Blois/St Claude de Deray

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Day 111 Friday 3 July

Friedrichshafen to Blois

39c in Paris bloody hot



We woke up and got ready to leave then had breakfast. Jonas left for work and Dani drove us down to the station where we said goodbye and thanked her very much for the great time we had with them. They are certainly a fabulous couple. We boarded our train and went to Stuttgart passing through a very heavy storm. The German country side was very green and the villages looked beautiful.



We changed at Stuttgart onto the TGV to Paris. For the first part we had the carriage to ourselves. We had made lunch at Dani and Jonas and had just finished eating it when the staff brought around a complimentary meal "for our international first class passengers." We ate some of it later and it was very tasty. At times the train got up to 320km. Despite this it was 25 minutes late into Paris which only gave us 30 minutes to get across the city to catch the train to Blois.



Luckily we had been able to buy metro tickets on the TGV so could go straight over to the metro which was reasonably close to where we had come in and jumped straight on a train to Gare Austerlitz where the next train went from. We arrived with about 3 minutes to go and raced outside to the SNCF station only to find that the train was leaving 15 minutes later than scheduled. Disaster averted.



On the way between trains we found some very helpful French people: one guy helped Gail with her case, another helped us with the platform indicator board, a woman offered us a seat on the metro and the information guy at the station chased us to give us a late platform change.



We arrived in Blois on a very crowded train, but we had seats and Thierry and CoCo were there to meet us. We drove to their house in St Claude de Diray, the village where they live which is about 8km from Blois. We had a French/English dictionary and they had their smart phones with translation Aps so we muddled through. Glenn rang and we had a talk. Laurette was in Paris at a job interview.



Thierry had cooked us a prawn risotto which was very tasty. We drank red wine, ate cheese and talked until midnight despite the communication challenges. After some discussion we decided to go for a 23km bike ride along the Loire the next day which has been a dream of Gail's for a long while



Day 112

Blois/St Claude de Deray

35c



After breakfast (bread, jam and coffee) we pumped up the bike tyres and adjusted the seat heights and were about to leave when a thunderstorm hit so we waited it out then left. At their front gate there was an informal meeting of their neighbours to discuss the weather and our route. Then 5 minutes later another thunderstorm but from then on it was fine.



We rode to the Loire past the aqueduct through fields of wheat, grapes and asparagus to the Loire and along the riverside. The river was pretty but there was not a lot of water in it. We rode past the Chateau Menars which was on the other side of the river. We had a picnic lunch beside the river and of course it was very French and very tasty.



After lunch we rode a bit further along the river then turned away to head for the Chateau Chambord, but then the directions got a bit muddled. The GPS would say 6kms to go, we would ride 2kms and then the GPS would indicate 6kms to go. Eventually we figured it out and rode down the driveway to Chambord. Magnificent.



We took some photos of the château then had a drink. There were a lot of people there as it was some sort of special day and there was at least one wedding. We rode out of the Chambord estate and rode through a couple of other small villages and fields stopping to have a couple of drinks because it was so hot and Thierry was not feeling all that well. The 23km ride turned into a 36km ride. When we arrived back home Coco went off to get some bread and we went inside and had a drink. Next thing we knew a car came into the yard with CoCo who had fallen off the bike and was a bit woozy and battered. We helped her inside and Thierry went to get the bike. After a shower and a lie down she felt a little better.



We were going to go into Blois to a music festival and have dinner but we thought we should just stay home and let CoCo recover but she was adamant that she was OK and that we should go. We all had a shower and drove into Blois, not the city but the bank of the Loire on the side across the bridge. There was a big crowd at the festival but we managed to find a table and then Thierry and I lined up to get the food. That took a while and the system was interesting. While we eating our meal a couple of Italian girls who were multi-lingual sat down and we talked. They were nice girls and one had been to Australia.



The music was good and they had two stages so it was continuous. At about 10.30 we left and drove home. A night cap then bed.



Day 113

St Claude de Deray

31c



We all slept in so had breakfast late then watched a movie about a choir of grandmothers that Laurette had sent to Thierry because one of her friends had produced it and it had won the French documentary of the year. Her friend's grandmother was in it. It was really good. We watched with sub-titles. Then we had a special lunch that Thierry had cooked for us. He made skewers of lamb, beef and chicken with really small French Fries, aubergine and peas in their pods. It was really good and Thierry told us that his style of cooking is traditional and that it is what he really enjoys doing.



Then we went for a drive for what they said was a surprise for us. We stopped at a village called St Dye Sur Loire on the South bank of the Loire. There was a little community fair taking place and some exhibits about nature that the kids were running. Two replicas of old boats came up the river and then we realised that the surprise was that they had hired the sailing boat, the Saponaire, for the four of us to go for a cruise along the river.



It was lovely, very peaceful and good to watch the scenery pass by. The boat was a replica of the ones they transported the stone for Chambord during construction. We went as far as a bridge with 4 arches which the boatman said was the first one built in France that way. We also found out that there were beaver in the Loire and that while they had disappeared for a while CoCo's brother had been influential in reintroducing them to the river and it has been a big success.



After the boat ride we went back home and had a cake Thierry had made after a guessing game in the car to try to identify what type of cake it was. It was a macaroon base with all types of fruit on top and was delicious and we had it with sparkling wine.



Thierry, Gail and I had a game of Pétanque after this that Gail won. We did some work on our cash card and worked out that some of our payments have not come through. It is a bit of a mess that we will have to work out when we get home. We talked some more then went to bed

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