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.