From Orléans to Montlouis sur Loire

Catching up with WiFi

We left Orléans with a blue sky and high scattered clouds, again a perfect day for cycling. We expected the paths and lanes on this section of the route to be busier than up to now, and they are. Between Orléans and Tours you enter château country. There are a lot of them, from the humble to the grand they all offer guided tours that end by passing through a gift shop. Lots of people rent bikes for the day to travel along the river from their hotel to do a château visit. There are even special train services that will take you and your bike to within a short ride if you're not sufficiently energetic to go the whole way under your own steam. We've visited plenty of châteaux on previous trips so have generally been by-passing them this time; mostly to avoid the coach trip hordes who lose all spatial awareness when following the lady waving a pink umbrella at arms length above her head.

In the gaps between French castles are some very pretty villages that, lacking a tea room, the coaches don't bother to stop at. We had our Lunch in one such village, Beaugency. It has an 11th century church, 12th Century Abbey, 14th Century bridge and a relatively modern, 16th century Hotel de Ville.

We arrived in Blois to discover we would be without WiFi for two days. The most significant issue arising from that was forward booking our accommodation. We're running about a week ahead with bookings so try to book at each stop for the same day in the following week. In fairness, WiFi was not listed as an amenity when I checked back but I hadn't imagined in this day and age it would not be avaiable. Lesson learned.

Blois has a history that includes once being the seat of the French monarchy and there are buildings in the city that date back to the 12th Centrury. Timber framed buildings from the mid 1400's are squeezed between stone buildings that are sometimes much older and sometimes much younger. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the French are much less inclinded to replace old buildings than we are. They re-purpose them and in some cases continue them in their original purpose.

Francoise, our landlady in Blois explained on our arrival that she spoke no English. I, in turn explained that I speak only a little French and that I need people to speak slowly for me to understand them. "D'accord" she said and then proceeded to chat away to me at full speed. I must have been gettting my nods and ah ha's in roughly the right places because she kept going for quite a while. This morning before we left she bought her three month old grandson in to meet us. This was accompanied by a conversation that only one of us was enjoying any comprehension from, but she was a lovely lady and who doesn't like a baby (when it's someone elses responsibility?)

The ride to our appartment for tonight and tomorrow took us through some more stunning villages and up into the vineyards where row upon tidy row of grapevines follow the contours of the hillside. Every one is parallel to the next and is uniform in width and height. The views from this high plane were excellent on a day that gave us scattered cloud against blue sky until late afternoon when the cloud almost all melted away. We dived down, very steeply from the vineyards into the town of Ambiose which has a similarly regal history to Blois. From here we stayed with the river for a few kilometres before climbing back up to our temporary home in Montlouis sur Loire.