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 chateau.
We passed Château de Chaumont but decided not to stop as we'd be seeing another chateau later today, and wanted to get to Amboise before traffic got too heavy on the ride in. It looks good on the postcard photos!
There were few villages that we rode through today, and the ones we did had no visible signs of life. However, when we rode through some parkland near one village, we came across a group of mothers out walking with their kids. It seemed to be a 'multiple births' get-together as all mums had twins or triplets in tow ... one seemed to have 4 under 4!
We passed a pump house on our ride, with 'firewood' stacked along its sides. Any guesses why? It's a habitat for insects and lizards, etc. No kidding!
As we turned towards the chateau, and about 20 km to ride to it, we struck hills ... and plenty of them. Other than one, dubbed 'heart attack hill', the gradients weren't necessarily steep but they just went on and on, and there were plenty of them. The downhills were fun but fleeting, as you reached the bottom and started another climb.
At one point a deer, racing across a paddock, was vectoring on a collision course with me riding along a bike path. I braked in time for it to jump across in front of me at a frenetic pace. It could have been a venison meal for dinner ... fed to me in a hospital bed!
When we began having tourist buses pass us, we knew we were close to Château de Chenonceau. We arrived, expecting to take some photographs and move on, however, we had no vantage point that allowed us to see the place so we had to pay entry. As over 60s, (other than Col (58)), we qualified for a seniors discount ... a saving of 1.50 Euro ... woohoo!
Château de Chenonceau is one of the most popular and recognised chateaus of the Loire Valley and was built between 1514 and 1522. Remarkably quick compared to others on the Loire, although additions to the main building continued over subsequent years. At one point in the 1500s, the chateau was gifted to Henry II's mistress who was responsible for creating the extensive and beautiful garden surrounds. Eight years later, when Henry died, his wife seized back the chateau, and goodbye mistress!
Touring the chateau was worth 14 Euro (with discount) ... filled with period furniture and an extensive collection of paintings by the masters of the time.
Most amazing was a painting that showed the long-lost French custom of sniffing a young baby's foot soon after birth. Note the photo of the painting below, then the zoomed-in image ...
OK, so there is no custom of foot sniffing ... just weird!
We eventually headed to our lodging for 2 nights near Amboise, where we have a rest day tomorrow. It was an easy 13 km journey until ... yes, you guessed it ... another issue. This time it was Brett's tyre that had been developing a problem over the past couple of days. Fortunately, we'd passed a bike shop in a small village that morning and he bought a spare tyre. He now needed it.
We finally arrived at our rented house, washed clothes, had showers, and then walked into town for a few drinks and dinner. Another day given a huge tick!
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