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...

We have struck it lucky in Orleans. Our arrival coincides with the Festival of the Loire, an annual event in its 11th year. When we saw thousands of people on the river's foreshores when we rode in, we thought it may have been a welcome party ... After checking into the Hotel Marguerite, we meet up with our newest rider, Stewart. David and Stewart have been friends for over 35 years, and now he's our new mate! We bonded over a few beers and dinner and convinced him of all the initiation and rights of 'cycling' passage rituals e.g. buying the beers, etc. Stewart saw right through our scheme. He's a smart one. At 10.00pm we could hear fireworks going off down near the river which went for around 20 minutes. It was massive ... the River Fire (a Brisbane tradition) of Orleans ... without the military flypast! Tonight Orleans was definitely a party town ... and every reveller passed our hotel room on their way home in the early hours of the morning. Delightful! On our da...

We had a 'hearty' breakfast at the hotel this morning. I'm still getting used to 'cold' breakfasts in France ... e.g., cold pancakes! Seriously! Filling nonetheless. When we loaded the bikes, all the tires were inflated which was a good start to the day, so we left by 8:00am. We had an 85 km ride to Orleans to meet up with our 5th rider, and David's best friend, Stewart. There was very little traffic on the road, and after 2 days of rain, we were looking forward to some sunshine. You suddenly can feel the temperatures dropping as the seasons change. However, David noted another kick-up in temperature early next week. We rode through the back streets of Gien, an impressive town especially given its small size. We eventually find the EV6 cycleways, which are again up on levees riding beside the river and, with the crispness of the early morning air, it's just a beautiful time to ride. A few kilometres out of town we saw a couple of nuclear power station coolin...

So a bit of a slow start this morning as we had breakfast and decided to see what the weather would do. There were some intermittent showers, but nothing too heavy, and nothing to delay the ride ... until we went and loaded our bikes to find Brett had a flat tire. It's the fifth of this trip so far between us, and there always seem to be valve issues. We're thinking that a pretty cheap batch of tubes is the issue ... it couldn't be us! While the tube replacement team (Brett) got to work, David took the opportunity to put some adornments, bought at Decathlon yesterday, on his bike - toe clip pedals (to stop his shoes slipping off the pedals in the rain), a mirror (to see himself about to be hit by a truck), and a phone holder (ummm ... to hold a phone). The wet weather was holding off so we headed down a steep hill out of Sancerre. Some of the back streets were potholed and gravel, and the wet surfaces made the ride interesting! We rode across a beautiful ancient bridge, thr...