Saint Florent sur Loire to Nantes, through Oudon

July 10, 2023 - Saint Florent sur Loire to Oudon

Instead of trying to get to Nantes in one day, I'm taking things easier and just doing 25k today. We've had quite a few days of about 50k, and that gets old after a while. Nice breakfast at this bed and breakfast, no baguettes but nice sliced bread, cheese. The hostess and her husband were also full of advice about the bike path. Apparently he is a big biker and has been all around France, and done the same route as the tour de France bikers do. I took some pictures of a few pages of the biking guide book, to help in planning.

We had a pleasant short ride today, lots of stops for plums, which are ripe and tasty. Oudon castle was where we went to take up some time until tonight's bed and breakfast is available. It's annoying that they mostly have a check-in time of around 4:00, though the past couple nights we were lucky and they allowed us in at around 2.

The castle was fine, medieval. We're getting to the point where we definitely won't visit this kind of site if it's out of our way, because we've seen a lot of castles. Going up the steps is actually kind of painful. You'd think the biking would make your thighs tougher, which it must, but still, going up steps is more painful than it normally is.

There's no open restaurants nearby, since today is Monday, and that's a day that many restaurants are closed. So, we went to the local grocery (thank goodness there is one) and got some salads, some bread and butter, and some fruit. There was a convenient picnic table nearby that we took advantage of.

I found out that Montargis was hit really badly by the rioting, arson, and looting, just days after we left. A pharmacy was burned down, just one street north of the hotel we were in. Crazy.

Markers for different flood levels over the years

Lunch - we bought (from the host of last night's bed and breakfast) some boutique jarred fish risotto from a local producer. A good break from bread and cheese.

The tower in Oudon

The hanging (moveable) mills, next to our bed and breakfast - Le Moulin pendu - Champtoceaux

The hostess of the bed and breakfast makes her own pastries

Dinner

Peter's salad had a breadstick shaped like a fork

July 11, 2023 - Oudon To Nantes

Our last real day of biking, from one town to the next. We may do another city bike day in Nantes, but this is the end of our daily travels. From here on will be in Nantes, then we'll take the train to Paris, and then fly home. It's hard to believe that we're close to the end of our trip, and this is the last biking day, except for day trips. At the beginning, it felt like we had so much time, even that I might have made the trip too long.

This morning we had breakfast at the bed and breakfast, I asked our hostess how her twin baby boys had slept that night, and it wasn't that good, one of them was up a lot, with a cold and teething pains.

After getting all packed and ready to go, we were checking out with the husband, whose family is from Cameroon. A very engaging guy, we had a good talk with him, at least 45 minutes, he talked about the very high taxes in France, how he'd love to go to the United States, his impression of the political system in the United States. He said, using his hands to indicate high, medium, and low, "There's God, there's the United States, and there's France". We spoke almost exclusively in French, but he says he and his wife have a goal this year of learning speak English better. They better start practicing!

Flood levels

Getting close to Nantes

This looks like a painting to me

Probably our last picnic along the bike path

... and the grafitti starts. It's because we are close to Nantes

Another Bellevue, east of Nantes

It was a short 30K day on our bikes, and we took a lot of breaks. Easy biking, almost exclusively level. As we got closer to Nantes, we started seeing graffiti all over, also there was what looked like a gypsy settlement right outside of town.

It feels strange to be in a large city again, this is by far the largest one yet, since Paris.

We started seeing signs of some of the recent riots, lots of broken and boarded up windows, mainly. Also there were broken windows at the Carrefour that we got some groceries at.

We went to the castle, very close to our hotel (which has a little kitchenette), and walked around the walls, which are completely free to walk around on. There was also a museum in the castle, but neither of us felt like it.

Then we went to the train station, so Peter could play the public piano that was there. He had to wait a long time because there was already someone there playing, finally he got up the nerve to go up to him and ask to play, and it wasn't a problem.

This area is definitely more like Paris and the suburbs, in that there are many, many more Arabs and blacks here, than there were in the past couple weeks of our bike ride. There's also a lot of people that you really only see in cities, the chic urban types. Often very well dressed. I'm getting ideas of clothes that I want to wear. I'm certainly getting tired of the items I've been wearing for the past 3 weeks!

I went to the tourist office to ask about the trains to Paris. And I have to say it was the least friendly tourist office that we've ever been to in France. Must have something to do with it being a large city. The friendliest one was the one in Montargis. But all of them have been pretty friendly, except for this one.

Views from the castle

July 12, 2023 - A day in Nantes

At the breakfast buffet this morning we sat with the two German men, who arrived at the same time we did yesterday and were also touring the Loire, camping.

I had a really good conversation with them, we started out in English, but then switched to how I used to speak with my parents (they spoke German, I spoke English). It worked very well. They started their tour at the city of Nevers, and actually did make a big effort to see all of the famous castles along the way. I did regret a little bit, not making more of an effort to see the absolute most famous ones. But then they actually missed the caves, that were east of Tours. They were using a Loire bike trail guide book, as opposed to the actual GPX file, which is what I was using.

They were both special-ed teachers, and had done multiple extended bike trips together. They did the North Sea trail, in multiple stages, and many other bike trails. I mentioned leaving my daypack behind, multiple times, and it turned out that one of them had actually lost his wallet, credit card, etc, someplace in Scotland, and had to cancel and replace everything.

They said they had tried multiple times in Germany to actually book a regular fast train (not the slow regional ones), with bike tickets, back to Germany, and had failed. So it ended up that they needed to take local, slow regional trains, and it was going to take them three days to travel to Germany! That seemed like an insanely tedious trip to me.

At that point I was very apprehensive about us actually getting train tickets, bikes included, to Paris. So the first thing we did after breakfast was go to the train station. Peter played at the piano there, and I waited around for about 30 minutes before I was able to talk to a customer service rep. It was a relief to find that I was able to actually buy tickets, including bike transport, for Friday, not the first two scheduled trains that she checked, but the 1:00 train. So, we're all set there.

We walked around quite a bit and did some shopping. We went to the Gallerie Lafayette, the Deux Euro store, and the Hema store. Then we walked around, often following the green line that's painted on the pavement. The line is basically a pedestrian walking path that goes through the touristy areas. We had a decent lunch at what seemed like a reasonable price, I had a rice with pork and mushroom dish, Peter had some kind of mashed potatoes with salmon.

Then we found the Place Pommerau, a very interesting antique mall type of place, full of fancy shops. I looked around for those white shoes that I see so many women wearing, that I really like, but didn't find anything interesting.

Back to the room, a little rest, and then we went out again just for a stroll and potentially dinner, but it seems like everybody spends a lot of time drinking, and then only eats dinner very late in the evening? We ended up making scrambled eggs in the little kitchenette here.

Matching colors at the botanical garden

July 13, 2023 - A second day in Nantes

Our German biker friends, the ones we ate breakfast with yesterday, weren't around at breakfast this morning. Incidentally, breakfast at this hotel is probably the worst value we've had so far. 13 euros, and just not a lot of variety.

We took a bike ride today to Île de Nantes, the island south of the center, where the huge mechanical elephant is. That was fun to see, and luckily it was actually out and about, "walking" around (actually rolling).

It was an interesting kind of post-industrial landscape, with lots of huge sculptures. I was hoping to bike around the whole island, and indeed that's what the city website says is one of the premier bike rides in town, but the southern part is all blocked off and impossible to access. We tried a bunch of times, and then finally were able to start taking the bike path in the southeast area of the island. Lots and lots of government buildings, the palace of Justice, the regional government office, etc. They mostly look pretty ramshackle and poorly maintained.

Cool, cantilevered balcony

People are definitely less friendly in a city like this, it's hard to find people to have a conversation with. It didn't seem that difficult in the towns we passed through.

Later in the afternoon we decided to do another bike ride, this time on the canal to the north. I thought that since it was an actual named bike ride, it would be reasonable, but it was pretty bad. It was mostly just biking on pedestrian paths, some very crowded. Most everybody else that's on a bike knows exactly where they're going, and is going there very fast, while I always need to stop and look at the map.

Then the bike ride back into the actual city, in bike lanes on the road, was a nightmare, very dangerous. It reinforced my apprehension about only doing longer distance biking on good, marked trails, separate from traffic.

Dinner at a kebab place. Peter and I were watching the Andrew Tate interview with Tucker Carlson, Peter is now interested in starting a business, and we were talking about potential business ideas.