Au revoir La Loire

It is such a fast start to the day. With our bikes cleaned and the chains oiled to perfection we zip along wide, well paved and smooth bike paths out of Bourbon Lancy – sometimes the bike infrastructure is just so very, very good in this country! It’s always good to make a lot of progress early up – it sets up the day and make us feel good about our progress.

We cross La Loire after about 12km and then follow Canal Latéral á La Loire until we reach yet another pont canal at Digoin. This one, though not as elaborate as the one at Briare, is older, having been constructed in the 1830s. It’s 243m in length. The mind just boggles at the efforts back in those days of creating this incredible canal system and the superb engineering that sees this kind of canal bridge still operational nearly 200 years later.

Crossing this canal pont is our last act with the lovely lady La Loire and Neil serenades her with the Nick Cave rendition of The Carnival is Over. After 13 1/2 riding days, and 765km following this river upstream from Saint Nazaire, our carnival with her is indeed over.

We follow Canal Latéral á La Loire for a while longer before EV6, for some mysterious reason, decides to route us up into hilly cow country. It is actually Charoloais country and the fields are occupied by these huge white animals, most of whom are lazing around in whatever shade they can find on this warm and sunny day.

The hills become a little tedious and somehow we lose touch with EV6. There are different people placing the signs around here. One sign, which Neil and I both agreed pointed to the right turned out to be pointing straight ahead. How do we know that? A couple of kilometres uphill until Neil realises we were heading south, there are no signs and a quick map check says we are wrong, so wrong. You don’t really want to go out of your way on a hot and hilly day. We know we aren’t the only ones having trouble keeping on route though.

Eventually we tire of faffing around and take a direct route back down to water and follow Canal du Centre all the way into Montceau-les-Mines.

I wondered about the name of this town (the les-Mines) bit. As we approach town we see what looks like a giant coal-fired power station right on the edge of town, and dominating the landscape. It has been decommissioned (most likely in favour of the many nuclear power stations we’ve seen along the way) but it’s kind of ugly.

Our hotel is pleasant and just too hard to leave after a long day in the saddle. We go for an end of day drink on the convenient and attractive terrace, rubbing shoulders with groups of men in white business shirts (do people still work?). The wait staff hassle us to order meals and it is just to difficult to contemplate getting up and walking around to find anywhere else, so we do. The selection is not great for me – the old French vegetarian standby of a large salad for my plat. There was a really lovely entrée of stuffed leaks though, so I should just shut up and be glad. The salad actually quite filling and nice, but I would have liked something a bit more solid in my stomach after a long day.

But, if the main meal is not quite filling enough, you can always have dessert! With 88km in my legs today, I can eat anything!

Stats for today:

• Distance: 88.68km
• Climb: 327m
• Average speed: 17.1km/h
• Average temperature: 28C
• Moving time: 5:10:48
• 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 only a short distance from our room at the terrace bar/restaurant of our hotel. Very refreshing!

Along the way today: