Day 9, St Gervais- St Cyr. 35 km

As we are in Château country, we decided to have another day of Château-ing.

As we were only 14 kms from one of the most famous: Château Chambord, we decided to make time to visit.

We aimed to leave early, but our elderly hostess wasn’t very quick with breakfast, and insisted on telling us where each local ingredient had come from; which took a while.

We arrived at this magnificent building, via a cycle route through the forest, soon after 11am. It took ages to find the cycle park which was hidden by a hedge. However it was a good location as was more out of sight,so made us happier to leave all our belongings attached to the bikes.

First view of Chambord

We’d booked to see a horse show at 11:45 so had to make our way to this «Spectacle » straight away

People jousting with each other; aggressive.
Horses bowing to each other; very polite.
Spectacular building, a haven for house martins to build nests.
2 x 3 storey spiral staircases independent of each other , but using the same shaft. Each accessed from opposite sides. Very clever architecture!
Apparently, 1500 of these little fellows live on the 13,000 acres estate
A rather more interesting display of modern art than yesterday’s chateau. Each face was created from floor sweepings, collected from underground stations in Paris. Much human hair included.
Face in more detail
By 2pm we were hot and ready for some food. No tables were available on the site, so we found a “farm shop” selling local goodies, then escaped from the chateau to a quiet shaded picnic area, and enjoyed a bottle of delicious local wine for €8 whist watching some tree creepers doing their thing in a Siberian elm tree.
We left the estate along one of the many cycle trails, so couldn’t resist this shot that a fellow cyclist took for us.

It was only a short distance to our night’s stop, but I’d made a mistake on the navigation, and I took us to the wrong village: 😡. 8 kms from the village we’d booked into: not a happy wife moment!

No problem; our bike app had a solution to get us there through the woods; short cut, only 4 kms.

Track torn up by wild boar
Track meant for off roading vehicles
Pretty scenery didn’t help.

We finally made it to our little hotel, which promised food; but no: restaurant fermée🤬

Luckily a pizza restaurant was up the road. Unfortunately it was completely booked, but we managed to plead with them to cook us a couple of pizzas to take away to our hotel. At least the hotel had some cold beverages to wash it down with. What a day!!

Back to serious pedalling tomorrow. No more châteaux.

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Published by Robkeene

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

4 Comments

  1. Chris Pare's avatar Chris Pare says:
    September 10, 2023 at 4:46 pm

    Got your Blog/diary downloaded. Its working well with all the updates.
    Love your daily updates. Wish we could have participated part of the way.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    1. Robkeene's avatar Robkeene says:
      September 10, 2023 at 6:15 pm

      Still time!! Just met some U.K. camper vaners in a bar. Had a good chat. They’re travelling around France with a couple of electric bikes for 6 weeks and having fun.

      Like

      Reply
      1. Chris Pare's avatar Chris Pare says:
        September 10, 2023 at 7:40 pm

        Would so love to have.
        Hopefully waiting for Exchange this week then we can make a plan.

        Like

      2. Robkeene's avatar Robkeene says:
        September 10, 2023 at 9:19 pm

        Hope that works out ok🤞🤞

        Like

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