Pedalling for a Purpose

This will be our shortest day's ride of our trip to date ... and our wettest. After breakfast, we headed off from our abode around 9.00 am. Helene, our host, was ill so we self-checked out. We did a 'bloke' check that we'd cleaned up adequately, so I hope my AirBnB rating remains satisfactory! We had a nice ride out of Nevers, although we had to play chicken with cars on roundabouts during peak hour a couple of times. On the outskirts of the city, we came upon a Decathlon store. I told the guys that this was the Bunnings equivalent of sports stores in Europe. Begrudgingly they entered the store and I saw them re-emerge about an hour later like kids from a candy store. They even bought a full-size bicycle pump to replace the supplied hand pumps we carried. We are apparently heading into a thunderstorm so we're keeping an eye on the skies ahead. Normally there aren't too many places to pull over in a lightning storm so it could be an interesting day! Today's 5...

After cycling over 600 km in 7 days, we've almost reached halfway along the Eurovelo 6 route across France, east to west. We can't keep this pace up, and fortunately, the second half of the trip has a less hectic pace in terms of distance each day. The main reason for this is that the second half, the Loire Valley, is perhaps the most interesting in terms of history, places to see, 'attractions', etc. The second to the main reason for the pace is that we're meant to meet a friend of David's in Orlean - Stewart, who'll join us for the next half of the trip. When working out dates for him to join us, I kinda miscalculated by a day or two, giving us less time to get to Orlean. Don't blame me ... blame my 2A Unit Maths teacher in high school! Our rest day started with me being up early and doing a walk around the Nevers medieval and middle ages areas. The history, and associated architecture, here are unbelievable. Buildings from the 7th century still surviv...

A big day today. We'll hit the 600 km cycled mark in 7 days (if we make our destination later today)! 85 km to do today.  Another early start with Michel, our host, providing a filling breakfast. Over breakfast, Brett described the ride from Mike Wells' book, The Loire Cycle Route, which will be our guide until the end of the ride. It takes the reader through the highlights of the Loire Valley - attractions, must-sees, and the countryside we'll ride through. Brett read out loud that today is generally a very flat ride. Hooray! The first 20 km of the ride was a series of rolling hill climbs and descents ... incessant ... and a number of them steep. At one stage we thought about taking Brett's book, having him bend over, and placing the book (gently yet firmly), in a place it would never be found! Later we found out that the book did mention the climbs, however, Brett thought it best if we didn't know.  The views through the rolling hills were beautiful. A series of o...