Given that I am in Nantes, a large and rather pleasant city, a bit of tourism is called for. So I start the day with a little circuit touristique to take in the main sights: Hotel de Ville, Cathedral, Castle and so forth. Nantes Castle is imposing and impressive, in the middle of the city and surrounded by an enormous moat. And right outside the city's main tourist attraction is the city's main tourist office. Unsurprisingly, at 09:30 in the morning, it is closed. Just as well I don't actually need any information. I've come across this before in France; clearly they either don't expect tourists to be out and about in the morning, or more likely, the staff's quality breakfast time is more important than the tourists. It's all about maintaining the French reputation for customer service I suppose. To be fair, the number of tourists is bound to be less in the morning than later in the day. Still, I've come across towns where the tourist office is closed on Sundays, and you could hardly claim that Sunday was a quiet time for tourists.
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| Château de Nantes |
Leaving Nantes, I pass through the same dodgy area I entered through yesterday and then on to the pleasant shaded path that follows. Coming the other way is a guy waking his dog. Or perhaps more correctly, a dog walking a guy. Actually, it's better than that: the guy is on a skateboard and he's being towed by the dog. They're going pretty fast since the dog is running. Fast; clearly they've done this before.
For the return ride I'm trying to follow different routes to those I came on. That's not too difficult, since there's almost always the choice between the north bank or the south bank, and quite a few bridges to switch between the two. Every now and then however one of the two banks involves climbs up to the overlying hills (admittedly not very high hills) or significant detours away from the river and I decide to retrace my earlier route for that section. Which brings me back to Oudon, where I was only yesterday. It's been coffee time for quite a while but with no suitable places to get it along the way so far, I settle for a return to Oudon and the same café I had coffee at yesterday. It's a nice spot and although the coffee was pretty poor I'm beginning to reconcile myself with the fact that good coffee is just not going to happen.
There's a young girl at the bar today and not the two guys from yesterday. So maybe she can make better coffee I wishfully think. While I'm at the bar ordering, I notice the rather large guy next to me sitting at, or more accurately, bring supported by, the bar looking at me intently. You can see he has something on his mind, something he's trying to work out. Then I realise he's the same guy who was sitting at exactly the same spot yesterday. He's large with a big round red face and watery eyes. His nose has become a mass of alcoholic veins. But he's a happy drunk and now his face breaks into a Cheshire cat grin. "You were here yesterday" he says finally, and I think we are both impressed that he remembers. The coffee is not as hot as it was yesterday, but it's still pretty sad.
From Oudon I have little choice but to backtrack to Ancenis, the town which seemed so grim when I passed through it previously. This time I ride through some different parts of the town and to be fair on the town I see now that it's not all as bad as it looked before, although the construction work makes this difficult to visualise. Perhaps in a few years time it would merit a return visit.
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| Opening the bridge at Montjean-sur-Loire |
I ride on, trying to take new routes as much as possible. Towards the end of the day, I'm forced to take the same route back to Montjean-sur-Loire as I took leaving it and so I get to ride past the 'Bel Air' farm again. Thankfully the air has cleared since yesterday. At Montjean I make a point to ride to the other side of the bridge to the Ile de Chalonnes which I had found closed two days ago, just so I could see what the other side actually looked like. Sure enough, it's still barricaded. But as I'm standing there looking at it, a local council worker pulls up and approaches. "You want to cross?" he asks. I tell him that two days ago I had been on the other side and had to double back, forcing me to ride almost another 20 km. He listens sympathetically and a discussion ensures about how they'd tried to get the 'authorities' to properly signpost the closure but clearly they had not a good job. This is an advantage in France; there's always another layer of government or public service you can blame, even if you are the public service. Then he smiles: "You want to be the first to cross? I've just come here to open the bridge again. You're better off riding on the island - it's quiet countryside. Not like the highways here." As he says this he points to the road we're standing on. Anywhere else this road would be considered a minor country road; he's calling it a highway. It's all relative I suppose. He removes the barricades and so I get to ride over the bridge after all, making yet another trip on the island, which by now is becoming rather familiar.
My destination, Chalonnes-sur-Loire, is just near the other end of the island. After crossing the main bridge from the island to the mainland I arrive in the town at what must be the local peak half hour because there's actually a lot of traffic, something I haven't had to deal with much on this trip, even in Nantes. The final kilometre is a challenge; it's straight up a long hill which seemingly has no end. I'm greeted by my host for the evening and get a cold beer for my efforts; things are looking better already.
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| A Monopoly House (not the one I stayed in) |
Tonight I'm staying in a Monopoly house. It's my first time. It's a contemporary house in a new lotissement (subdivision). You see these small subdivisions pop up on the outskirts of older villages and towns all over France and they are invariably all the same style of house: a cement block box with a simple gable roof. The simplest ones look a lot like the sort of thing a four-year-old would draw if you asked them to draw a house. The larger or more complex ones look pretty much the same, only larger with perhaps a former window instead of skylights for the rooms in the roof space. The subdivisions tend to look a little like a monopoly board towards the end of the game when most streets have multiple houses and perhaps a hotel or two on them; the pieces representing the houses in monopoly have exactly the same size and shape.
This household has three children, a cat and two kittens. It's a friendly chaotic sort of place and is very easy going. But it's going to another early night for me; another long ride tomorrow.
Distance today: 83 km, 5 hours riding
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