Day 8 Chaumont- Sur Loire- St Gervais La Forêt 25 km

Today we gave our bums a rest and instead, nourished our grey matter with some culture. We were so close to a magnificent chateau, that really felt we should visit it,

Our kind host let us keep the bikes in her garage, whilst we made the short walk up the hill to the chateau.

Great colourful gardens
Lots of rather odd sculptures, but I liked this giant crocodile made out of old grape vine stumps
Another sculpture: a tree trunk made out of laminated cedar wood!! A real tree trunk would have looked just as good and been a fraction of the price!
Stunning cedar tree, overlooking the valley but rather spoiled by 3 useless old retired boats standing against rusty poles; all in the name of art??
Beautiful stables
Tack room
Interesting to see a corridor full of undecorated rooms will old relics lying about. Much more interesting than the dozens of other decorated rooms full of framed pictures of modern “art” that looked like they’d come out of a kindergarten.

By lunchtime we’d had enough of culture, people and heat, so collected our bikes and headed straight to “our” lovely river for a dip alongside the water boatmen. Thousands, just visible in the photo.

Calm and clear
City of Blois

A short, pretty ride of a couple of hours took us to the edge of Blois, then 3kms south to St Gervais to try to locate our chambre d’hôtes. This proved harder than we thought as there were 4 houses in the street numbered 9, and ours was one of them!

Our elderly, very friendly host, showed us the room and apologised that the shower head was not attached to the wall. Luckily I’d brought a selection of cable ties, so the problem was soon solved and we felt fresh again, ready for an Indian curry a short ride away.

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Published by Robkeene

Sue and I are both over 60 and looking to explore the cycle routes in France

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