Author Archives: Robkeene

As my last blog stated, the 16th we didn’t ride at all; a day of rest. We still had a good walk around the town and managed to service the bikes.

The 17th was forecast to be warm so we set off quite early, if you call 9:45 early!

A different river to follow, so we set off up the Saône, on a very interesting path. I even managed a refreshing dip in a new river.

After 50 kms we found a busy riverside restaurant. Fortunately with enough room for 2.

As we were getting into our seats, a waitress came behind me, laden with plates of food. As I stepped back to get into my chair, she collided with me throwing a plate of food over a old lady in her green sunday best.🥱.

I really don’t think it was my fault as the waitress should have seen me; I’m not that small!

I apologised to all and gradually the other customers stopped staring and resumed their conversations. However, the affected lady in question still kept scowling at me!

We then settled into our excellent plate of duck gizzards and smoked duck breasts on a bed of salad.

Shortly after lunch we picked up a follower, who decided he needed some exercise. We asked a couple of people if they knew where he was from, to no avail. Fortunately some walkers came by who he then befriended. We had to set off to again to pass the walkers and dog. We needed to pedal as fast as possible for a km to ensure he didn’t follow us! Our track then returned on the opposite side of the canal and we could still see our canine friend with the walkers!!

Our track then took us away from the Saône and onto this very pretty and relatively busy canal.

It is the waterway link that enables traffic from the English Channel to the Mediterranean.

We’ve observed this lack of staff so much on this trip. It just leads to poor service, grumpy staff and irritated customers; why??

Today we had pedalled 1000 km so we celebrated in one of the very few open restaurants. (Sunday night). I had some small but delicious local fish, and Sue had a big chunk of Simmental beef, which I had to help her finish…as usual!

No Prosecco here but Crémant de Burgogne is the drink she’s now into; very similar.

The day began well when I went to pay for the previous night’s meal. The receptionist couldn’t find any record on the computer of our meal, so said we could have it for free!!😁

( Maybe they’ll catch up with us??)

Things then went wrong, when within 50 metres of leaving the hotel.

Sue hit a piece of metal sticking out of the ground and fell off…again; breaking her mirror. She then blamed me for leading her over some rough ground, en route to the cycle path!!

Who would want mirrors, I hear you say. Well in France, there are lots of high speed “mamils” on the cylcle trails. ( middle aged men in lycra)

These very serious cyclists, trying to beat their PB’s or whatever, come screaming up behind you.

They are very frustrated when two oldies, on heavily laden bikes, are blocking their racetrack.

We’re usual riding side by side chatting about the countryside that we are passing through, as well as trying to avoid the frequent lizards who seem to enjoy dicing with death.

Sue always looks behind and warns me when a threat appears from behind, so she really missed her mirror immediately.

It was a stroke of good fortune that within a km of this incident, we came across the first bike shop we’d seen in 800 kms and they had another mirror!!

We then had a very pleasant shorter ride along the beautiful Canal de Centre.

A DAY OF REFLECTIONS

We’ve now done 958 kms of pedalling since the start.

In a straight line on Google earth the distance is 450 kms!

According to my Bike map app,we have about 800 kms to get to Freising and 340 kms still to go in France.

Main thing is we’re more than half way 😁👍🏼.

We both felt we needed a rest day, so have booked our stay in Chalons for 2 nights.

0 kms of pedalling today!

I started the day with a run/walk. Strange that I felt I needed more exercise, I hear you say. The reason was that the bent over position on the bike was giving my lower back some stick. Fine on the bike, but sitting on a normal chair was strangely painful!?

Sue had had a bad night at the Fawlty Towers, as the bed was too small, the sheets were itching and I had allegedly been snoring all night; untrue of course!

For these 2 reasons I decided to leave her to sleep some more and I’d try to loosen by back, and return with some breakfast, and provisions for the day ahead.

I was glad of my decision, as it was a fresh beautiful morning after rain overnight.

Our cycling day was largely along the Canal de Centre. Very pretty, and quite a few boats and locks.

This was our final farewell to the beautiful Loire. For the last 840 kms we’ve followed her journey, enjoyed her wildlife,her sandy beaches and refreshing waters. She still continues another 200kms, southwards to her source. We now headed NE towards the Saône, largely following the canal for the rest of the day.

The easiest morning load up so far!

We had the bikes in the apartment, which saved the hassle of lugging all the panniers down lifts etc.

In the morning we made good progress along the canal path, then after a really good pizza for lunch, the route took us into the countryside, and back to the Loire a couple of times in the afternoon.

Following the EV 6 route has taken us through many stunning places, views, etc but it always is a longer route than the road. We passed a sign saying 30kms to a town, but the bike route was 40kms.

This hotel would have been superb 100 years ago!

It’s declined a bit since then! It took 1hr 30 mins for us to get our food, which, after a long bike ride, didn’t go down well.

When our meal came, it was very pretty, but pretty sparse. 10 mouthfuls and it was no longer there.

Not our best meal for sure, but entertaining to watch the chaos, throughout the evening .

We woke to thunder, and therefore felt no pressure to hurry. It was the first heavy rain we’ve seen since the end of June.

Our young attractive host, Émilene, very kindly let us stay in her apartment until midday, to give ourselves a bit more time to recover and relax. She and her boyfriend had done a great job turning a terraced town house into 2 rentable rooms on 2 floors, with a shared kitchen. The mushroom bedside lamps were one of the many quirky ideas we liked.

We only planned a short day to Nevers so it was great not to rush.

The first 20 kms was along a rather featureless levy with trees preventing a view of the river. It had a good surface, so we covered the distance quickly.

We then joined the Lateral canal towpath and it became more interesting.

We’ve never been to Nevers and probably will never go to Nevers again!

A good sized town, great for cycling around. I stocked up with a few necessities, like wine and oil for the bike chain, whilst Sue slept. I then pedalled back to the very spacious apartment, took the bikes up the lift to the first floor, and gave them a much needed clean on the balcony.

We ordered a Uber eats Thai meal, and relaxed with the wine for the rest of the evening. 🍷🍷

Another long day planned, frustratingly going south and we wanted east. However the river planned its route many years ago and we were following its course so had no choice.

I didn’t anticipate it being such a long day as it was, but explanation comes later.

Needing a break I spotted a small town coming up on the map, called Sancerre, which would surely have some refreshments and enable us to replenish our cold water supply. We both agreed that it would be a good place to go to.

Unfortunately the bike map app took us a direct route which would have been great for electric mountain bikes, but not for our heavily laden tourers. Sue had a fall as well on the loose rocks which didn’t help her mood.

We finally made it to the top of the 500 ft hill and fortunately found an open bar and refreshed ourselves.

Feeling refreshed and rested, we had a fabulous zoom down the hill around nice sweeping bends to get to the river. Only another 30 kms to pedal to our destination.🥴😵‍💫😵

Both our batteries had suffered from the steep climb so they were on their last legs, like us!

Our longest ride to date!

Having had two days of admiring chäteaux we planned an early start, whilst it was still cool. We hit the road at 9am and cycled along good roads through forests of oak trees, for an hour and covered 21km; A record so far. It was another 30 minutes before we rejoined the EV6 and saw the Loire once more.

Entering Orleans on a very swish cycle path

Much of the day’s ride was along the flood levy and as we entered the outskirts of Orleans on one such path, we passed this unusual machine.

Cycling through Orleans was a breeze compared to Tours. A very wide track under an avenue of huge plane trees adjacent to the river, made it a interesting ride.

After we once again crossed the river, we had an enjoyable treat of riding through the Park de Charlemagne which lasted 5-6 kms. Lots of lakes, some with beaches, walks and rides, and plenty of wildfowl. Probably the best park we’ve seen. Managed to get my first swim of the day.

We stopped for a beer then a swim from a beach. Unfortunately the water now seems to be carrying more blanket weed and you emerge from the river covered in small green strands of italthough still feeling very refreshed😃

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Another hot day pedalling through vineyards, and along wooded trails.

We started by following the River Cher until we reached Tours, then a hairy transit of the city to join the Loire again.

Although the main cycle route through the city is reasonably clear, it’s hard to have to deal with the crossings of roads. Traffic lights for cars are often different from ones for cycles, and zebra crossings are often ignored by drivers!

The map I was following didn’t agree with the cycle trail signs, so we had to integrate with a main road until we found access onto the riverside trail once more

By the time we left the town, Sue was having a meltdown, from which she took a while to recover. Luckily we soon found a bar which sold some local fizz that helped with the recovery process.

Navigating through towns and large villages can be tricky as the route kindly takes you through the least amount of road traffic. This means it ducks and dives around churches, up small alleys and through parks. The app for my phone which I’ve found that works really well is “BikeMap.” Unfortunately, like all these navigation apps, it sucks up the phone battery. This time I’ve bought a light weight solar powered charger pack which seems to be working well, and now the phone lasts all day; however so far we haven’t had a cloudy day to test it.