Sunset at Les Sables-d’Olonne

The End

 Hello to anyone still reading this. 

A few bits of the story to finish this riding blog off.  

After getting back to Tours on Tuesday evening last week. David and i had a day off Wednesday with the intention of going out Thursday afternoon for s few hours riding in the local area.  Thursday afternoon turned out very hot so we went out early on Friday instead. 

We went upstream on the banks of the river Cher to Blere for a coffee and pastry then came back through Amboise and along the Loire then cutting back to the Cher to finish the ride. 68 km. 

Saturday we left early again with a 40% chance of rain. That turned out (as we believe) to be 40% of 24 hours and it rained all morning. We got as far as Chateau de Villandry had a coffee and came back wet through   Still is was a couple hours on the bikes and another 38 km. 

that was the end of the cycling apart from cleaning stuff. 

Sunday we drove over to Les Sables-d’Olonne to spend a few days with Magali and Guillaume. 

I used the train then bus to get to Nantes airport a few hours ago and i am just waiting gor my flight home. 

See you soon

Chris

Photos

Interesting spotted shoals of fish fry in these balls. Might have been predators about?  But saw more than 10 of them as moved along this section on canal

La Fleche - ice cream stop

Past loads of Sun flower fields

 

Tue 15 Aug - Day 3

 Hello

A day late for this, but more than a little tired when we got arrived back at David’s yesterday evening. We had another 96 km in the day although it was flatter than the previous two. We had some really nice sections through forests, open fields where you can see for miles (or km’s) and the run into Langeais down a small valley with an ice cream at the end opposite the Chateau.  After this stop it was straight flat ride along the Loire and Cher, which drops us literally metres from David’s front door.

So we have done 289 km in 3 days and not the advertised 300 in 3 days.  😀

We (I) didn’t feel like going round a circuit of a park to make up missing km’s last night.  After a day or two of rest we will no doubt be back on the bikes again but just runs out from the apartment and back.  The one thing we will need to watch is the weather it is forecast to be getting up to 30 degC which means a lot higher out in the Sun on a bike.  We might have to do some early morning riding and be back for 12:00.

Not many photos this time.  I’ll send a couple of what I have shortly. 

Regards

Chris

 

 

Monday 14-Aug Day 2

Hello all

09:30 to 17:30 cycling today but not all riding. 98 km  and 580 m ascent. Another nice day and we even needed to put on some Sun screen for part of the afternoon.  

Towards the end of the day we hit a path that was a disused railway for 20 km. Anyone who has used these know they are for  getting along quickly. Mainly because the maximum gradient is 2%, so no hills. 

That old rail path got us to the last town of of the day, Bauge-en-Anjou, it turned our accommodation was quite bit further.  7 km.  But it was up and down and all over the and around the fields. At one point we inly 450 m from it, but across a field of corn, so we had to do another couple of km’s to get to it in much more round about way. Its a lovely place, the complete opposite from last night’s Ibis in Le Mans.  Middle of countryside, surrounded by farms with all sorts of crops growing. 

Only one problem no dinner service. Fortunately David has brought some dry pack camping meals and our room comes with kitchen we can use. So now we are showered, fed and plenty of drinks inside us. 

Thats all for now. Its only 8:30 pm but bed is calling already. 

Chris

Sunday - 1st day

 Everything was going well this morning until we realised our train to the start at Alencon was cancelled. 

So David re-plotted the route and we headed of directly on the bikes to the first nights stop in Le Mans. We started about 09:40 and we arrived at the hotel a while ago 17:00. 

It’s been a lovely day’s riding. Weather has been really good, not to hot, sunny with cloudy intervals. We have covered 95 km and 680 ascent.  It was a bit shorter than we anticipated seeing we headed in the opposite direction to than the plan.

Maybe more later, time for a shower.

 Hello all

Pretty straightforward day so far. After 3 solid hours of faffing about the house, met Lynn at AE station ( nice to be sent off on one’s travels).   Airport was a bit busy but acceptable. Flight on time and land 10 minutes early at 3pm.  From there I Landed 1 hour ago exactly got through immigration, bus to city rail station, got ticket, got drink, sat on train with 11 minutes to spare before departure.  So 2 hours to Tours!

Hello

 Greetings everyone ... hope you are doing well and looking after yourselves.

Chris and I are going for a short bike ride in a few days and we'd thought it might be fun to share the antics using a blog. This micro adventure has been thrown together in almost no time and will consist of a train journey on Sunday morning from Tours to a place called Alençon and then the plan is to cycle from Alençon back to Tours over three days with the total distance around 300km.

Here is the route

Taking the usual precautions as we always try to do we shall be carrying a GPS Spot tracker with us and this great device sends updates every 10 mins on our location. For anyone who enjoys the sport of dot watching the following links will show our location based on the Spot Tracker after we start cycling on Sunday morning.

https://maps.findmespot.com/s/M4ZV

Spot Tracker Map

Stay tuned !