In the morning the sun is shining again although I don't initially see much of it because my host has closed the shutters of my room. Opening the windows so I can open the shutters I discover how cold it is out there. Last night we agreed that breakfast would be at 8:30, or rather when she asked me what time I would like breakfast and I suggested 08:00, she agreed it would be at 08:30; I wasn't going to get an 80 year-old up earlier than she wanted to get up, just to make me breakfast, so 08:30 it was. I am up well before then and later hear her pottering around in the kitchen getting things ready. When I turn up in the dining room at the appointed time, the table is laid with a simple but complete (at least the French idea of complete) breakfast. The cat is waiting there for me as well and we have breakfast together (the cat and me).
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| Château de Blois |
At the tourist office I go in for my Camino stamp and the woman apologises that her stamp isn't very nice, but suggests that I go up to the castle where they have a very nice stamp, just for pilgrims. The girl at the castle knows exactly what I need and volunteers that her mother finished the Camino last year. It seems the further south you go, the better known the Camino is.
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| A nice spot for a morning break |
I'm now riding in relatively familiar territory, along the Loire river. Soon I begin passing the troglodyte houses built into the side of the soft limestone cliffs. I still find it amazing how people have created whole houses into the cliff, with chimneys sticking out through the ground above, and what to all intents and purposes looks just like a normal house façade, with windows and doors, built into the cliff face.
Nearing Amboise I make another detour to go into the town itself (the route bypasses Amboise by staying on the north side of the Loire) and suddenly I am in tourist-ville. I'm following an organised tour group of Chinese and they make absolutely no allowance for me; so there's no way for me to pass on the shared cycleway. Then I begin seeing more bikes, many of them obviously Dutch, almost certainly following the Loire valley cycle route, La Loire à Vélo
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| Lussault - coffee pot fence |
The little, somewhat hidden town of Lussault is obviously a bit alternative. There are quite a few rather unorthodox houses; some old and ramshackle, but some brand new and quite different and interesting. There's also some troglodyte houses and one place that's found a novel way of displaying their vast collection of enamel tea and coffee pots by incorporating them all along the top of and in places embedded into, the stone wall along the road. There's also a beautiful brand new section of cycleway, complete with a mini vineyard with rose bushes at the end of the rows of vines.
Seen today on the cycleways: a very large German couple, both with Lycra bums that seemed to completely swallow their saddles (I know they were German because they kindly stopped when I was making some minor running repairs and asked if everything was OK); a pair of somewhat alternative looking girls riding with a lot of luggage - literally luggage: one of them had an old suitcase strapped to the rack on the bike instead of pannier bags; a guy riding an amazingly heavily laden bike, carrying almost everything you could imagine. Perhaps not quite the kitchen sink, but he was carrying not just a spare tyre, but an entire spare wheel! An older French couple, both looking slim and fit, riding matching (racing) bikes and dressed in identical Lycra riding suits; a guy in a singlet (remember that it is a cold day) riding a rather rickety old bike with a large basket on the handlebars containing a dog; a tall guy with a ZZ-Top beard riding a Dutch-looking bike; a young (probably Dutch) couple riding a very unusual tandem - she was sitting in a reclining position right at the front and he was behind, with the handlebars and controls, sitting in a normal position and therefore looking over the top of his partner. I'd seen something very similar in Santiago last year, but that (Dutch) couple had children and was also towing a trailer. And in the streets of Tours, late at night, a guy riding a bike (look Ma, no hands) playing an accordion.
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| 1,000 km so far... |
I pass another milestone today: 1,000km. This is longer than I had initially expected the trip to be, but I've taken a few detours and ridden on more little wiggly back roads than I thought I might. Looking back through my notes, this part of the Camino has turned out longer than the Camino Frances I rode last year.
In the early afternoon I ride into Tours, the final destination of this section of the Camino. For the first time on the trip I see Compostela markings on the route. I know the way here, so don't need my map. I ride to the cathedral and there I am pleased to find that there is a person who can give me my final stamp. She is shut away behind a sliding glass panel in a little cabin inside the cathedral and she makes it obvious that I'm interrupting her reading. She seems to cheer up a little when I speak French, but she makes no effort whatsoever to help me celebrate the occasion of my having just competed the first major section of the Way to Santiago. To her I'm just an interruption.
I feel the same strange contradictory feelings of just having accomplished something significant while at the same time having a sense of anti-climax that I felt arriving at the final destination in Santiago last year.
So tomorrow I will keep on riding.
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| Tours Cathedral |
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