Cycle Tour 2022 – Day 18: A hard but rewarding day along the Loire

Throughout this trip, I've been reflecting to Sonia that I've been trouble finding the joy in bicycle touring that I usually have, and I've also been having trouble figuring out why. Surely a not insignificant portion of it is that the process of discharging the accumulated stress of the past 2+ years, with Covid (and its myriad insidious knock-on effects) and the death of my in-laws, which has taken quite a lot of time to accomplish. There has also been a low-level dissatisfaction with my new bike, but that's a small thing. And there has been the fact that each of the first two weeks of this trip had a number of stretches of riding that I don't want to say was monotonous, but was, let's say, very similar day after day. 

But during this leg along the Loire Valley, I've been getting my mojo back, which is wonderful, because I was worried that I had lost the thrill of cycle touring. And I realize that one of the things I've been missing—one of the things I love most about cycle touring—is simply cycling through the countryside and farmland. None of which we did much of during the first two weeks. But the smells and vistas one experiences riding through farmland and vineyards are a balm for the soul, and I've missed it so much! 

We left Savonnières this morning at 9, stopped at the excellent local patisserie for a second-breakfast treat, and then set off down the road, the weather deliciously cool and, for the first time on this leg, with a tail wind. So we made excellent time getting to Tours, where we had our mid-morning snack and tea ceremony at a park on what we would call the South Shore but what the French call the Rive Gauche. Then, a short delay. I felt that my rear wheel was wobbling and, knowing that I had a spoke that tended to work its way loose, I proceeded to check my spokes. Finding several that were quite loose, I took out my spoke key and tightened all I could find. Alas, in the process, I overtightened several of them and managed to untrue my wheel, causing my brakes to rub. So I took all the panniers (etc.) off the bike, flipped it over, and learned, in that moment, how to true a bicycle wheel. (Of course, the few drops of rain that we have had in this whole trip chose to fall just then, but it was only a few drops.) I knew the principle of how to true a wheel, but I had never done it before, so I was perhaps unreasonably proud of myself when, after about 15 minutes, I had gotten my wheel true again and was back on the road. 

We road through Tours, stopping in at the pretty rundown cathedral, finding a bakery for a sandwich, and taking a perfunctory picture of the chateau before getting out of town. From there it was down the Loire to Montlouis-sur-Loire, where found a market just as it was closing down and bought some veggies, cheese, and fresh pasta for our supper, and after which we once again climbed out of the valley and into the upland vineyards.

The Château de Tours, of course

 

Unlike yesterday, benches and picnic tables abounded along the EV6, and we found the perfect spot for lunch shaded by a fruit tree of some sort and surrounded by grape vines. Paradise! Then we dove back down to the river and followed it to the town of Amboise, which seemed absolutely lovely. Alas, we reached it during the very hottest part of the day, and the noise of the town, combined with our fatigue and having to stop at a grocery store for a few last provisions, sapped any patience we had for looking at the chateau or the gardens or the house where Leonardo da Vinci once lived and ultimately died. These tours are definitely not about sightseeing, except in the most serendipitous of ways.

The EV6 then took us back into the uplands for the last stretch of this long day, which ended up being a solid 70 km. It was almost as lovely as the earlier part of the day, but by now we were eager to get to our Airbnb. We stopped briefly at a winery to pick up a bottle of local wine for supper (which turned out to be a fairly meh rosé), and coasted back down to the river to our lodging for the night in Chaumont-sur-Loire, which is quite nice. Chaumont has what appears to be a very nice chateau, but it is barely visible from the road. 

Our bikes safely stowed for the evening