The Loire by bicycle

Arrival in Orleans

We set off early in the morning from Padua with our cars loaded with bags, 6 bikes, determination, a bit of muscle and hearts open to the encounters and emotions of this trip. After the Mont Blanc tunnel, truly unsettling for how narrow it is, the sight of the glacier on the French side kissed by the sun lifts our spirits. It's incredible how it's within reach, with its crevasses, even as it retreats more and more, year after year. Along the French highways there's no traffic, you're always driving through greenery, beautiful yes, but it's always the SAME green! Getting off the highway after 600 km is therefore a relief. We arrive in Orleans toward evening, unfortunately in the rain and with a chill that's nothing to joke about: 14 degrees. We knew this kind of climate awaited us, but feeling it on your skin still makes an impression.

With some difficulty we find the hotel, the area is on the outskirts, shopping centers all around, but since we only have to spend the night here, this and the last one, and having the car available to visit the center, we're fine with it. First personal approaches with the French and with French are positive: they smile, they understand me and often I understand them. Tired from the journey and knowing the habits of the French (after 9:30 pm it's extremely hard to find something to eat!), we decide that the nearby "Buffalo Grill" (terrible, I know) can satisfy us.

Loir Hotel Zone Expo Sud - Orleans Tel. +33(0)238510055 Fax +33(0)238511333

Triple 42 euros plus 6 euros each for buffet breakfast Outdoor car park but closed by a gate. Bike storage inside the hotel. Spartan rooms, bathroom in the room but rather inconvenient. Very easygoing and courteous management; one of us forgot his glasses there and they shipped them back to Italy.

Orleans-Blois (75 km)

We stick our noses out of the hotel: hey, it's even colder! 10 degrees!!! But there's sun! Unexpected, unforeseen, to be seized on the fly. But on the first day we're still getting oiled as a group and the (hearty) breakfast and the preparation of bags and bikes (meticulous) mean that we don't leave before 9:30. It's already cloudy. The hotel manager greets us cordially, says we have courage and that he hopes to see us again in a week but he's not very convinced. I begin to suspect that what we're about to do is a bit over the top even for the French, connoisseurs of two wheels. Oh well! Off we go. After 5 km the first village, we immediately stop at a pharmacy: a sign? The first part of the route doesn't include a bike path, in any case we ride on roads with little traffic. At Clery St André, that is after 15 km, we sense it's time to prepare for rain.

This part of France is like England, the weather changes quickly: the sun may even come out, but sooner or later it will surely rain; the next 2 days we'll set off already well covered! We spot a nice path along the embankment and start riding it: terrible choice! The surface gets worse and worse and we can't bring ourselves to turn back. Result: at Meung sur Loire we're covered in mud everywhere, unpresentable, us and the bikes. Never again dirt roads: we learn many things for being the first day! A few kilometers further on, the first puncture: in front of the nuclear power plants! The wind is perpetually against us and very stiff. We arrive at Chambord after about 50 km, but it feels like a lifetime! The sun peeking out, a restorative lunch and above all the sight of the castle quiet our worries.

The castle is simply magnificent: despite being truly enormous in size, it's made graceful by the green of the gardens and woods around it, to the point of making it almost a natural work for how integrated it is with its surroundings. We skip the planned castle of Chiverny because the stage promises to be longer than expected and we definitely need some time to wash the bikes and sort ourselves out, given the condition we're in. Shortly before Blois, a small gap is widened by the headwind and splits us into two groups separated by minutes. Raffaele has problems with his rack which we quickly repair. All in all we're lucky, because in Blois a violent storm breaks out but we're already sheltered in a covered passage of a house.

At the hotel we give ourselves a general clean-up, rest, warm up and above all look each other in the eye: no one expected a pounding like this and if the weather and mechanical situations are like those of the first day we'll definitely have to change plans and shorten the route. The historic center of Blois welcomes us for our dinner, many places with Middle Eastern or Indian cuisine follow one another. We eat decently, stroll around Blois and visit the cathedral in the evening, splendidly illuminated as we will often notice here in France. Its appearance, absolutely asymmetrical, strikes us quite a bit. Time to meet a couple of Italians along the way, Venetians (Italians are everywhere in the world doing tourism, Venetians even more!) and it's time to go to sleep.

Hotel Le Savoie Rue du Docteur Ducoux 6-8 - Blois Tel. +33(0)254743221 Fax +33(0)254742958

Quadruple 66 euros, Double 48 euros plus 6 euros each for buffet breakfast Bike storage inside the hotel, partly uncovered. Decent rooms, in the quadruple there are 2 bathrooms in the room.

Blois-Tours (87km)

We get up and the weather doesn't look any better than the previous day. We improve, slightly, on preparation times, even though the buffet breakfast is a must for us cyclists because we can stuff ourselves without scruple or guilty conscience. We set off and after about twenty km we arrive at Chaumont. The castle, with a very grim appearance, is in a fantastic position, dominating the town below and the Loire valley; the gardens are in fact a public park. We're quite cold because of the wind, but it's not raining and we set off again toward Chenonceau. We taste the first ups and downs typical of these areas, yes because the concept of plain in France is very different from our Po Valley one: a blanket thrown haphazardly on the floor compared to a billiard table. Rivers mark the valleys and the folds of the blanket are the elevation gain to overcome to go from one to the other.

On one of these steep bits Alberto pushes too hard and...breaks the chain, sigh! Now, one can repair a punctured wheel, can fix with screws and nuts the loosened rack, but if you break the chain you can do nothing but curse and change it. Obviously this happened on a Sunday morning in August in the middle of nowhere in the French countryside. Some French cyclists, very kind, try to help us repair it but we only gain 5 kilometers. The difficulty is brilliantly overcome in a typically Italian way, that is by improvising: Alberto is towed on his bike for 20 km by 2 of us thanks to elastic cords tying the frames of the 3 bikes together. Moral: we occupy much of the roadway being 3 side by side! This way we all arrive at Chenonceau visiting the castle and gardens, then Alberto continues to Tours loading his bike on the train, while we get there by pedaling.

Mentally this episode was important, because we realized that despite the "bad luck" that was clearly manifesting itself, we were stronger. Or stubborn. Or crazy. Chenonceau deserves a careful visit to the gardens and also inside the castle. Unique in its kind, it extends over the river Cher as if built on a bridge. Diana of Poitiers, mistress of King Henry II who had given her land and manor, took care of the castle and its gardens first, then his wife Catherine de' Medici, who upon her husband's death forced Diana to leave her possession of Chenonceau! It was possible to supply the residents with food and materials directly from the river via boats. We meet (would you look at that!) the Venetians from the previous day that we had crossed paths with in Blois.

We 5 cyclists continue to Amboise, the sun welcomes us in this very lively little town, with a castle right in the middle of the historic center. Here everything recalls Leonardo da Vinci and his stay in these places. From Amboise to Tours we ride a very busy and narrow road that serves as an embankment along the Loire and we almost rear-end each other, all 5 of us. We reunite with Alberto and in the evening we wander around Tours and its typical wooden houses with sloping roofs. Tours is a rather extensive city, but the historic center is limited and full of restaurants for tourists, unfortunately we choose badly and end up with the worst dinner of the vacation. If possible look for places outside the center then, a bit more typical and cheaper.

The nighttime view of the Tours cathedral compensates for the gastronomic disappointment: we're simply speechless before the monumental facade in classic French Gothic style.

Hotel des Chateaux de la Loire Rue Gambetta, 12 - Tours Tel. +33(0)247051005 Fax +33(0)247202014

Triple at 60 and 64 euros plus 6.60 euros each for buffet breakfast and 0.70 euros each city tax. Bike storage inside the hotel, uncovered. Clean and well-furnished rooms, bathroom in the room.

Tours-Chinon (60km)

The whole morning is lost finding a mechanic available to repair the bike chain. On Monday many shops are closed but Decathlon saves us, which in France is an institution and is present in many towns. There a mechanic solves our problem and we set off again shortly before lunch. The stage called for a considerable mileage, about 100 km, and many castles and villages to visit, we immediately decide to shorten it, also because the weather conditions have worsened again. The first part of the bike path, up to Villandry, is delightful: continuous curves and ups and downs along the Cher, splendid villages like Savonnières, you don't meet a living soul. Then at Villandry, suddenly tourism and the mass of people.

Riding these places by bike is a sort of parallel journey into another dimension, which intersects with the worldly and touristy one a few hundred meters from the castles, with parking lots crowded with cars and campers (all Italian), and then immediately abandoning it and diving back into the French rural world. The first drops of water and all this crowd push us to take a secondary road that soon takes us out of the world, out of time, but into a farm stay (Etape Gourmande its name) that will offer us the best taste-olfactory sensations of the vacation! Chinon wine, exquisite salades with pansy salads, lake fish, daring but delicious sweet-savory pairings...

With a full belly one thinks better: it's raining heavily, why get on the bikes? Better to visit the gardens of the castle of Villandry, a wise choice! After smell and taste, the eye also celebrates in this expanse of hectares of colors. Kitchen garden, vegetable garden, ornamental garden, water garden: all in the name of harmony. We set off again still in the rain grinding out, finally, kilometers on the bike constantly against a very stiff wind. We arrive at Ussè, happy because we're no longer heading west and the wind is at least sideways. The sun peeks out, a girl in a car greets us smiling: this is the business card of Ussè which suddenly shows us in profile its gem, the castle of Sleeping Beauty! The classic fairy-tale castle, as it is in our imagination, Ussè inspired Perrault himself in his famous tales.

The entrance for the visit is outrageously expensive, a full 11 euros, let's skip it because it's still beautiful to admire it from outside by moving away from the main road and slipping into one of the many streets that skirt the branches of the Indre river. We skip, alas, Azay le Rideau and its castle and head toward Chinon, the village where we decide to stop for the night. The sun gives us back our energy, which we immediately use to overcome a significant climb that separates us from the town. Chinon rises on the banks of the Vienne, yet another left tributary of the Loire, perched around its rather dilapidated castle, among the vineyards of the same name. We stay overnight in a delightful place, the town is full of historic residences transformed into places of hospitality.

We linger to observe squares, equestrian statues of Joan of Arc, Rabelais' residences and so we risk being left without dinner because, here more than elsewhere, kitchens close early!

Etape Gourmande

Domaine de la Giraudiere - Villandry Tel.:+33(0)247500860 Fax: +330)247500660

info@letapegourmande.com

Hotel Le Plantagenet

Place Jeanne d'Arc, 12 - Chinon Tel. +33(0)247933692 Fax +33(0)247984892

info@hotel-plantagenet.com

Doubles at 55 euros (after negotiation!), breakfast with an additional 6 euros each. It's absolutely the most beautiful place where we stayed. The structure is divided into 3 buildings, each from a different era. 2 of the 3 rooms were truly valuable: attic rooms with the original wooden framework exposed and in any case very spacious. Bike storage inside the hotel, uncovered. Bathroom in the room. The hostess is a jewel and eager to converse with tourists.

Chinon-Les Ponts de Cé (97 km)

Le soleil, finally! Forecast respected, the weather turns fair and the temperature rises. Perfect conditions for cycling, we set off early all very charged up. Me more so: I can finally show off my anti-France shirt, white with unmistakable writings referring to the outcome of the World Cup final. It's time to demolish French grandeur, riding the roads of France highlighting who won and who lost seems almost a moral duty to me. We leave Chinon and after about fifteen kilometers we're at Candes St. Martin, at the confluence of the Vienne into the Loire. This village is marvelous, excellently preserved, with an elegant Gothic cathedral and beside it a beautiful cobblestone alley leading to a viewpoint (recommended detour, if you're sturdy do it by bike!).

From here you can admire the 2 rivers and the splendid panorama of the surrounding hills with, inevitably, a nuclear power plant, the oldest in France! Immediately after we reach Montsoreau, another beautiful village with an attached castle. At this point I highly recommend detouring toward Fontevraud as we did, in fact this town hosts a marvelous abbey dating back to 1100 and recently restored; the abbey is the largest ever built and requires a good 2 hours for a careful visit (plus half an hour for the free tasting of local wine!). Fontevraud is 6 kilometers from Montsoreau, don't take the main road, but follow the signs of the bike path: it's marvelous, it winds between hills and farms with animals roaming freely in the road! Back at Montsoreau, the bike path continues toward Saumur with a stretch as demanding as it is surprising.

You in fact enter the Anjou region, characterized by its famous vineyards and the Caves, places inside the rock where wines and other gastronomic products are stored. The vineyards appear extremely orderly, even the grass between one row and another is perfectly cut and flowers here and there color these very steep hills. On the bike brutal steep bits alternate (the one at Souzay Champigny is not easily forgotten) with gentler stretches among the vineyards. Saumur and its castle are an excellent place to stop for a break and sunbathe: a grassy slope dominates above the town. We set off again but a mechanical mishap (oh, how strange!) immediately stops us: Dario has the rear wheel with completely loosened spokes, which consequently won't stay straight anymore.

By now we're experts: straight to the Saumur Decathlon and we set off again in less than half an hour! Villages follow one more beautiful than the other: few houses, always friendly people who greet us as we pass, cars nonexistent except for old but extremely reliable Renault 4s that rule these territories. Cunault, Gennes, Le Thoureil, among forests and forests: it's a fairy-tale place, that opens the heart. I'm ashamed of my shirt: here everyone is affectionate toward us. The route is so pleasant and the unusual warmth so inviting that the kilometers flow, we even pass St.

Mathurin, aiming to sleep in one of these villages, la Dagueniére, but once we arrive we realize there's nowhere to eat or sleep! We then stop at Les ponts de Cé, on the outskirts of Angers, an anonymous town but tonight we're tired and don't care about going out, we eat in the hotel where we sleep with a smile on our faces: it was the most beautiful stage of the trip.

Hotel Restaurant Kyriad Avenue Gallieni, 62 Tel. +33(0)241449244 Fax +33(0)241449224 e-mail: angers.pontsdece@kyriad.fr

Doubles at 60 euros, plus 6.70 euros each for buffet breakfast and 0.9 euros city tax. The most expensive of the vacation, but the dinner, good and cheap, had at the same establishment amortized the expense. Bike storage covered in a somewhat inconvenient storage room, bathroom in the room. It was in any case a fallback choice. Staff not up to par. Credit card requested as guarantee. Not recommended (there's nothing in the town), stop in some village before, between Saumur and Angers or in Angers itself.

Les Ponts de Cé-Ingrandes-Nantes (47 km)

Another sunny day. The morning dedicated to Angers, a city nestled on the banks of the Maine, with an interesting historic center, the inevitable castle and a splendid cathedral, almost at the level of that of Tours. Here too we taste excellent wine at the "Maison du vin" and wander around the restricted traffic zone of Angers, very pleasant and lively. Finally we cross the city park on the other side of the river, so large it could contain much of the city. Outside the park the Loire is already in view with its last bends. At Savenniéres we detour toward Béhuard, it's a village built on an island created by the course of the Loire! It feels like going back in time, and going back slowly! We continue almost by inertia and tackle a stretch of bike path longer than 10 kilometers inside another island of the Loire.

As if it didn't want to reach its mouth, the great river does everything to hold itself back and hold us back from reaching our destination. Amidst this kind of sensations and emotions, the sight of an abandoned bar with the revolutionary name "Bar Lenin" seems almost natural to us: for a while I thought I was next to one of the branches of the Po in the Ferrara area rather than in real France. We arrive at Montjean sur Loire, we stop for a snack, but it's an excuse: we spend the time observing those passing by, the slow rhythm of the people, of the fishermen, a bit spellbound a bit envious. Tiredness surfaces heavily on some of us, Raffaele and Alberto are a bit "on the hook". We decide not to reach Nantes by bike, but by train, saving ourselves the last 50 kilometers of the day.

At Ingrandes, while waiting for the train, we see a river pool populated by the inhabitants of the village: it's decided, without waiting for the ocean of the next day, we bathe directly in the Loire! The water is indeed freezing, as well as murky, polluted and tasteless, but the situation immediately captivates us: the children making castles with the river sand, the deck chairs with the elderly sunbathing in swimsuits at 20 degrees, you can't resist. I notice the effect of the invigorating swim a few minutes later on the train: the attendant of the bike car is a girl with a gaze you don't easily forget. I boldly strike up a conversation.

Unfortunately, as was predictable, she only knows French...I think I said all the words I knew of French in that conversation, by the time I got to Nantes I was drained, but I had managed to propose an improbable meeting to her in Padua! In Nantes too we find much courtesy in those who welcome us: the hotel porter knows a few words of Italian and makes an effort to speak it, he recommends a place nearby to eat. We eat very well and the waitress who serves us also speaks Italian, thanks to a year of Erasmus in Trento. We visit the historic center of Nantes after dinner, nothing special, but not even that little that one would expect from a port city such as it is. Hotel de la Gare Allée Commandant Charcot, 5 Tel. +33(0)240743725 Fax +33(0)240933371

Doubles at 51 euros, plus 6 euros each for breakfast and 0.6 euros city tax. A stone's throw from the station (it was convenient for us), but the center is not far on foot. The area has more or less decent hotels, this one is definitely worthy and the staff courteous. Bike storage cramped, but present and covered.

Nantes-Pornic-Orleans (55 km)

Today we can finally ride free from the weight of the bags: the goal in fact is to reach the ocean and then by train go back to Nantes, pick up the luggage from the hotel and continue always by train to Orleans where we have the cars. This relief of weight combined with the sensation of the destination now being near means that each of us gives more or less everything and rides rather recklessly, not caring about the travel companions. The wind, which never granted us the pleasure of abandoning us, and the last ups and downs do the rest.

After crossing the last bridge over the Loire indicated on the map, which is actually a ferry shuttling from one bank to the other, nothing holds us together anymore: we even choose different roads to reach Pornic, that is, the Atlantic! Personally, together with Flavio and Dario, I choose to reach the ocean even earlier, at La Bernerie, and continue along the coast toward Pornic. The wind is very stiff, we decide to lengthen the route by returning inland along a very fun bike path that we tackle at crazy speed. Nicely fired up we arrive at Pornic and manage to all find each other, all 6 of us! Pornic is pretty but certainly around Nantes there are more beautiful places on the ocean, such as la Boule or le Croisic, however the need to return to Orleans the same day with bike-transport trains didn't allow us much choice.

Pornic, a name that sounds eRotic rather than eSoteric, a name that, when we drew up the itinerary of the tour at the table, seemed to us the ultimate goal, even up to 2-3 days before, when we were floundering in the mud and under the rain, it seemed to us the improbable goal. And instead it was there in front of us, materialized in a castle (oh really?), in a beautiful little town immersed in greenery and in the last joke of nature: low tide! The ocean was kilometers away, we nevertheless unanimously established that we had reached the ocean and it was it, coward, that had run away. The return to Orleans goes fairly smoothly until Blois, where the last tragic absurd unforeseen event occurs. A man threw himself under the train, railway between Blois and Orleans interrupted until who knows when.

A Frenchman on the train explains to us that it's normal here, it has already happened to him 6 times and that generally it takes 3 hours before setting off again! Normal??? I've always thought that too much green drives you to depression! We visit Orleans by bike even though it's now late evening. The historic center is very pleasant, with pedestrian alleys that intersect descending toward the Loire, crowded with young people chatting outside the venues. The Orleans cathedral has nothing to envy to that of Tours, at least seen from outside. We speed toward the hotel, I would have loved to see that likable rascal of a hotelier to show him that yes, we had been courageous and we had made it. Too late: here everyone is already in bed and it seems it's best for us too since 1100 km await us (or maybe more?) the next day to return home.

Return to Padua

We set off again by car for Italy. The idle flowing of the Loire has infected us, rather than heading straight for the highway, we wander along secondary roads in the countryside around Bourges and Nevers: they are very beautiful places, which reminded me of the prosecco hills around Valdobbiadene. Here too vineyards everywhere, extremely orderly and every now and then ancient and characteristic villages. At one of the many wine producers we propose ourselves for yet another tasting, but this time we're by car and we buy. In fact we begin to seriously head home mid-afternoon and at 3 in the morning we're all home. All or almost: someone unloaded the bike and had to do further kilometers pedaling to reach his four walls!