Day 13: Bordeaux

Today I adopted my usual practice when visiting a new city, and just walked. I didn't seek out any special sites or galleries or whatever, I just wandered and tried to soak up the atmosphere of the place.

And this is a lovely city, one in which I immediately feel comfortable. Quite cosmopolitan, with significant Spanish and Turkish communities, but very French. Excellent public transport, with a superb modern tram system: how I wish that some UK cities had the imagination and determination to implement something similar. Very charming, too: a combination of grand 19th century boulevards

and much narrower, sometimes older, back streets that occasionally surprise you with another one of these:

The French take on the English pub is surprisingly fashionable here, there's a Charles Dickens, a Frog and Rosbif (see what they did there?), a Sweeney Todd, a Dog & Duck... . They aren't all about the tourist trade, either; when I had an excellent pint of locally-brewed pale ale in the Frog and Rosbif the clientele was overwhelmingly young, and local. The barmaid, however, was from Darlington, via Halifax, and had been in Bordeaux for ten years. I doubt if she'll be throwing her weight behind the Brexit campaign.

Now, if you've stayed with me this far I realise that you may feel you've had a surfeit of ecclesiastical architecture, so I'll keep those pictures to a minimum. It's not easy to get good shots of the major churches anyway, they're too hemmed-in by the surrounding buildings. However, I was interested that the two major churches - Bordeaux Cathedral and the Basilisque St Michel - both had massive campaniles separate from, and I suspect later than, the main buildings. And in the Cathedral they have in a couple of places restored the decor to something close to its original colours.

This got me thinking. The ancient churches with which I grew up had been stripped back to the bare stone by time and, to a lesser extent, by the protestant reformation. As a result they were, and are, austere. The image of religion that they present is essentially puritanical, and stern, and much more about fear than joy. It's interesting to reflect on how different an impression might have been created by these places when they were new, and glowing with red and gold.

Altogether very pleased to have spent a little time here, I'll be back. And this has been a superbly timed stop as far as the weather is concerned, because today has been cold, and blustery, and intermittently wet. Fine for walking around town, wouldn't have been so great on the bike. Sunshine forecast for tomorrow.

Day 12: Blaye to Bordeaux

55 km. Details

A lovely easy spin in spring sunshine, followed by the usual slow business of navigating oneself into the centre of a big city while avoiding the major arterial roads. That was an even more painful process than usual today, the roadsigns were determinedly directing me to the fastest - and therefore least cyclist-friendly - routes. No big problem, I had plenty of time, but it took a bit of fiddling about.

To be fair, French signage is generally very good, at least as good as in the UK and maybe less likely to mislead. My only complaint has generally been that "toutes directions" quite often turns out to have been an abbreviation for "toutes les directions sauf la direction que vous voulez".

So, a painstaking business getting into Bordeaux. However, once in it becomes clear that this is a city of considerable charm.

I've barely scratched the surface yet, of course, these are just random shots taken on a short walk from the hotel. More serious exploring tomorrow.

Day 11: Saintes to Blaye-et-Sainte-Luce

88km. Details

If you're ever roaming around the Gironde, do yourself a favour and spend a night at the Hotel La Citadelle in Blaye. Rooms not especially luxurious, but perfectly adequate. Nice restaurant and terrace bar. Swimming pool. Sensational views of the estuary. But its distinguishing feature is that when it says citadel, it really means it. It is smack in the middle of the Citadel at Blaye, a historic monument on a vast scale.

La Porte Royale

This photograph doesn't do it justice. It is taken from inside the external fortifications, and shows the main entrance to the citadel proper. The thing is a kilometre long. and covers 38 hectares. Inside it there's the ruin of a 14th century castle that looks about the size of a shed by comparison. The hotel is in what seems to have been part of the headquarters building, next to the monastery (!) that was built to give the soldiers access to the consolations of religion. Extraordinary, fascinating place, and I'm in it entirely at random having decided to stop riding at 1400 rather than continue for another 50 km into Bordeaux.

Vineyards everywhere I looked on the ride today, kilometre after kilometre of them. A surprisingly large number of them were devoted to making Pineau and Cognac rather than wine. Some of the wine-makers do alright, though. These are the sort of premises that owning a really top vineyard in the Gironde will buy you:

Chateau Segonzac

The vines are just coming into leaf. It seems amazing that in the space of only about four months they are transformed from what look like dead twigs and will be groaning under the weight of the grapes. Strange business, life.

Bordeaux tomorrow, followed by a rest day. Having left myself only 50 km into town, I'll easily be there by lunchtime, and so will have a full day and a half to explore the city.

Day 10: La Rochelle to Saintes

91 kms. Route etc.

Zut alors! It's absolutely beautiful round here. Today's ride down the D114 between Surgeres and Saintes was just a procession of charming little villages and towns set in glorious countryside. St Savinien sur Charente, for example:

never heard of it before, and there's no reason why I should have, but it's a simply lovely little riverside town. The Charente was lovely virtually throughout, in fact.

And Saintes, where I an staying tonight, isn't half bad either. Older than I had realised, it was apparently an important town in Roman times. In consequence one can't escape a bit more architecture. In 1047 another Martel (Geoffrey, Comte D'Anjou, no relation to the great Charles, as far as I can see) founded a Benedictine abbey here for women. Unsurprisingly, it's very Norman in feel.

Abbaye des Dames, Saintes

The main doorway alone is worth five minutes of one's time:

and it provided a surprise entry for the "best flying buttress of the trip" competition.

As you may gather, I've had a good day. Better than I expected, in fact. I was feeling pretty tired at breakfast and thought I might be wise to have a very easy day. So I considered just making the short hop to Rochefort, about 35km. But I felt great once on the bike, and the 91 gently undulating kilometres to Saintes were pure pleasure.

I keep making random cultural observations as I go along. The cafes that double as bookmakers are everywhere, loads of them have PMU as well as FDJ terminals. And (entirely unrelated) there is massive enthusiasm for organic farming. Ever since Poitiers, virtually every village I have passed through has proudly declared itself "Terre Saine" - a community without insecticides. 

Day 9: Niort to La Rochelle

80 km. Details

After long years of experiment and deep contemplation, I have come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as a following wind. There are those who claim to have had a different experience. If they are to be believed, the only explanation must be that the universe is conscious, and has taken a dislike to me. Whatever, the wind certainly whipped in off the Atlantic today, apparently with me in mind.

I spent a lot of today in and around the Parc Naturel Regionel du Marais Poitevin. It's a beautiful place to ride, criss-crossed by deserted country roads and spotted with pretty villages. The marshes must have been huge, years ago, many hundreds of square kilometres, but like the fens in East Anglia they have mostly been reclaimed for farmland, the land drained by a network of these:

There was lots of birdsong, and the occasional croaking grenouille, but mostly the fauna decided to be heard but not seen. I did spot a couple of raptors lazily quartering the fields - some sort of marsh harrier by the shape of them, but very light-coloured. And here is a curiosity for my neighbours in Leicestershire:

If it isn't clear, the bottom sign reads "Jumelee avec Barrow upon Soar"

So, a nice but windy ride to La Rochelle. It won't be news to many of you, but this is a seriously attractive town. The old port is lovely, as you might expect:

but if anything I am more impressed by the host of really ancient arcaded streets. Here's one picked at random because it's absolutely typical.

A really nice place to just wander around.

Phenomenally cycling-friendly, too, there are bike lanes and paths everywhere. I rode around town for the better part of an hour this afternoon after checking into a hotel, and it took me a while to get used to just how much space on the roads was set aside for cyclists. Most impressive.

Not sure about tomorrow. Maybe Saintes.

Day 8: Poitiers to Niort

82 km, 4 and a half hours. Details

As predicted, I didn't want to tackle the whole distance from Poitiers to La Rochelle today. Good job I didn't, too, because I was riding into a westerly headwind throughout and 130 km would have been a tough old day on the bike. Not that there is much to complain about when one is riding through this:

Anyway, I kept it very sedate, and find myself in Niort. Not a town I remember having heard of before, but it turns out to be quite a substantial place with a rather attractive big central square. I also find myself in unusually lavish accommodations, because on stopping at the Mercure (I'm becoming fond of the Mercure chain, this one's my fourth) I found it almost full, they had only a 'junior suite" left. I thought of riding on to a Best Western or whatever, but decided wotthehell, I can't take it with me.

My morning was slightly marred by the discovery that I had lost my rain jacket. As soon as I missed it I had a mental image of it draped over the back of my chair at yesterday's lunch stop. Irritating. However, the Decathlon Sports Megastore in Niort has furnished me with an inferior (and, to be fair, much cheaper) replacement, so not much harm done.

I also spent a half-hour or so at the end of today's ride tinkering with the set-up of the bike. I was finding that my saddle wasn't its usual perfectly comfortable self, and since it couldn't be the saddle - it and I have happily ridden maybe 10,000 miles together on three continents - it had to be something to do with my riding position. The bike fits me beautifully, but was set up a bit more aggressively than is usual for touring, more like a full-on road bike. So, I've raised the handlebars a tad and fractionally shortened the reach, and judging from a quick ride round town this afternoon, seem to have sorted it. Nothing like four or five hours a day on the bike to reveal any unnoticed imperfections. And while I'm boring on about the bike (a subject, I quite understand, that while fascinating to me is utterly uninteresting to anyone not actually riding it) I went up a little hill in Lusignan today for which the computer claimed a maximum gradient of 21%. Not sure I believe that, I mistrust Garmin data when it comes to gradients and elevations, but it was certainly in excess of 15%. It doesn't get much steeper than that even in the Pyrenees, so that suggests I won't meet much that I can't climb with the gears I've chosen. Quite reassuring.

On to La Rochelle tomorrow. Looking forward to it, pretty much everything to the south-west is new to me.

Day 7: Tours to Poitiers

102 km, 4hours 38 mins. Route etc.

For no particular reason other than doing what the fancy takes me, I decided that I wanted to turn south today, so headed down the D910 to Poitiers.

Poitiers is one of those places that has been in my head for a long time, for reasons that most will find odd. It first caught my attention when at school, as the place where Charles Martel turned back the Moors in seven hundred and something. I thought it was vaguely cool that a near-namesake of mine had been such an important figure - amazing how tenuous are the connections that snare the imagination. More recently, ever since visiting the Chateau at Chenonceux several years ago I've been intrigued by Diane de Poitiers. Even though he was one of the more successful kings of France, and therefore might have been expected to make grand gestures, that chateau was a princely gift for Henry II to bestow on his mistress. And she held his attention for his whole life despite being 20 years older than him. I've always thought she must have been remarkable. How the queen must have hated her!

As for her home town, I suppose she might feel that the town hall is worthy of her:

The more modern parts of town, maybe not so much.

Today was one of those days that remind me why I do this sort of thing. Just a great day on the bike. Cold when I left Tours at 0815, but brilliant sunshine which lasted all the way to Poitiers. I was feeling pretty strong, too, cranking along at a briskish pace by loaded touring standards. A long way to go, but I can see that at some point I'll be able to remember what fit felt like.

One interesting cultural sidelight. About halfway I stopped for a cafe creme at a cafe that doubled as a bookmakers, with a FDJ terminal on the premises. Eleven a.m. on a Sunday morning, and the place was packed with (mostly) middle-aged men drinking beer and playing the numbers while watching the racing on the TV. Not something I've seen on previous visits, but maybe I just wasn't paying attention.

Not sure where I'll go tomorrow. Certainly in the direction of La Rochelle, but it's probably a bit further than I'll want to do in a single day.

Day 6: Amboise to Tours

56km, just over three hours. Details.

The weather wasn't kind today. Cold and wet, so I kept it short. Pottered around between Amboise and Chenonceux, more to make it worthwhile being out on the bike than anything else, before making the brief hop across to Tours. Things are supposed to improve tomorrow so I'll try then for a more substantial ride.

Notwithstanding the weather, I was thinking today that if anyone wondered whether they might enjoy a bicycle tour, they could hardly do better than the Loire Valley to give it a try. It's very flat, so even the absolute beginner need have no worries about covering 30 or 40km each day; and there's so much to stop and see that they might not want to go further than that anyway. Plus the food and drink are terrific, and there's a host of quiet roads and cycle paths that mean nobody need be intimidated by traffic. Maybe there's a second (or is it fourth?) career for me as a Loire Valley cycle tour leader.

When I was last in Tours we used it mainly as a base for exploring other parts of the valley. That (or more probably, dementia) may account for the fact that I have very little recollection of the city itself. The old part of town is, however, very attractive, with a lot of 15th and 16th century stuff still in use, as here.

Inevitably, I had a look at The Cathedral. It's a nice one.

In particular, a lot of the stained glass is really lovely.

Be reassured, dear reader, that this obsession with late mediaeval architecture will not endure. As the weeks pass the focus of this blog will shift from the man-made to the wonders of nature. But before I pass on, I must gratify once again the flying-buttress fans. 

This one is a bit special.

Day 5: Rest day in Amboise

Decided to make my stop here rather than riding straight on to Saumur. A bit early in the trip for a rest day, but I'm not on a timetable and this is an attractive little town. Surprisingly significant historically, too, as I discovered when spending a happy morning rooting around in the Chateau.

Really interesting building, having started out as a heavily fortified mediaeval castle then morphing into a Renaissance Palace during the late 15th and early 16th centuries as Charles VIII and, especially, Francis I turned it into one of the principal royal residences. You can get an idea of how the palace grew out of the fortress from this view:

Palace on top, curtain wall underneath, town far below.

Anne de Bretagne lived here. By marrying her Charles VIII put an end to the fighting between France and Brittany. And just to illustrate how determined he was to make that a permanent arrangement, the marriage contract stated that should he predecease her, she must marry the next King, his cousin, Louis XII: which, in 1498, she duly did. And thirty-odd years later the Duchy of Brittany was finally and irrevocably incorporated into France. Don't you love it when a plan comes together?

But the real enthusiast for the renaissance was Francis I, who, if I remember rightly, was the one who built Chambord. He invited Leonardo da Vinci to Amboise and the great man lived here for the last three years of his life. He's buried here, in the chapel.

La Chapelle Saint-Hubert

At least, he's probably buried here. He was certainly buried in the Chateau, but the tomb was destroyed a couple of hundred years later. They exhumed some remains that they thought were probably his and reinterred them in the chapel. He's around here somewhere..

So, a fairly pivotal place in the formation of modern France and the building evolved with the times, starting out when French Kings needed the protection of castles and finishing up in the era when the Chateau had become a grand country house, with gardens to match.

You want topiary? We got it.

Otherwise, a lazy day in the local cafes. It was supposed to rain. In fact it has turned out to be beautiful. Tomorrow, on to Saumur, or thereabouts.

Days 3 & 4: Chartres to Amboise via Beaugency

No wi-fi connection at the hostel in Beaugency, so two entries for the price of one today.

Day 3: Chartres to Beaugency

90km, 18.5 kph average. Route and details.

Excellent breakfast in the Mercure, set off not long after 0900 in beautiful spring weather. Chilly breeze but bright sunshine as I rolled through hour after hour of rich, flat, northern French farmland. If I tell you the day mostly looked like this you'll get the idea.

The road south from Chartres.

Pretty much pancake-flat, so on a calm day this would have been supremely easy. The number of windmills would lead one to suspect, though, that calm days are the exception here, and today the wind was whipping across the flatlands from the south east at 25-30 kph. Easy to see how the crosswinds rip the peloton apart in those supposedly easy early stages in the Tour; you're cruising along without a care in the world then come to a bend in the road and BAM - you're grovelling. I'd have liked an echelon to shelter in today.

No point in wasting my strength fighting it. With the panniers on the bike I have all the aerodynamic qualities of a housebrick, so trying to go faster into a headwind just makes things exponentially harder for very little result. I just geared down and accepted that the wind was going to turn what might have been a fast day into a slow one.

The first 50km from Chartres to Patay took me the better part of three hours and I was starting to feel a bit beaten up so I was peeved to find the Cafe in Patay was closed for refurbishment. This little cloud turned out to have a superbly silver lining, though, because about 10km further on I came upon Le Bagatelle - an unprepossessing little place in the middle of nowhere that was packed with what seemed to be the local agricultural workers. A good sign, I thought, and I was right. Four course lunch (excellent mixed salad, calves liver and onions with frites, very good cheeseboard, apricot tart, plus wine and coffee) for the outrageous sum of €13. I spent the next few kilometres trying to work out when I last ate so well for a tenner, and failing. Memo to self - you don't have to go to fancy places to eat well in France.

Tonight at the international hostel in Beaugency-sur-Loire, a very pleasant little place overshadowed by its bigger and more famous neighbours. The hostel a bit more basic than my previous accommodations, but given that it was less than a fifth of the price...

I found myself sharing a bunkhouse with a very amiable but slightly eccentric Englishman called Phil. He too was on tour, but by car rather than bike. Nothing odd about that, except that since he would only stay in hostels his route was dictated by their locations, rather than by anything he wanted to see. As a result he proposed to go from Beaugency to La Rochelle without stopping anywhere. Chateaux of the Loire? Nah, there's no hostel present. Phil's French was so execrable he mistook me for a native speaker when I was stumbling through a conversation with the hostel manager, and he confessed that he'd wanted to see Chartres Cathedral but had been unable to do so, because he couldn't read the signs telling him the rules about parking. Since these signs generally say "PARKING", I found that a bit surprising. Perfectly nice man, though...

Day 4. Beaugency to Amboise

80km, 21 kph. Route and more.

The unaccustomed length of time on the bike is clearly having an impact on me, I slept almost ten hours. Today's ride was lovely, warm weather, not much wind, the Loire in sight most of the day. And there is so much to see. 

Chateau de Chambord. 

365 chimneys, they say: I didn't count them. Astounding, though, as country houses go...

From Chambord back to the river and Blois, a really beautiful town. Here it is from the river:

It was still quite early so I considered continuing all the way to Tours. I reminded myself that I'm not here to break any distance records, though, and decided to stop at Amboise. I'm glad I did, too, because as you can see, it's rather lovely.

Chateau d'Amboise

Today has been so attractive in the architecture and history categories that it is making me reappraise my immediate plans. I may stop for couple of days, maybe at Saumur, and give myself time for a more detailed exploration. I have no appointments to keep, after all.

Day 2: Le Plessis-Robinson to Chartres

91km, 4 hours 47minutes riding time, average speed 19 kph. Look here if you want to see the route.

A slowish day, partly because on leaving Le Plessis-Robinson I decided to take a short cut through a forest, and, inevitably, got spectacularly lost. The only thing that gave me some idea of the direction I was taking was the position of the sun, and that helped not at all because the tracks simply went in circles. No problem, there was no rush and it was a beautiful place to spend 45 minutes or so looking for the exit. Another illustration, though, that I am not one of the lucky few that are intelligent enough to learn from experience.

And my progress thereafter wasn't especially quick, because the Ile de France turns out to be surprisingly lumpy. Without ever feeling I was in anything approaching challenging terrain, I still accumulated about 700 metres of climbing, almost all of it in the first half of the day.

Getting lost aside, though, this was pretty much an exemplar of how I like to tour. Beautiful countryside, largely quiet roads, doing most of the miles before stopping for a pleasant lunch (beer, croque monsieur et frites and coffee in Rambouillet) leaving just a couple of hours of cycling in the afternoon. Arrived in Chartres at 3pm, plenty of time to find a hotel, get a shower and explore a bit before dinner.

Speaking of Chartres, it's my first time here so it was essential to look at the cathedral.

Chartres Cathedral

It's quite a place. I must confess that being a Durham lad I prefer the Norman to the Gothic, but this is still a building and a half. And if flying buttresses happen to be your field of interest, we have them in abundance:

Extraordinary amounts of carving everywhere, too, the place is festooned with saints. Looking pretty good for their age, considering a fair proportion of them have been up there for over 700 years...

Tonight I am in the Mercure Hotel. The Mercure chain seems to fill the niche that is occupied in the UK by Premier Inns. Mais c'est un peu plus chic, naturellement.

Day 1. St Pancras to Le Plessis-Robinson.

So, I am under way. I find myself in the Grand Hotel in Le Plessis-Robinson, a place that I know will be well known to all my readers.

But in case they are a less cosmopolitan bunch than I imagine, Le Plessis-Robinson is a small suburb to the south-west of Paris, more or less due south of Boulogne-Billancourt. Not quite as far out of the city as I was planning, but navigating my way out of town proved a little more challenging than I had anticipated so I was running a little late, and decided to stop at the first appealing hotel that presented itself. Very appealing it is, too, quite possibly as posh a place as I will inhabit on the whole trip.

Travelling across on Eurostar definitely a good idea. Drop off the bike at Eurodespatch behind the station, check in, arrive early at the Gare du Nord and wait fifteen minutes for the bike to be unloaded. Very civilised experience. Emerge into a beautiful spring afternoon - April in Paris - and negotiate the one-way system, cross the river at Concord and away we go. Didn't record today's ride on the grounds of its insignificance, but future days will be mapped and I'll link to them. In the meantime, here's a picture just to prove I've arrived.

Definitely feel a bit of joie de vivre coming on...