Month: July 2014

After yesterday’s heat, it was a bit of a surprise to wake up to rain and a solid overcast in the morning.

Checkout time at the camping bungalows wasn’t until 1000, so Martin and I left our bags behind for a quick trip up the hill to see Sancerre proper in the drizzle.

Great views of the Loire and the hills south of it from the top of Sancerre, but the chateau wasn’t open yet.

By the time we got back to the campsite and loaded the bikes up for the forty-five or fifty klick ride to Briare it was raining properly and solidly, and it kept that up all the way to Briare. Mild temperatures, at least, so it wasn’t too unpleasant.

Briare has the longest canal bridge in Europe, carrying the Loire Lateral Canal across the Loire itself. It’s a spectacular piece of 1890s engineering, in which M. Eiffel of Tower fame played a role.

Staying in a salle municipale tonight, which basically means camping in a big hall with forty+ other cyclists. Lots of room, at least!

A really short day tomorrow, not even forty klicks to Sully-sur-Loire, so hopefully the weather improves and we can do a bit more sightseeing.

Left the Espace Bernadette Catholic hostel just before eight for a good, smooth ride of just over fifty kilometres, mostly along paved bike trails parallel to the Loire.

We had one mid-morning coffee stop at La Charité-sur-Loire, which has a big ramshackle old Cluniac abbey church in the middle of town which was established in the ninth C, then collapsed, rebuilt, burnt, rebuilt, and modified since. The front courtyard used to be part of the interior nave, some of the walls have extra buttresses thrown up over the centuries, and it’s generally an interesting mess.

We’re staying at another campsite with bungalows, which are common and a great option for our group.

There were plans to bike up the hill to Sancerre proper and see the town, which is apparently lovely, but we’re back to afternoon temperatures over 30 C, so all ambitions evaporated in favour of hanging out in the shade at the campground.

Short day tomorrow as well, so we’re planning a sightseeing ride up to Sancerre in the morning then heading further down the Loire to Briare. A post-dinner tour might also happen, if food and evening cool restores some ambition…

Easier ride today than yesterday’s 100+km, 45km or so mostly along the Loire canal, except where work crews had the canal path blocked for resurfacing, where we got to watch them create new Eurovelo 6 surface as we watched.

One of the other riders told me this afternoon than he had broken 2000km since Vienna during today’s riding, which fe els about right – my bike computer having quit way back in Austria on the first week of this ride…

Staying tonight at a Catholic hostel called Espace Bernadette on the edge of Nevers’ very nice old town. Twin rooms with nice beds and really good food at dinner again, just like the Catholic places we stayed at in Germany. No WiFi, but the tourist office in town took care of that modern necessity after lunch, during our sightseeing afternoon in central Nevers.

Off to a place near Sancerre tomorrow, 60km or so. Supposed to be getting hot tomorrow, so we’re planning on leaving early, right after breakfast.

After leaving the horse farm we picked up another escort of local cyclists and headed west and north toward Digion, about twenty kilometres or so, following the Canal du Centre after leaving the hills around the farm.

Digion brought us to the last river of this trip, the Loire. The Canal du Centre actually crosses the Loire on the Pont du Canal at Digion, basically an aqueduct carrying the canal over the river.

We had a quick group photo with the local tourism office on the bank of the Loire, then headed to the town of Bourbon-Lancy for what turned out to be another awkwardly translated mayor’s speech and a snack. Pretty little town centre, though.

Lunch was picnic style in a little village a few km north of Bourbon-Lancy, and we used both the official Eurovelo 6 route and main roads to finish the ride to Decize. Unfortunately the EV6 through this district has almost no signage, making it hard to follow even with a map and GPS. With the detour out to Bourbon-Lancy it wound up being a long day, over 100km and we didn’t get to our hostel until nearly six.

Dinner was a very nice pizza at a place right on the bank of the canal just outside Decize, then an early bed.

The day ended with a really spectacular front of very dark clouds filling the south-east horizon, so our weather might be in for a change…

Random amusement: when I misspel “canal” while writing these posts on my phone, one of the options it offers is “cabal”… biking alongside the cabal would make this a very different sort of European trip indeed!