Pedalling for a Purpose

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...