Cycling the Loire part two

Place St Pierre, Saumur

Here is part two of our cycling trip to the Loire, you can read part one here. 

Despite our packing being very minimal, (even the hotel owner was surprised by our lack of luggage), we had packed a change of clothes for an evening in town and I even had a pair of flip flops to wear with my sundress too. Saumur was a lovely place to stay and after a stroll around town we enjoyed a spot of people watching over a refreshing beer in the Place St Pierre before eating in an Auberge in Rue St Nicolas where we sampled the local speciality of fouées for the first time. This is a bread cooked in a wood fired oven that puffs up to form a pocket you fill with local delights including goats cheese, white beans, garlic butter, lardons, rillettes and a confit of onions and blood sausage. It was delicious and full of carbs, which was ideal to replace our energy.

Fouées, a local speciality

As cyclists, the following morning we were allowed cheese with our French breakfast – an option not given to the other residents at the hotel and one we made good use of. It was then time to head back towards Tours, taking the river route past some interesting cave houses to Montsoreau, where we stopped for morning coffee. I have to admit it wasn't much further on when we stumbled upon the delicious aromas coming from a patisserie - it really wasn't an option to cycle past!

Cave houses

The Chateau at Montsoreau

Looking back to Montsoreau

The patisserie, a girls best friend

We again found ourselves cycling towards the beautiful chateau at Rigny-Ussé where we left the Loire and followed the road to Azay-le-Rideau eventually finding somewhere willing to serve us a croque-monsieur for lunch – we seemed to have our invisibility cloaks on again! Despite the chateau at Azay-le-Rideau being very beautiful the view from before the ticket office isn’t so great and we really didn’t have time to pay to enter any of the chateau on this trip. The run back to the Loire at Villandry was shady and cool and by the time we reached the car we were delighted to have clocked up 200km in our two days.

The Chateau at Rigny-Ussé

We were lucky that the weather was lovely and warm, sunny and more importantly dry, as we really are fair weather cyclists only. I suppose ideally a little cooler may have been nice, but the sun really gave our two days a proper holiday feel and much of the route was shaded by trees. The architecture is so different to where we live it was difficult to believe we were only a two hour drive from home.

What struck me a lot along the way was the number of cyclists we saw who were many years older than us, often with their panniers and trailers full of camping equipment and still with a friendly smile, nod of the head and a bonjour to share with us. The Loire really is a cycle friendly area that I can recommend to anyone with an interest in cycling in France, not just serious cyclists. As well as the Loire, Cycling Southern France - Loire to Mediterranean by Richard Peace also has many other great routes from the Loire down to the Mediterranean and was a very useful book for us that we will use again.

If you fancy a Loire break with or without your bike, I have a couple of friends with holiday accommodation and there are many others on our Special Places in France website. My friend Nicole (we grew up in the same road in Surrey in the 1970’s) and her husband have three beautiful gites to the southeast of Tours. We visited them a few years ago so have seen for ourselves how special their place is and you can see details on their website here. To the west of Tours, Facebook friends Le Chant d’Oiseau, have gites and a campsite (see website here). We haven’t visited them (yet), but we have seen the tasty photos of the soirées they hold where they cook pizza and fouées in their wood fired oven, the stuff holiday dreams are made of.

I hope you have enjoyed our Loire holiday pictures; it really is a very beautiful place in France. Now where to take our bikes next?

Cycling the Loire Tours to Saumur

This time last week, having eaten our fill at the Quick Palace hotel buffet breakfast in Tours we set off for two days of cycling along the river Loire with a bit of Chateaux spotting. Since getting back I think I have spent most of the week in the kitchen as we found ourselves somewhat over run with cherries, raspberries and courgettes. I have baked quiches and cakes and started stocking the cupboards with chutneys and relishes, however it meant neglecting the blog.

After the madness and excitement that was The Tour de France in Tours it was with a little reluctance that we headed out to the west of the city on Friday morning. The further out of town we got and the more peaceful it became, the more we knew we had made the right decision not to stay with the buzz in Tours awaiting the lunchtime departure of the cyclists. The Tour might have been over for us but we still had a good few kilometres to tackle on our own little tour of the Loire.

Morning coffee in Savonnières

The plan was to follow the river Loire from Tours to Rigny-Ussé, cross the river Indre, then loop down to Chinon before following the river Vienne back to the Loire and on to Saumur. This route is well documented in Cycling Southern France - Loire to Mediterranean by Richard Peace, however we didn’t have the space to carry the book with us, but following big rivers, on the flat, how difficult could it be? Well, despite the Loire being a cyclist heaven with over 800km of marked cycle paths and many cycle friendly hotels and campsites it wasn’t actually as easy as I thought. It wasn’t long before the path veered away from the river and then horror of horrors, became a cobbled track. I am a 41 year old body cycling a 30 year old road bike and neither of us do cobbles. The benefits of heading back to the road were that tarmac is a much faster surface for our thin tyre bikes and we followed the route Le Tour had taken the previous day, so the villages and roads were decorated on a cycle theme.

Cobbles are a no no!

The bridge over the Loire in Langeais

We lunched on pasta and tinned fish, perfect energy food, having seen Villandry (from afar), the lovely bridge at Langeais and got a great view of the Rigny-Ussé chateau that morning. The afternoon took in Chinon, where we stopped for a beer, some lovely shady cycling by the river Vienne then the beautiful village of Montsoreau. 

Chinon

The Vienne river

Pretty displays in Montsoreau

We were only about 16km from our overnight stop in Saumur but tiredness and the heat were starting to show. When given a choice of a 14km route via the river or a 12km route via the vineyards, we decided to head uphill and save a couple of kilometres. Well, the views were superb, but unfortunately the signage wasn’t. We must have covered at least an extra 10km with lots of hills and lots of heat that necessitated a walnut break under the shade of a tree. The final zoom down from the Chateau in Saumur to our hotel was a fantastic feeling and we felt rather pleased with ourselves having covered 95km.

The Loire vineyards

Saumur

The Cithotel was very welcoming with a safe storage area for the bikes and a clean and comfortable room. Never has a short bath in a two-tone peach hotel bathroom seemed so welcoming as that night!

Bliss!

Do join me again tomorrow with part two of our adventure.