Wow! Today was so different, we’re not sure if we’re still on the same tour. It was our final day on the Atlantic coast, but we almost didn’t recognize it.
The sun was shining, it was warm, and – no headwinds! The winds were out of the south, so even in the afternoon when we turned east the worse we had was a cross wind.
In 1998, Nathan and Jon had 7 days in a row of headwinds crossing Nebraska. That was a record Jon did not want to ever break! Today ended 9 days in a row of headwinds. All in all we’ve had 11 days out of 19 with moderate to severe headwinds.
It has caused us to even question our capabilities as cyclists. After days of struggling to even get 60km out, we had begun to think we were getting too old for this. Then suddenly today we have calm to cross winds, and we fairly easily put away 90km.
Assuming, as we are now heading east, that we will have much more favorable winds, we have a renewed hope that our trip through the Loire valley will have enough time after all, for lots of Chateau hopping, as originally planned.
But sadly now we say goodbye to the Atlantic coast. We will try to remember it as something more than just cold, windy, cloudy, and wet. Unfortunately, it had one final disappointment for us today. We had decided it was finally warm enough to get our feet wet on a sandy beach. But instead of beach sand, the final few kilometers ended up being only muddy estuaries, and we ended our coastal passage without once feeling the ocean waters between our toes.
At the St Nazaire bridge we met the mouth of the Loire, and were immediately welcomed at lunch by Loire Velo place mats.
As we turned east to head upstream we were also greeted by new signage. Along the coast we have been following Euro Velo route #1. Now that route is joined, as far as Nantes, by Euro Velo route #6.
In Nantes, where we are tonight, we say goodbye to route #1 as it again turns north to continue up the coast. We will now be following route #6 to Basel Switzerland. It continues to the Black Sea, and is the same route we rode 4 years ago from Vienna to Regensberg along the Donau.
So we are on the next water of the journey, about to take a rest day in Nantes and then explore the Loire Valley. This is our 2nd pass through here by bicycle, the first was in 2005 in the other direction.