Saturday, July 28, 2012

#454 Down the Loire valley

This is the first week of riding as a bike guide for Rutas Pangea (same as #456 above). There are 28 Spaniards riding from Orleans to St Nazaire in France. I'm the Lantern Rouge or as I'm in a Spanish group El Farolillo Rojo.

I'm making a big mental adjustment, I normally average 20km/hr on my long rides but with this group it's more like 10km/hr. Frequent stops and no rush to arrive means we are really relaxed - very Spanish.

Plus I'm learning to be patient helping riders with less experience than my (roughly) 55 years of road bike riding.

Last day we had to cross the Loire by bus as the bridge was deemed to be too dangerous for cyclists (It is!). As is tradition everywhere the group started a sing song which included the lines:

Que buenos son,
Con Chus y John
¡que  excursión!


(or something to this effect).
And a jolly good time was had by all :-)

* some of these pictures make it look like a wet week, but we actually only had two rainy days.



Day 1
Orleans to Blois 63km
Day 2
Blois to Seillac 82km
Visited Chateau de Chambord
Day 3
Seillac to Tours 85km
Visited Chateau de Chenonceau
Rained ALL day :-(
Day 4
Tours to Saumur 92km
Excellent!
Day 5
Saumur to Angers 58km
Then some wine tasting . . . :-)
Day 6
Angers to Nantes 98km
Longest day and the shortest, at our hotel by 6pm.
Day 7
Nantes to St Nazaire 6km
We reached the Atlantic. Por fin.

Orleans





On the bridge in Blois (it's wet).

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