Dave and his Bike

Update from yesterday. We strolled into town to find the Bal des Pompiers (loosely translated as Fireman’s Ball) in full swing with live music, food stalls (burger & fries each) and several bars. Brilliant evening!

July 14th 2022

Bastille Day. National celebration of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. And a reason for cafés and restaurants not to open across France. That said, having had an early start (0830 departure) we found a café open in Louvigné-de-Bais where the coffee was so good we had two each. 

The northerly breeze continued, and our early departure meant that the temperature was only in the early 20’s for the first couple of hours. That, coupled with more excellent road surfaces and a lack of traffic (also as a result of Bastille Day) ensured that the kilometres passed swiftly by, and the climbs didn’t feel too hard. Jane sensibly suggested buying lunch stuff at La Guerche-de-Bretagne, plus some cold drinks which we drank outside the beautiful church.

More rolling countryside and increasing heat took us to Pouancé where we planned further cold drinks and lunch, but fell victim of the Bastille once again as there was nowhere open. We decided to push on towards Candé, and to Jane’s delight entered sunflower country. It’s the little things in life…

Shortly after we passed the pretty château at Challain-la-Potherie. 

Still nowhere to buy a drink. Once in Candé however, despite it appearing deserted the kind patron of the hotel (Relais du Val de l’Erdre) opened just for us and not only sold us ice cold Coke, but filled our water bottles. Decent chap. Lunch was taken sitting in the street.

An hour further down the road and we coasted through Ingrandes on the Loire river – our destination for the day at a convenient 100km. We bagged the last room of the day, booked a table for dinner and had a well deserved cold beer overlooking the river.

Showers, kit wash and the Tour de France on TV (good effort Tom Pidcock!!) and we are about to go for dinner. It’s looking hot for tomorrow, so hopefully we are acclimatising well.