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Thursday 25th August 2016 Orleans to Blois We left Orleans at 9:20 and had lost each other within a mile of setting out. First Andrew overshot the crossing and then I waited for him on the wrong track. Fortunately with the miracle of mobile phones we were able to pull everything together and were soon pedalling along at a fair rate in the warm August morning. We stopped in Meung sur Loire at a sort of book-shop cafe although there was no food on offer. Still, a cup of tea went down well, albeit taking half an hour out of our schedule.
Today we thought we’d try for lunch a bit earlier so at around 12:00 we pulled in to Beaugency and sat down at a cafe which offered a choice of four different omelettes! Oooh! There were no ‘au fromage’ ones though, and no frites, and bizarrely although they had cheese, because it wasn’t on the menu they wouldn’t do a cheese omelette. OK, instead we had the ‘Finest Herbs Omelette’. It was nice enough. Afterwards I got a gooey chocolate confection from a nearby Patisserie to pad it out.
Beaugency was a nice place, quiet in the mid-day heat with few people about apart from a few wandering Loire-á-Velo tourists. There was a big stone keep and a chateau where supposedly Louis XI and Joan of Arc had stayed in times past. From Beaugency to Blois there was a good cycle track but the heat was increasing all the time and progress got slower and slower. I decided to try a swim, or at least a paddle, in the Loire to cool down and after a couple of tries managed to find a spot where I could reach the water’s edge. Unfortunately my feet aren’t leathery enough to skip lightly over the stones and pebbles into the refreshing waters. Too many sharp stones so I had to pick my way carefully forward. Still, I managed it after a fashion and then Andrew turned up and had a paddle too. After a final ice-cream stop we rolled into Blois at about 4:00 and got fixed up at the first hotel we came to, the Pavillon, which was actually on the south side of the river (€65 for the room plus 6.5 euros each for the abysmal breakfast).
In the evening we walked over the bridge into Blois and had a meal (pasta risotto and tiramisu/banoffee) then a few drinks in the main square. There were lots of flying creatures all around, landing on us as we played our nightly game of crib. When we walked back over the bridge at the end of the evening hordes of moths and bugs were going crazy around the street lights on the bridge and we saw there was virtually a carpet of them lying on the ground, spent and dying. Maybe it was the one day a year for them to fly, reproduce and die – but die they certainly did, all over the place. Average speed: 9.8 mph Miles today: 42.9 Total miles: 179.2 Blois elevation: 239 ft | |||||||
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