Pedalling for a Purpose

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...

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...