A what?

We’re treating this today as a bit of a commute. It’s a 70+ km day and the EV6 route looks like it meanders around a bit early on so we decide to take the road for some of the day to cut a few kilometres off and get some distance done early.

The first part of the day out of Sully-sur-loire is on fast levee road, all the way to Lion, where residents for some reason have put chairs out the front of their places with various decorations on them. I wonder what that means? Just keeping up with the Joneses?

On the other side of Lion we come across a road marker. We are now just as far from the source of La Loire (Mt Gerbier de Joni) as we are from the mouth (Saint Nazaire/Saint-Brevin-les-Pins) – at least by road D951. The mid point by road is 462km. By our wriggly route we are already past 500km!

From Lion we leave EV6 for a while and make great pace on the road for about 20km, before stopping for a drink in Saint Brisson-sur-Loire where we chat with a couple of Scottish people who are out for a jaunt on their e-bikes.

We rejoin the EV6 route and follow it toward Briare where we’ll consider whether to continue following the route or take Neil’s slightly shorter route which follows the road. We’re not prepared for what we find next!

“Wow!” I ride around a corner and up a very small incline and see a dragon. A very cute dragon.

But that’s not all!

We’ve stumbled across a canal pont. That’s a freaking canal that crosses a river on a bridge! I’ve never seen such a thing. It is a monumental piece of engineering, built in the 1890s. It is more than 660m in length. Parts of it were built by Gustav Eiffel – yep, that Eiffel. And if you are keen on detail, it’s located at Briare (on La Loire).

If we’d done meticulous research about this trip we would have known about this thing. We would have seen pictures and known pretty much exactly what was coming. I like the surprise.

After this lovely surprise, we treat ourselves to lunch in a nearby park where we meet a Parisian cyclist, here on a day trip for the day. We tell him about our trip, feeling pretty awesome about ourselves, then he tells us about his son and son’s girlfriend who rode from Perth to Darwin. Get back in your box Joyce-McKinnon! Though to be honest, I’m not sure I would enjoy riding Perth to Darwin, with long stretches of hot nothing. The beauty of riding to Europe is short stretches before points of interest (even if you can’t always get lunch when you want it!)

To get to Cosne-sur-Loire we ride along the Canal Lateral du Loire, a pretty easy and flat ride, except for the frequent and steep-ish rises up to road crossings. This is a taste of the canal riding we’ll do when we finally leave La Loire (I think).

We then turn back toward La Loire and ride in its vicinity, crossing over to enter Cosne-sur-Loire, our stop for the night. We have a lovely little apartment right near the cemetery which is well equipped with off-street, locked storage for our bikes and a washing machine. I watch the last of the French Open final (blah … Djokovic wins) and we get laundry going before heading out for a beer and dinner. I tried very hard to get takeaway beer from a Tabac (a sort of smoke shop/bar/convenience store found in almost every village), but she said, “No.” We’ve seen plenty of Tabac with takeaway beer – maybe this is a Sunday rule? Who knows?

We find a little restaurant/bar overlooking a canal for the end-of-day beer, and then, because there are few restaurants open in town, ask if we can stay for dinner.

“You can’t have dinner at this table. Dinner is over there on those tables.”

OK. “Can we see a menu?”

A menu is reluctantly provided. I scan it, and though I’m not pleased with the offerings I can cobble together a meal.

“Yes. We’d like to stay for dinner.”

We have to get up from our table and follow the waiter. She takes us inside, then has us follow her back outside, where she sets up a table only metres from where we were sitting before.

I’ve been really enjoying salads made from heirloom tomatoes and with a burrata on top. There’s one on the menu. I order that for entree and then a vegie burger for my main.

I’m not allowed to go that. The salad, the waiter tells me, is quite “fat”. I won’t be able to eat that and the vegie burger, which is also “fat”. She seriously won’t let me order both. Although the vegie burner is probably more filling and probably has more protein, I order the salad and sulk. When it comes it is quite large, but I reckon I could have scoffed the vegie burger as well.

I don’t think she realises how far we have ridden to be here for dinner tonight.

 

Stats for today:

• Distance: 73.5km
• Climb: 141m
• Average speed: 18.1km/h
• Average temperature: 25C
• Moving time: 4:03:33
• See our ride on Strava

The beer picture

At the end of a day’s ride, our tradition is to enjoy a beer, and to photograph it for posterity. Today’s beer picture was taken at a br/restaurant on a canal in Cosne-sur-Loire where the rules about where you eat and where you drink are complex and strict.

Along the way today: