Leonardo Da Vinci's last home, the Chateau Close Luce. Amazing place and an amazing man. Few would not have heard of Da Vinci, but few would know the extent to which his talent has influenced the world. He was a genius well ahead of his time. An Italian, Da Vinci came to Amboise in 1516 at the invitation of King Francis I, a lover of the arts. Francis gifted Chateau Close Luce to Da Vinci as a place to work and live under the King's patronage. Da Vince died there in 1519 and is entombed in the town. We then followed a town walk as suggested by some map we'd been given by the local tourist board. It went up and down hills across Amboise, eventually taking us on a circuit leading to ...

We all agreed that today was the 'hillyest' day of our ride so far.  The reason was that we going to leave the Eurovelo 6 route and visit Château de Chenonceau as a detour to our ride to Amboise. Blois was a great town and it would have been easy to spend another day there exploring its rich history. We noticed that we are seeing more people out and about now that we are truly in the Loire Valley region, given its popularity with tourists. The ride out of Blois was easy and uneventful. As we only had 60 kms to ride we left at 9.00 am - our latest start time of the trip. We did find the traffic busier, however, the bike paths out of town gave good separation from cars. We were soon riding on secondary roads - less wide and less busy, then tertiary roads (even less wide and cars, and farm machinery, very rare). While we did ride along some bike paths, it would be road riding most of the day, especially after leaving the Eurovelo to head away from the river, to head inland to the ...

Another great breakfast at the hotel this morning and then a short ride of a few 100 metres back onto the Eurovelo 6 route. It's an easy ride out of the city in the crisp morning air. It's our first ride with Stewart and we take turns riding beside him to get to know our new friend better ... and how far we can push with our Australian humour. Our route is a mixture of nice bitumen cycle paths and some dirt country lanes - all of which add to the experience. We do travel a couple of secondary roads where the traffic was a bit busy this morning, however, drivers are generally very courteous to cyclists. As I came around one bend in the trail, I saw a guy smashing a large pole into the branches of a tree. I assumed it was one of those nouveau or niche anger release sessions that are all the rage. I stopped to observe, and found myself invited to eat walnuts! This local monsieur was in fact knocking walnuts out of the tree! After a brief lesson in French on walnut hunting, none of...