Cycling along the Loire River

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We started the day by mailing 3.5 kg (7.7 pounds) of packing materials and a few clothes back to our friends in Paris in an effort to lighten our load! In retrospect, I could have kept two garments, but...I am doing fine without them. We feel so much better, I can tell you. Annie kept saying, I cannot believe that you didn't weigh your panniers before leaving home...Annie, if you only knew that we travel at the last minute!

Getting to the bike path was quite an experience, due to the fact that people were driving to work in municipal part of Tours and Annie was not sure of the directions. Fortunately, we had our cell phones and were able to stay in touch with one another.

The path was smooth and FLAT! We cycled along corn fields that looked like Iowa, and bought baguette sandwiches along the way. In the future, we will carry our own mustard and probably veg pate from a supermarket, but in the meantime, we enjoyed what was prepared for us!

We toured the Villandry chateau and wandered around the amazing gardens. One family, since 1905 has been renovating the chateau and planting the gardens, which require 10 full time gardeners. The gardens are the only ones in France that reflect traditional monastery design, so they are very carefully laid out. (I am sure that google will help you find them.)

Annie got a migraine, but didn't fully explain this to us, and we thought that she dashed ahead of us because we might have done something wrong. So, we were left to our devices to find Saint Cyr sur Loire, her village, which we did, arriving only a few minutes after her. We only had to ask directions once, and we finally got some information from our GPS that we had uploaded with French maps. Dinner was a wonderful baked ratatouille with cheese.

We packed our panniers so that we could leave early to get the train to our next stop: Angouleme.

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