I’d finally arrived at the starting point proper of the Loire Valley section of Euro Velo 6 – “the most famous and prestigious cycle tour route in all of France”. I’d been anticipating it for a long tine and was keen to get an early start. But…
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Friday 3rd August, 2018. Digoin to Decize |110 km|
Thwarted again! This time, by the batteries not having charged overnight even though I had paid the extra for power and had them connected to the outlet all night long. The camp manager was unsympathetic. “But you must know you need a special ‘adaptateur’ for the power outlets at any campground in France for them to function, and if you’d asked, I would have loaned you one”. Yeah, well, I know now! [And, looking back on it, there was some prior indication, when my neighbour Gottfried at the previous campground loaned me his extension cable and socket when I couldn’t draw juice out of my power plug. I had just assumed that the socket I’d been attempting to use was faulty].
So I sat there till 11am waiting while the batteries recharged in their poor excuse of a common room equipped with just two miserable power sockets, that were in constant demand all morning from people wanting to charge up their smart phones. Lucky I had a double-adapter and only hogged one socket.
Oops! To add to my woes, I also realised that the new rear pannier rack was beginning to crack around the bottom weld just like the previous one did, so as a precaution I bolstered it with a hose-clip and a couple of strong cable-ties. This make-shift remedy held firm and the rack never gave me a moment’s further problem, although by the time I got back to Aachen to have the rack replaced for the second time, the crack had spread to nearly the full circumference of the join.
And as you could gather from my very erratic track above, things didn’t improve much after I finally did get away either, with several mis-cues subtracting at least 20km of forward progress from my miserable tally of only 110 km for the day. And most of this off-piste adventure was way out in the boondocks on a very hot day with nowhere to get a drink. But I did eventually manage to make up for my lack of sustenance at the quaint little shop below, where, besides being able to get my standard Orangina and a panaché, the arthritic old couple painstakingly made me a rustic baguette sandwich filled with great gobs of runny cheese. I just love France!
So I rumbled in to Decize late afternoon and made camp at the municipal camping ground alongside the river. The camp commandant looked grumpy but was actually quite affable, if not a trifle inept. After he had a big discussion with his wife about it, I did manage to buy from him that crucial “Adaptateur Camping” for €10. At least I think I bought it – there was some talk about consignee that might have meant I just paid a deposit to borrow it. Anyway, I kept it because there was no one around next morning to resolve the issue when I headed off.
Saturday 4th August, 2018. Decize to Sancerre |130 km|
So, still a little daunted by the discovery of the broken pannier strut the previous day – in addition to the almost constant graunching noise still emanating from the crankcase – I headed out nice and early on my wounded bike in drizzly rain, after waiting around for an extra half an hour to be served the really pathetic €5 breakfast I’d ordered the night before and which consisted of a micro-glass of OJ (like, 150 mm), coffee and 3 slices of different breads with butter and jam. At least I have a camp power adapter now 😁
This day turned out to be incident-free and one of the best days cycling-wise. This was mainly because the scenery had changed and I was now entering wine country again.
With the tent still all wet from last night’s rain and my clothes filthy dirty from living in them for a week, I decided to check into an hotel and do a bit of a clean-up. I chose the least-salubrious looking one – Hotel Des Remparts – which turned out to be the best-value decision I made all trip. For €55, the large old-fashioned room had a huge bath and a little balcony to hang out my clothes after washing them, and a cool breeze wafting in (it was still 29° at 10pm). There was also a delightful and well-patronised terrace restaurant attached to the hotel, where I enjoyed a superb Menu du Jour meal accompanied by half-bottles of their famous local Rosé and Sauvignon-blanc wines.
I felt I had finally arrived at the true heart of what this trip was all about!
Sunday 5th August, 2018. Sancerre to Orleáns |155 km|
Early morning view from my hotel room
Trouble again! A flat tyre from another tiny little puncture greeted me in the morning. But not to let that dampen my spirits, I quickly fixed it and headed back on down to the river again. Didn’t get far though – the tyre went flat again and I found another small puncture I missed the first time.
And again! This third time I couldn’t find a puncture at all and concluded that one of the guys who lent me his pump (I had to borrow a pump from the passing cycle traffic every time I needed to pump up again) must have damaged the valve stem by trying to force his unsuitable Schraeder pump onto my Presta valve.
Two French guys stopped to help me, and for two people who called themselves Kevin and Joey, they sure didn’t speak much English! We’d actually been passing each other for the past two days, with me going faster (much faster) but stopping more often, and them just plodding along. But they wouldn’t leave until I had at least gotten the tyre to stay inflated, which took well over an hour. With their help, we filled up one of my panniers with water from the adjacent canal to find any leaks, re-patched one leak that was a bit suspect and discovered the slow-leaking valve. After ascertaining that their spare tubes were unsuitable, we applied my pliers to the damaged valve stem and managed to straighten it enough to keep inflation.
After bidding adieu to my good Samaritans and getting going again, I back-tracked a few kilometers looking for a premises such as a bike shop or even a service station that might be open where I could at least buy a pump or new valve or a can of sealant foam if not a whole new tube. But service stations as they exist in Australia are a concept that does not exist in France, at least not in the 4,000 km through France that I travelled. Petrol stations sell fuel. Period. They are often unmanned (auto-self-service via card reader) and even then often closed on a Sunday, and bike shops are definitely closed on Sundays (my GPS did take me to one 5km back, but it too was closed). So, with no alternative, and seeing I was at least on a busy cycle path, I shrugged off this small misfortune and just kept on trying to follow the Eurovelo 6 signs again so as to at least stay on a well-trafficked route.
Another one of those impressive canal bridges, this one doubly so, given its age at more than 130 years:
Contrasting types of road surface on the Eurovelo 6, from single-track dirt to super-highway bitumen:
I arrived at Orleans in good spirits and checked into a boutique hotel called the Hôtel de l’Abeille (ie. Hotel Bee) near the centre, after a waiter at a downtown bar was good enough to google nearby hotels for me, check availability on Booking.com then call the hotel direct and negotiate the quoted Booking.com rate down from €110 to €93. How good is that!
Monday 6th August, 2018. Orleans to Tours |150 km|
But of course, the bike shops in Orleans, like all over France, are closed on Mondays if they open on Saturdays. At least, the three that I tried were, and its probably due a workplace regulation of the highly-regulated French labour market. This somewhat negated the reason I’d stayed in town in the first place.
So, still without a pump, spare tube or even a valve or can of sealant, and with a clacking bike and a broken pannier rack, I just kept on down-river and hoped for the best. The towns of Meung-sur-Loire, Beaugency, Blois and Ambois were all attractive, well-heeled tourist spots:
I arrived at Tours without incident but had some trouble locating a campground. Eventually I GPSed-in one called ‘Only Camp’, 6km out of town. It was the worst one yet, and turned out to be the worst one of the whole trip – a rip-off at €18.50, snooty receptionist, sullen neighbours, barren pitch, no food outlet (closed on Mondays!)….oh, and pervaded by the rank smell of raw sewerage. So, two ice-creams again for dinner: sure glad about that sumptuous €13.90 lunch I had at Blois.
Next morning, I rode back into town and found a bike shop but had to wait till 10.00am for it to open up. In the meantime I bought a baguette and some cheese across the street and was serenaded by some lovely classical music coming from the music school next door while having breakfast.
The bike guy, when he came, and after making me wait another quarter-of-an-hour before he was ready to receive customers, was stand-offish and couldn’t help much, but at least he was able to sell me a spiffing new pump and a canister of ‘spray’ sealant and, more importantly, dig around his waste box until he found a second-hand valve core that would work in my tube. I think that did the trick, but I put the sealant in as well anyway. He didn’t even have a new tube he could sell me!
This whole time, I had been communicating via email, SMS and phone with the redoubtable Fabien at Velo bike shop about the crazy noise issue and the breaking rack problem. I had already googled that the closest R&M dealer was located in Le Mans and Velo agreed to have a replacement rack sent there and to brief them and authorize them to fix both the rack the noise issue emanating from the motor.
So that’s where I headed next. To Le Mans.
-ends-
#47 The Loire: Digoin to Tours |643 km|