The beginning of the 84 mile ride was great, the end not so great as I didn’t finish the ride. First the nice part. I’m getting hungry about 40 miles out and see a pizza place, yum, I pull in park my bike by my table, sit down and look across the street and WOW, surprise, surprise, a beautiful castle. The pizza was superb and I know that to be true because our guide Enrico joined me and he said it was good and as he pointed out he’s Italian and should know.

Now to the downside of the beautiful day. About 45 miles out I hear a clanking noise which is not a good sound on a bike, one of my spokes has broken and wound into my gears. In all my miles of riding I have never broken a spoke. The van had to be called, cannot ride anymore, no problem, if I miss half a day out of 45 but there is a problem when the van is 1 1/2 hours away and I can see the black thunderstorm approaching. I am hobbled with my bike on the corner of a residential area and cars keep driving by and looking at me. When the storm hits, it is a doozy, a great wild Florida thunderstorm so I am sitting on the sidewalk behind a streetlight post praying lightning doesn’t strike when I notice that the street cannot take all the water flowing down it (slight slope) and now the water is coming up over the curb. Now I am sitting in 2 inches of water. Biking does have it’s down side

Almost a Florida ride (quite flat) except when we got in my gps said we climbed 2000′ I was impressed since I don’t remember going up. The highlight of the trip was the castle at Chambord, which is the most impressive castle in the Loire Valley and well it should be with 440 rooms. It was built for some king so he could bring his hunting buddies for the weekend. Looks logical to me.

These are swans under a bridge as we enter a village

And lastly Orleans, the city where we are spending the night.

Castle day, passed by two and are staying next to one. As I write this we are all sitting in the lobby drinking beer happy that we didn’t get too wet. The ride was great but mid afternoon the black clouds arrived by my side, in front of me and creeping up behind. I am tired it’s a 76 mile ride and for some reason my legs were in revolt when I saw the black clouds, if you can imagine the afterburners igniting that’s what happened. The last 25K (15 miles) was my sprint to beat the rain.

This is the castle that supposedly inspired “Sleeping Beauty”

This is pretty typical of what we see riding into a French village. There are so many of these villages that we ride through with all the flowers and narrow roads.

Still along the Loire River off and on. Today was about 73 miles but good. Not to say it’s all fun and games, I do have to do laundry on arrival at our hotel

It’s not a pretty sight in my room some nights.
Today was a Sunday and the roads and towns were empty, everything is closed, but we saw bikers and I mean lots of them. It seems like everyone rides a bike. We see pelatons of 30 riders all dressed alike (teams or clubs) groups of all sizes, families with kids on the back with pacifiers, dogs being carted behind. If the kid is over 3 he’s riding. That is why the drivers are so great, now any idiot can come down the road anyplace but by and large it is amazing. The roads are very, very narrow, most without bike lanes. I have never heard a horn, they pass very close but with no malice and polite if they can’t get by right away. In some small towns I take up the entire lane and they follow patiently until I can move over. A real pleasure to ride.

We went to the castle in this town before dinner, tomorrow there are three castles on our way to the next city

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I’ve been to France before but never ridden a bike here. Our first day was a easy 65mile ride along the Loire River, mostly on bike paths which I think will become boring unless they are broken up with small towns, we’ll see. Our group is going to be very good, there are only 13 which is a pretty small group so after 45 days we’ll all be in love with each other or not speaking. I knew 6 other riders from other trips leaving the only couples, 3 of them, new to me.

Can’t ride along the Loire without a castle. This our first siting in Nantes. Someone said “aren’t castles romantic” as I looked over the moat unto the sprawling lawn to see two lovers in very romantic positions, guess she was right about the romance. Took a little tour, ate my lunch on the castle steps, tried not to watch the lovers and continued on to the end of the ride.

I am determined to write something every day, not for anyone but myself. When I first went across the US it was a 47 day trip and someone told me that in a week I wouldn’t remember the names of the cities I’d stayed. I thought this was preposterous, I was so excited about going I thought I would remember everything. A week in to it we all would laugh because we couldn’t remember the last town let alone 3 days before that and they were all American cities (names I could pronounce). Every night in a new place 45 times is just too much to even remember our hotel room number each day. Now I’m on a trip where I can’t pronounce half the cities names and we will be in 10 countries so I am going to write it all down.

Our first day was on the beach in St. Brevins on the Atlantic coast of France. This was the first view I had walking out my hotel door, not bad for a beginning photo.