Month: May 2013

Our threat to change the name of the tour seems to have paid off! Despite the weather forecast, we had no rain today, the warmest day so far (Jon was down to his lightest clothes part of the day), and we only had to ride through 3″ of flooded path for 25 meters. Fortunately, we had confirmation it was no deeper – from cyclists who had come through before us. With our tiny wheels, 3″ is about our limit.

Actually it was almost one of those days people think all French touring should be (at least, what MC has been waiting for): we rode 10k then stopped for quiche and eclairs, then another 10k with a stop for a view of Chinon Chateau and hot chocolate.

But to throw a wrench into it, we then had to climb (walk) up several very steep hills, but past some cool troglodyte ruins.

And this was then followed by a bit of a mistake in our route. The Loire Velo does not offer a route directly from Chinon to Azay. Jon thought he was clever and found a GPS track someone had posted. Big mistake! We believe whoever posted it had to have been riding a mountain bike with no gear. We ended up on stair cases, sand, and washed out roads.

We finally managed to work our way over to the main highway, which had no shoulder – but it was straight and we made excellent time, only delayed by an hour due to Jon’s folly.

We were then able to resume our idyllic day, concluding with a tour of the local Chateau.

We’ve been cycling near, next to, on top of, in, through, over, and completely drenched by … the waters of France! Today was the rainiest day we’ve had yet, and we are still rerouting around the flooded paths. At least it means that every time we come across cyclists heading the other way – we now stop and share notes about where the route is blocked, so we are starting to meet some of the other cyclists.

We started our wet day cycling past the hotel/restaurant where we stayed in 2005, having a moment to say hello to the owners.

At lunch we came across a bar lined with loaded bikes and joined a couple of New Zealand cyclists who are doing the entire Euro Velo 6, all the way to the Black Sea. We had met one of them back before Nantes while fixing a flat tire. So, like the US TransAmerica, this trans-Europe route begins to form a community of cyclists sharing the road and passing information along.

The high point of our day was a return to the Combier Distillery in Saumur. We had found it in 2005 and loved many of their concoctions. Today we had another tour, tasting, and buying just a little to take with us.

They are the original maker of Triple Sec.

But the best news we got is that they now distribute in the US, so we are looking forward to no longer having to wait until the next time we bicycle through Saumur for another taste.

So, yes we are wet … very wet. But this is still the beautiful Loire valley. Where else can you finish the day in a little restaurant overlooking a Chateau?

And we are very grateful that we are not on a budget, and though we have our camping gear with us – tonight we will go back to our cozy chambre, albeit lined with drying clothes. Tomorrow is promising to be only scattered showers.

Not rain this time, but a flood!

We started the day on beautiful paths out of Nantes. It was much easier than our ride into Nantes from the west. Then we hit about 15km of single track and mud. But unlike on the Canal du Midi, the track was much wider, and there was a gravel base that helped us keep our traction, so we still made good time.

But the big excitement of the day started just after lunch. We had heard rumors of the path being under water, and as we entered Saint Floret le Vieil, we could see where the river had been flooding the path. A few blocks later, the path disappeared under the Loire and we had to find our way through the town to continue.

We thought that would be all, but it was just the beginning. We stopped in Montjean sur Loire to call ahead to a hotel and gourmet restaurant we had stayed at in Angers in 2005. They were closed on Wednesdays so MC was calling to find us another place.

While this was happening Jon saw a group of 4 cyclists heading west and wondering about a “route barrier” we had just come through. He went to let them know it was open for bicycles and they asked about flooding.

They did not speak English, and kept saying something about Pont and tout droite – meaning “cross the bridge and go right”. They were very insistent, and then said to stay on the road. We then compared maps, and it became very clear. Up ahead were very large sections of the path flooded from all the rains in central France this past week. We needed to make some major changes in our route.

It really saved us a lot of backtracking. In this picture, we were supposed to be on a path on the island across the river.

In the end, we made fantastic time and achieved two milestones today. First, we have fully recovered from headwinditis – and did our first century in Europe, 102km. We’ve realized that we may not have been able to do this trip at all if we tried it with the trailer, and now not having it is paying off in our speed and distance.

Secondly, we have now gone 1248km, so are more than half way through the tour.

Our location in Angers is also ahead of schedule for the first time – which puts us in excellent position for the upcoming Chateau hopping along this part of the Loire. We are just 2km from our 2005 route, but have plans to see many of the Chateaus we missed that year.

We took a rest from cycling today, and spent the day touring Nantes. Turns out it has a very rich history, as it was a major inland port supported by ocean tides.

The churches here tend to have modern stained glass, as they have been destroyed so many times. Nantes was a stronghold of the Nazi occupation. This is the inside of St Nicolas.

In the excellent Chateau Museum we discovered that there used to be another transporter bridge here, as depicted in this model.

And there we also found what may become the symbol of our trip. It is a ceramic image for LU biscuits, which was catering to the upper class – because tandem bicycles were expensive.

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.

One thing we have not mentioned yet, is that our daily progress over the last two days has in part been dictated by the tides. A section of our route today can only be traversed at low tide, so we had to make sure we timed it correctly.

One unfortunate consequence of our timing was that we picked a bad place to stay last night, Le Barre de Monts. It’s on the map, even had a fairly nice Chambre d’Hotes, but there really isn’t a town there! For the first time since our last trip in France in 2005, we were skunked for supper, and had only our emergency rations to eat. Breakfast wasn’t much better, with the usual bread and jelly. We did not find any protein until lunch – a bit hard on cyclists.

But our timing was perfect. First we got to cross a modern bridge to the Island of Noirmoutier.

Going to the Island was in fact our most direct route to the north. But from this bridge, just 2.5 hours before low tide, we looked to the north where our road was to continue, and could see nothing but water.

We next rode across the Island to Le Gois.

This would be our passage back to the mainland. It is only open for 1.5 hours either side of low tide. In fact, when we arrived – the middle of the roadway was still submerged, and we got to see it rather quickly uncovered as the tide ran out.

We have now learned that this area has a 5 meter tide! That makes for very dramatic changes, quite rapidly. We watched as the roadway dried and hundreds of people headed out across the tidelands looking for shellfish. We are near a full moon so this was a lower than usual tide.

Unfortunately, in our excitement of doing the crossing, we forgot to take pictures with the iPhone, so the best ones will have to wait to be posted after the trip.

Our next bit of excitement (you know, for a cyclist), was an opportunity to get the closest we had ever been to wind turbines.

That’s Jon and the bike on the lower right. We still had headwinds today, but they were a little lighter.

Next we passed through several small coastal fishing villages “on hold” till the tides would come back again. This picture shows more accurately what a 16 foot tide is like;

And our final spot on the day’s itinerary, was Dolmen de la Joseliere.

This was a ruin of a tomb from the Neolithic period. On the following picture you can see that it is almost right on the ocean, on the right is another Nazi bunker, and – faintly on the horizon above the tomb, you can almost make out the wind turbines we had passed earlier in the day.

Today was our first day on the coast that it did not rain! In fact even the headwinds died down to about 20km, so it was a welcome improvement. (Never thought I’d ever say that about a headwind.)

In the morning, the paths were some of the best we’ve seen. Meandering through marshes and sand dunes, which felt like wildlife sanctuaries.

Unfortunately, in mid-afternoon we seemed to have moved to a new county and the paths deteriorated so much that we had to find nearby roads, to avoid sections of loose sand. The signage had also been excellent, but suddenly were missing in key turns. We don’t know how anyone could follow this route without a GPS.

It was still cold, but Jon tried a little tide pool investigating, as the Vendee Miniatures Museum we had intended to see – is closed on weekend mornings! It’s open all other days, so it’s schedule doesn’t seem to make any sense to us.

It just seems one more “French” mindset that we don’t understand, like closing a ferry for the lunch hour. Another that we came upon again today, is when they close the bike path for construction, but don’t bother to show a detour – any way to get around it. It’s like they either don’t expect visitors, or don’t really care about being hospitable.

We then stopped for lunch at a Crepery in Saint Gillis-Croix de Vie, while locals ogled our bike. On the way out of town we saw that it was indeed low tide. It appears that tides may be 3 meters in this area.

After some more dunes, we ended up back on the coast along about 4km of nothing but hotels, apartments, and beach that seemed to stretch forever. As with most of the coast, it was almost abandoned. It’s hard to believe that all this is constructed, and then only really used for 3 months – June through August.

We have now completed our first 1,000km of the trip. And it’s hard for us to believe that we will have only two more days on the coast, before turning east and heading across France back to Switzerland. But of course, that will be the longest leg of the trip, as we are still 150km shy of the halfway point.

Today we saw the most awesome sign – almost fell off our Tandem! We know that bicyclists are a minority among travelers, and of course Tandem cyclists are a very small minority of bicyclists.

Well, a very enlightened and conscientious road worker has finally recognized our presence:

Power to the Tandem!

That was followed by a very, very, very long lunch. At least it seemed long because the Cuckoo said 1, then 2, then 3, then … well, have you ever heard someone setting the time on a Cuckoo clock? Jon’s been wanting to see a Cuckoo all year. But now that we are in Cuckoo country, it does get a little dull after the first 23 calls, then another joins in and it gets really redundant.

Overall it was a delightful day – almost like what we had hoped for along the Atlantic coast. The paths were smooth, and we were impressed at how clean and new they were. A lot of work is currently in progress improving and adding new sections. In fact, this area reminds us of the CA and OR coasts, if we added bike paths to them!

The day was still pretty cold – high in the low 50s. And the headwinds were not only lighter, but much of the morning was in forests that provided a windbreak.

It was only in the last hour, when our route came back onto the water’s edge, that we had to work hard again.

The winds had picked back up to 35km and we got pitying looks from the tourists as we struggled for the final 10km into Les Sable d’Olonne.

Now, doesn’t that sound better? Bet you’re tired of us talking about the wind. But as much as even we don’t want to believe it – today was the worse yet.

We had 35km headwinds pretty much dead on all day. Our average was only 13.4k. What made it worse, was that all morning we were traversing what appeared in the guidebooks as a beautiful path along the cliffs north of La Rochelle, overlooking the ocean. What that means, of course, is that we were atop a hill with nothing to block the relentless torrent of air.

Nothing, except the occasional former Nazi bunkers that dot the coastal ridge.

Later in the day we began following more canals, and even added a touch of rain. But while much of the paths were in reasonable shape, there were many short sections that reminded us of the early canals, single track, rocky, and even a few oyster shells mixed in.

So, as if the wind were not enough, soon after passing through this flock of sheep we had a complete tire blow out with a 2cm gash. We had to use our spare, and there are no bike shops for at least another 60km.

But we have hope. The weather forecast for tomorrow says that the headwinds will be dropping to 20-25km!

When in Seville Spain over Christmas Jon had this amazing experience of being in the same room where Christopher Columbus went before Ferdinand and Isabella to request funds for his expedition to seek a western passage to India. Having lived my life in America, it brought reality to the connections we have with Europe. Today was another very similar experience.

In 2000 we were visiting our friends Joshua and Magenta in Nova Scotia when we came upon a French fort built in 1604, three years before the British landed in Jamestown Virginia.

Today we rode through Brouage France and visited a small church.

The first hints of something unusual were two stained glass windows dedicated to Quebec and New Brunswick. After this caught my attention I started reading a large set of posters around the sanctuary.

It turns out that Brouage was the main port of France in the 17th century, and this was the primary church responsible for sending the French missionaries to the new world. All kinds of familiar events were covered, including the fort established in Nova Scotia in 1604.

Ok, so it’s logical all those people who showed up in the new world had to start out from somewhere, but being in that church today somehow just makes it more real. Just to reflect on the same events, but from the European perspective. What was going on in their minds?

And if that were not enough, a few hours later we came across this ship in Rochefort:

This is a brand new replica of a ship that France sent to Yorktown and was key in enabling us to defeat the British in the Revolutionary War. I still remember Nathan and I reading about that battle in Yorktown, the last day of our bike trip across the US. Today we heard that it took 6 years to build the replica, but only 6 months to build the original in the 18th century!

And for those who read the earlier blog from today – yes we did finally get across on the Transporter Bridge, and here are a couple more pictures:

This is the hanging platform as it is approaching our side of the river. And the following are some of the rest of us who were waiting out the 1.5 hours while it was closed for lunch.

Finally, by riding a little later into the evening, we did make our destination into La Rochelle, where we rode past the biggest small sailboat harbor (beaucoup boats), we’ve ever seen, then past Cousteau’s Calypso and the massive city harbor gates. Sorry, but those pictures will have to wait till we have a computer.