Is it cheating if you hitch a ride?

Deb and Howard invite us onboard Moondance to travel a few kilometres with them and we jump at the chance to experience the way the other half travel along these waterways.

We only go a couple of kilometres, so it’s not really cheating, right?

We travel through one lock on the barge, and experience the precision it takes to manoeuvre this 21.69m long, 4.47m wide barge into a narrow lock. It’s amazing how quickly the water flows into the lock to raise the barge to the next level. It would be less than 2km between this lock and the next.

We leave the barge and cycle to the next lock where we watch them go through (with me opening one lock gate at the end – a new career of lock keeper maybe?)then wave goodbye.

Moondance and her happy crew are continuing on to Cercy La Tour, while we travel along the Nivernais canal for a short time before heading away on our route to Bourbon Lancy.

Our route that takes us through farmland without any obvious waterway, which is a bit of a change. La Loire is never far away though and we cross paths a few times throughout the day, including at lunch when we stop for a pique-nique.

Despite this being our thirteenth day on the bikes without a break, the going is pretty easy, even when we strike a few hills towards the end of the day. It’s a warm day and just so very quiet on the roads and in the small villages we pass through. It feels like somebody or something has come and scooped up all the people, leaving the countryside empty.

Well, not quite empty!

I’m riding only slightly behind Neil when I hear him yell. I see the snake writhing about and only just avoid it myself. This one’s a big one! You wouldn’t think it would be possible to ride along and not see snakes on the road, but this is our fourth now, including a dead one I rode over early in the trip, and the poor unfortunate one I hit just out of Orléans.

Most snakes in France are not poisonous. I keep reminding myself of that. It would be so easy for a frightened snake to stick its fangs into my leg as I cycle over or around it. I resolve to keep more concentration on what’s on the road in front of me from now.

We roll into Bourbon Lancy mid-afternoon and have to wait to check into our apartment. We’re staying quite near a lake and there’s a lovely park with a playground nearby.

Bourbon Lancy is our long-awaited rest stop. We always try to have a break every 3-4 days while on the road, but needing to get to Phllippe’s place in Chaingy and then wanting to meet up with Michelle and Steve has kept us going just a little too hard.

We take a walk into the main town area which is really quiet! There’s not much open and not many people around except for cyclists! We have a beer (and then another one) at the only bar we find (even that one closes at 8pm) then go and eat at the only restaurant we can find open. When we’re finishing up, Sally and Jeremy – the Kiwis we met on our second day riding – cruise into town with some friends looking for dinner. I thin we’re going to continue stumbling across them all the way to Budapest.

Stats for today:

• Distance: 47.97km
• Climb: 235m
• Average speed: 16.3km/h
• Average temperature: 30C
• Moving time: .2:56:32
• 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 bar in Bourbon Lancy which was one of only a few places open this Wednesday evening. The beer was so good we had two!

Along the way today: