Redon- Elven

15 August

At Redon the river we were travelling on changed from the the Vilaine to the Oust, which we followed all the way to Malestroit. There are long stretches of canal but the river section is longer. There are weirs on the river to keep the level high enough to navigate, and locks for boats to use to get up or down the height. 

Right next to the track on the Ile aux Pies, which is an attractive holiday destination in itself, is a kind of confidence course, at 5 levels, from 1-25 metres, and from age 5. There are all sorts of opportunities to try out skills in a safe environment, with long flying foxes joining sections of the 'parcours'. We were fascinated and just watched for quite some time.

Lunch was taken outside, 'on the terrace' of a restaurant, in a small-town called St Martin-sur-Oust, just over the river from the track. The day was hot and it was lovely to sit in the shade of the umbrellas. The Breton crepe is not too much of an indulgence for lunch, neither price-wise nor quantity-wise. 

It didn't take long to do the 13km or so to Malestroit, where our friend, Alexandra, came on her father's bike to lead us up to her parents' house. I had stayed there before and it was great to see everyone again and to sit - again in the shade - with cold drinks. We talked, walked round the garden, threw objects for the dog to retrieve, and generally had a great afternoon. Locked our bikes up in a sheltered part of their place and went off in the car to where Alexandra lives, in a lovely village not too far away, called Elven. 

Nantes-Redon

13 August: Nantes-Blain

Getting out of town, even when you're already out of town is a struggle for all ages. It was great to meet up with two English girls of 30 who were lost at the same place as we were as we tried to get onto the right track north. Luckily a fifth person, who had some idea came along and we all followed. We eventually got onto the right path - but it was a path both parties had ignored before as the maps indicated straight on and this was a 90° left. 

Our party of 5 stayed together until we reached the canal Nantes-Brest, where the guy ate his lunch then turned back to go home via back roads and the girls continued on to end up in the same camping ground as us somewhat later.

It was a little strange to be back on a canal again but familiar at the same time. Not a lot of wildlife evident, though people living in the lock-keeper's cottages had made a great display of flowers at times. Back to Le Boat hire boats again - the larger variety - and not always very well controlled. The canal passed through few towns or villages but we found a bar-restaurant at just the right time for a cold beer...







And when Blain, with a camping ground, turned up, we stopped. It is a deceptively large town with an enormous cathedral and a castle that was converted from a military construction of the 12th/13th century into an elegant residence when the Rohan family took over in the 16th century. Anne de Bretagne and Louis XII stayed at Blain, so it is somewhat famous in Bretagne.




















14 August: Blain-Redon

This canal gets more and more interesting! It is made up of 5 rivers with junction canals and about 237 locks over the 360km. So today, we passed what they call a "key" lock, with no more locks for 22km. The canal then turned into what seemed more like a river, though without the flow, and became very wide, rather like a long lake. It was very pretty, with trees overhanging the water and reeds growing on the banks.

Not a lot of towns or villages en route but when we stopped for lunch at St Clair, it was a beautiful place. Camping ground going down to the water, port for pleasure craft, choice of restaurants with view over the canal. We chose a small cafe offering a galette 'complète' for 6 euros. That's the buckwheat flour crêpe, with ham, cheese and an egg in the middle.

The next place of interest was Pont-Miny, with a gîte d'étape - a sort of hostel, available for 10 euros a head. There is a kitchen available and usually a shared room, but it was just too early for us to stop. Also we wanted to get to Redon. We stopped to enjoy the picnic area and a display of the history of the canal Nantes-Brest. And the person in charge kindly allowed us to fill our water bottle.

 We reached Redon in good time, for the 59 or so km, put up our tent, off-loaded our gear and set off to find a bike shop. The nearest one to the campsite was a real find. The guy was going on his annual break of a week or two that evening but still gave us great service, fixing Rodney's spokes/wheel, gears and cyclometer and checking mine. He also changed brake rubbers for both of us where needed and all with a fantastic attitude. A joy to watch and it was wonderful to have fixed things that had been bugging us for quite some time.

Redon has a port, sadly now used only for tourist boats but you can imagine the activity back in its heyday, when it was the crossroads for sea traffic and river traffic. Salt, wine and tuffeau  (tufo) stone were the main cargoes. Today there is a big supermarket nearby that can actually be reached by bike or on foot - a winner for travellers without cars. Luckily we had a table near our tent (= tent placed near table) and were able to eat our purchases in relative comfort. Ah, the small luxuries of life!

Orléans - Nantes

12th August

With Chris and Mathilde's flat just round the corner from the station, it was no trouble getting there early for the Orleans to Nantes train to make sure of a place for our bikes. Imagine our delight when we found a WHOLE van dedicated to bikes. No struggling up the steps, no taking off all our luggage and drink bottles, no desperate "hold your mouth right and get the twist right" to get the wheel into a rack while the bike is vertical. Just wheeling the bike up a little ramp into the hands of a railway employee whose job was to stack it in the rack. Since we were going the whole journey, he put them right at the end so that we could access our bags if needed. Luxury indeed! 

The train was pretty much express, stopping at about 6 stations only and taking less than 3 hours to get there. The trip along the Loire is pretty, travelling along the river at times and across cultivated river plain at others. Before the river banks were worked on and levees built, the river could be 15 km or more wide in times of flood, so the plains are quite wide.

Nantes Castles is a stunner, though we didn't go inside, wanting to get on our way, and needing to come back this way anyway. We contented ourselves with a coffee from a bar outside, next to the Tourist office.

As usual, getting out of town proved frustrating. Although we knew where WE were, with Googlemaps locating us accurately, the maps indicating the bike paths, in the map from the tourist office, on Googlemaps and in reality are all different. We are particularly grateful to two Khazakstani students of robotics who offered to lead us to the track some kilometres back. There are heaps of cycle paths but no indication of which one would lead us to the Veloroute 1, which is what we needed.

Once out of town and on the right track we decided to call it a day and with no camping grounds for miles settled on a B&B Hotel, a brand we hadn't tried. For 45 euros we were well pleased. We had a ground floor room, slightly larger than normal, with room for the bikes inside. Great bed and bedding, TV, 3 power points, free wifi, large bathroom with loads of hot water and a set of tables outside where we could eat our meal, bought at the local Geant, 5 minutes ride down the road. Buying supermarket food considerably offsets the room cost! We can treat ourselves ( for example, salmon with celeriac in a fromage frais sauce, among other items, including a half bottle of white from Chateau Noble from Entre deux Mers, which we had passed near in the Gironde) for less than half what it would normally cost to eat out in a fairly ordinary place. We wouldn't cook in a hotel room but being able to eat outside in the evening sun was a bonus.  

Trains are so fast!

Written 12/08/13

We have just travelled from Orléans to Nantes in less than 3 hours, on a 'non-fast' train (TER). We've had an overview of the countryside and noticed a lot of market gardens and grain crops. The river plain is pretty wide down this end of the Loire and the land is mostly cropped though we did see some cows.

But we haven't experienced any of it. We haven't biked beside the crops and noticed how far out they are - or even what they are, we haven't smelt the odeurs of the countryside, the animals, especially horses, or the boulangerie with fresh bread, we haven't heard the noises overhead and in the distance, we haven't felt the wind on our faces and the sun on our arms, we haven't tasted the air - sometimes salty, sometimes reminding you of cows - not that there are many cows in the open, but they are there! Biking is about sensation. 

Trains are too - and we enjoy our train trips - the speed with which the 'slow' trains cover the country, the relative comfort of the seats, the rhythmic movement, the noise of a labouring engine climbing, and then the relief (for the engine) when the descent starts. We even enjoy changing trains if it isn't rushed. Our three hours at Poitiers and an hour or so at Tours en route from La Rochelle to Beaugency were lovely. We sat in the sun talking to a lovely woman we had met, drinking coffee which she ultimately paid for- such a kindly gesture and such a lovely woman! Yes, we have her name address and some day we may be in touch again! 

Loire à vélo: Tours and Amboise

We spent a couple of days at Tours and 3 days in the Amboise camping ground before heading back to Orleans to help Chris and Mathilde shift.

Tours:

Amboise castle:

Amboise camping ground - balloons floated overhead every so often in the early morning!

Castle in the background

3 balloons

Right overhead!

La Loire à Vélo: Muides-sur-Loire - Tours

27 -31 July

With Julian's bike now at Beaugency, Chris was able to use it to accompany us further down the Loire. First, a short shopping trip to Decathlon to get 'outfitted' and a final goodbye to Julian and Susan at the train station.

From Ourcelles, where Chris and Mathilde lived at the time, we cut across country to the Loire cycle path, joining it at Muides-sur-Loire, about a day's ride away from Orléans.

Before making our way to the camping ground we called in at a traiteur, who sells prepared food, and invested in 3 really nice pre-packed salmon steaks with salad, then at the pâtisserie for 3 desserts. That was a good way to start, as we arrived in the early evening and had time to put up tents and settle in. The camping ground is right by the river, and was not too crowded, with good facilities - there is a camping ground of interest to those with children (=entertainment, swimming pool etc) a bit further along the road.

Next morning we were off to Blois, the cycle track following closely the Loire River, beautiful in the summer light. 

We even found a handy restaurant for lunch, far enough out of town to be interesting and without 'parking' problems.We like to have the bikes in sight when they are full of the gear you need for months. Mathilde, Chris, Rodney and I had spent the evening of 14 July watching the fireworks display across the river from the town, and it was odd to be biking over the ground we had covered on foot from where we had parked the car that night. Blois is very pretty, especially looking at it across the river.

We needed to get to Chaumont that night, as Mathilde was meeting us in the morning to go around the château and its gardens with us. Quite a lot of the track was now away from the Loire, with what are called gentle hills to climb up and over - nevertheless taxing with a loaded bike. The Chaumont camping ground is pleasant, by the river and with wifi (though it worked only within about a 10 foot radius of the Reception area - quite common all through our trip). There was a canopy with a table set up for cyclists in one part of the grounds and when the heavens opened up we took shelter  -and our food - there, sharing the table with two Dutch women cyclists who covered quite long distances in a day and had been on the road for some time as well. Really interesting people to talk to. That's what we really like about camping grounds- the people you meet and the stories they have to tell.

Mathilde duly turned up at the camping ground the next morning and we had a lovely day going through both the castle and the extensive gardens, which had special displays for summer visitors. Tapestries, furnishings, some armour and strong-boxes, made for a great display but in addition they had opened up a lot of rooms that were not 'on display but being used for storage of things belonging to the castle. Old doors and furniture, chairs and candlesticks, wallpaper in various states of disrepair…I think it was almost as interesting to see this side of the castle as the beautifully furnished rooms.

An overly elaborate lock on the strong box

Mathilde returned home to Beaugency - we continued on, still over the hills and far away, to Amboise, where the camping ground is on an island in the Loire and is well set-up for all-comers. Although there were many campers of all types there (caravanners, campervanners, car + big tent, car + small tent(s), hikers, bikers, bikers with small children/middle-sized children, groups of some sort under canvas), it never seemed too crowded or overwhelming. We all had our space.

We really wanted to go with Chris to Clos Lucé, where Leonardo Da Vinci spent his last few years, as this has been set up with many of his inventions made either to size or as scale models. We had to bike back through the village and UP the hill we had cautiously biked down the night before. Thankfully we were able to leave our bikes and gear in an area provided for the job. Since I was there last they have added a lot computer-animation and simulations to the collection, and it is even more interesting than before. The car, the tank, the flying machine, the bicycle - these are just the beginning of a whole new world, dating back 500 years. And in the garden are even more working models. We particularly liked the ways he could remove water out of a pond or river for irrigation purposes, using either a screw or a pliable scoop. Genius on both counts.

The journey from Amboise to Tours followed the previous day's model, the hilly one, not close to the river, at least not for a while. The camping ground for Tours is out-of-town, about 7km, in a quiet patch of green, within earshot of both the train and the travellers on the fast road that passes the end of the street. French camping grounds are often set just out of town, and it is only after they have been established that motorways and TGV lines are routed along the the same out-of-town area. However, you really DO get used to it and the noise rarely penetrated our sleep.

Chris modelling the latest fashion...

The camping ground had a section for bikers, with no cars and a number of tables available. I remember that this one also had carefully-placed trees that we could string our clotheslines around. Getting our shorts dry every day is the challenge of the trip, though we have also established quite a good dryer on the back of the bike. last year we just used pegs. This year more sophisticated, with a net bag that we can attach more securely with a velcro strap left over from Rodney's arm sling of 2012.

Tours station

The following day was Chris's last and we easily covered the ground into the city. We also booked ourselves into a hotel, so that we could explore at our leisure. 

It was sad to say goodbye to Chris, as we had had a wonderful few days, with lots of different experiences. But he had a lease to sign and needed to get back. We had a few more days to do our own thing before returning to help them shift into Orléans centre, from a small 'hamlet' out in the country beyond Beaugency. 

As I write this catch-up post, I am sitting in the lounge of their new flat. It is close to the station and we have walked around the city today. The flat is light, spacious and warm and our riding shorts are all dry! What more do we need from life!