Pedalling for a Purpose

Mission accomplished.     We arrived in Saint-Brevin-les-Pins and dipped our toes in the Atlantic Ocean, after riding across France, east to west, from Mulhouse, near the Swiss border. We still had a short ride to Saint-Nazaire where we will spend the night and travel to Paris by train tomorrow. We've travelled over 1,300 km in 21 days, including 3 rest days in Nevers, Orleans, and Amboise. We experienced some of the best that France offers its visitors; cultural experiences, fine wines and food, and a glimpse of its history and heritage.   Today's ride ...   A few blogs I've read about the stage between Nantes and Saint-Nazaire described it as being a bit boring, however we found it great. Very diverse landscapes throughout the 65 km journey.   We started this morning with stands up at 9.00am, cycling back towards the Eurovelo 6 route on the northern side of the river. The traffic was chaos to us, however by the looks on Nantais' (natives of Nantes) faces it wa...

Our shortest day of riding for the trip ... for 3 of us. David made a promise to his wife to investigate a chateau that might make a great holiday destination at some point. Being a wonderful husband (as conveyed by David about David) he solemnly promised that he would do so. Unfortunately, we passed the turnoff for the said chateau yesterday, blissfully unaware we were soooo close. David was confident that it was still a day's ride away near Nantes! When David broke the news, we 3 Australians provided our input ... 'Catch an Uber', 'Tell your wife you saw it', 'Tell her it burnt down', etc. However, honourable David decided to add another 60 km to today's ride by heading back 30km to inspect a very very old chateau, then 30 km back to the morning's starting point, then 37 km to Nantes. Stewart, being David's buddy, offered to accompany him. We Australians looked down at our shoes averting eye contact, kicked some rocks, and said we didn't re...

It's an easy ride out of Angers this morning, through well-maintained parklands and wide bike and pedestrian paths. There we a lot of people out walking or running, as well as cycling. We pass waterways that resemble mill ponds - very smooth with not a ripple from wind or water flow, in fact, we passed a rowing club that seemed to be the perfect venue for such a sport. As we do every day, we see a few multi-day touring cyclists. They have full rear panniers and sometimes front panniers as well. You can easily tell they aren't cycling for just one or two days. This is a fraternity, and a wave or nod is reciprocated by the same. When travelling on my own last year I would have stopped, chatted, and swapped stories of our journeys ... the route, the destination, and any tips about the road ahead. Travelling in a group makes this more challenging as you don't want to hold the team up, or want to chase the pack to catch up. Being a Sunday we see lots of families out cycling ... ...

With a journey of 65 km to Angers today we opted for a late start of 9.00am. David would have preferred a later start ... as usual. He's been in construction all his life and now being newly retired, he wants to sleep in. The day started with the usual breakfast at the hotel. These are quite reasonably priced between 8 and 11 Euro, and are generally very filling. The ride out of Saumur was easy given the hotel was right on the route. We rode alongside the river through parks and very good bike paths for the first few kilometres. Unfortunately, we struck hills early in the day ... before the body had warmed up and the brain had adapted my pain receptors to accept it. Fortunately, the wind was negligible and stayed that way for the remainder of today's ride. We've planned well ... we've had very few Westerly winds affecting our ride, other than a few hours of headwinds early in our trip. OK, maybe just plain luck! The hills led to some good downhill riding allowing me to ...

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 ...