last biking day: savannieres to exhaustion

Today started out beautifully, with tartines with the lovely nico & noelle, who so graciously managed to insert us into their morning routine (getting two adults and a 14-month old washed, fed and out the door by 830...)without even seeming flapped. R & I loaded up the bikes, found the bike path, and pedalled on the 20km or so to Angers. The ride went right by the River Maine, through shaded forests and past squawking seabirds, and ended up suddenly in the middle of Angers by the chateau-forteresse. We peeked into the gardens (photos to hopefully follow) and walked around the grounds, but we didn't go into the chateau because we had nowhere to put our panniers, and Angers felt a little too big to just be leaving them in a car park. So no Tapestry of the Apocalypse for us. Sigh.

What really made us sigh was getting out of Angers. Or at least trying... definitely the closest we've come to a row all week. After circumnavigating the city and its environs for about an hour, we just rode in the direction that seemed most logical. It wasn't a bad choice, if a little too frequented by lorries, trucks, buses and lunatics for our taste, but it did, eventually, get us onto a bike path that led to our bike path. But not until Rich got a flat.

Neither of us had had one all trip. It was really only polite to let it happen on the last day.

Then came a really fun, fast (or as fast as we can handle with the paniers, which is about 16mph) spin into I-don't-remember-where-sur-Loire; we'd hit the 50km mark, which meant it was time for lunch. And beer. Mmmmm.

And back on the road, more spinning all the 26km into Saumur. We turned too soon and ended up hurtling over the four-lane heavy traffic bridge into the town, which was terrifying to put it mildly (Husband: Phew! I'm glad we made it over that bridge," pause "Oh look! There's the bike path..."). But it wasn't just the bike path, it was 86 000 bike paths all converging together under a bridge by the river (where, incidentally, a man had driven his car to, it seems, take its picture against a pretty background). And we had no idea which one to take. So we gave up and went to Decathlon, and then chose a route randomly and eventually found our way in.

The castle was really cool, if up an exceedingly steep hill, the likes of which we hadn't seen since Italy. But it was closed. And while we'd initially planned to go all the way to Chinon via Fontrevaud today, our bike computers were already reading 80km (or 50 miles) and the idea of half that again seemed just silly.

And so, somewhat unceremoniously, we headed to the train station and wangled our way onto one of the few TGVs to Paris (there was an SNCF strike, bien sur!), whence we write to you now. Bonjour!