2019 Bike Ride - Day 8: Briare to St-Denis-de-l'Hôtel

Yesterday when I was repairing my second puncture I was a little less organised than I might normally have been, given that I was out in the open with rain threatening, and so under a little bit of time pressure. So despite arranging all the bits I was working with in as orderly a fashion as I could manage, I still managed to lose the little valve dust cap. No big deal, it's just a dust cap, but somehow it was annoying. I looked everywhere for it, but of course a little black cap on a wet black path with lots a bits of gravel and so forth is hard to see. So no more dust cap. This morning as I am packing my things in the B&B, suddenly, there on the table next to my handlebar bag is the dust cap. It's almost as if during the night the dust cap fairy has come and put it there for me to find.

I've seen quite a few squirrels running across my path in the last few days. Today there's one on the side of the path, complete with an acorn in its mouth, a bit like a caricature. Just how you'd imagine a squirrel if you were going to draw one. Very cute.

My route will take me past Gien and I decide to stop here to visit the Musée de la Faïencerie de Gien (Ceramic Museum - really a factory outlet). I want to do something a little unusual - for me - which is buy a souvenir to take home. And this place has a few memories as well. Not that something ceramic is really a very practical souvenir to be taking on a bike ride! I buy a couple of small decorative plates, which I carefully pack into the panier bags.

Bicycle Flowers

The route goes past a little village called Saint Gondon. I make a short detour into the village, passing a house with an obviously avid gardener. He has big pots of roses along the footpath in front of his house, each with a little name tag. His (or maybe it's her) garden is a mix of flowers and vegetables, of all sorts. He also has some old bikes, complete with baskets of flowers. In fact that's a bit of a thing I've noticed in various places; people seem to take their old bicycles and put them out on display with plants and other decorations. In this village it's definitely a theme because it turns out there are lots of decorative old bikes on display.

So I've stopped for a pee break. I put the bike on its stand as usual and am standing a little way away doing what I have to do. The wind is quite windy, and then it becomes very gusty. I have a passing thought that with this much wind my bike could be blown over and just as I'm thinking this I turn around to see my bike topple over into a ditch, rather ignominiously. Somehow I must have known this was going to happen. And you can guess that this wind is not a helpful tailwind today, so the ride is hard.

Speaking about being clairvoyant and seeing things happen before they actually happen, the night before last I had a dream about riding my bike, as you do when you're riding a bike I suppose. I dreamt I was riding down a really steep gravely path and my rear wheel kept sliding and skidding as I tried to brake and I couldn't slow myself down. I looked down and realised the rear tyre was flat so I had to use the front brakes to try to stop myself from losing control going down the steep hill. And the next day I get two punctures (both on the rear wheel). Very strange.

Forest chair

I pass a chair tried to a signpost at a small side road. A bit odd I think, maybe the person that lives up that path has put it there it as a marker? You know, along the lines of: 'Turn right at the sign with the chair tied to it, you can't miss it'. A little later I pass another one. Definitely odd. Then another. This is not a coincidental hanging of chairs. There's plastic chairs, metal chairs, and now I've stopped at a signpost with a wicker chair. What's going on here? In the next town there are more chairs, some decorated with all sorts of interesting things. One with carved cats, several with flowers, one with a dummy sitting in it, chairs that are painted in bright colours. There's even chairs attached to trees in the forest as I leave the town. Like the dust cap fairy and the tin of fish, this is probably a mystery that will never be solved. [edit] A bit of Internet research shows that the council of the village of Lion-en-Sullias has encouraged the residents to brighten up their street frontage with an imaginatively-decorated chair - apparently in order to promote tourism.

I'm riding on the dyke that goes along the Loire River. So I have lovely views and am also ideally positioned to catch the full impact of the wind. The crows (there are a lot of crows) are enjoying playing in the wind, gliding, hovering and swooping. I am not enjoying it quite so much.

I ride into Châteauneuf-sur-Loire and just as I arrive at the church, right on queue, the bells toll the hour. It's four o'clock. This is another one of those dust cap fairy mysteries; how is it that so often I arrive in a town or village just as the bells chime?

In a field off to my left there's a tractor towing a shit spreader. He's a long way away but since the wind is blowing from that direction, I get the full olfactory benefit of his labours as I ride past. Lovely! It reminds me of the first day's ride when I saw a shit spreader in the distance heading at an angle towards the road I was riding on. Clearly our paths were going to cross, depending on who got there first. I had no chance of course and so was preparing myself for the worst, but luckily before he reached the road he turned off the shit dispenser and turned around for a return run. That day the prevailing wind was in my favour, at least insofar as me being exposed to the shit spreader; it was most definitely not in my favour for my rate of progress.

Castell de Sully-sur-Loire

I ride into a village - more a collection of farm buildings than anything else really - with the interesting name 'Lazy'. Of course in French this word has no other meaning, it's just a place name, but if you look at the name with English eyes, so to speak, it does seem a bit odd. 'Messy' is another place like that I've ridden through, although in that case the name of the place was a pretty good reflection of the condition of the town. In Lazy there is a pervasive sweet smell of beetroots in the air, and I soon discover why: there's an enormous sugar beet factory here (most of the sugar in Europe comes from Sugar Beets and not sugar cane). This is the destination of those huge tractors towing huge trailers laden with piles of beets that I've seen negotiating impossibly small and narrow streets in little villages.

I arrive at my destination 15 minutes before the time I'd estimated to my host yesterday. Not bad, considering it's been a long day's ride with multiple stops and lots of wind and my departure time was dictated by the size of the breakfast I was served this morning (it was enormous). It's also the longest ride so far on this trip. My home for tonight is a lovely little studio apartment above the host's house. She is also lovely and clearly wants to make sure everything is just right, which it seems to be. On a table there's a jar with a handwritten label: "Petits gâteaux de bienvenue" (Little welcome cookies). It's that sort of place. There's a supermarket within walking distance and rain is threatening and the restaurant choices seem pretty sad. Since I have an apartment with a little kitchen at my disposal I decide to eat in tonight and cook my own dinner. I manage to make it to the shop and back with my groceries before the rains finally come, and I can smugly sit inside and cook my own dinner knowing I won't have to get wet today after all.

My apartment comes with a little courtyard garden, with lots of flowering plants and - of course - an old bicycle with a basket of flowers growing from it.

The Loire near Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire