Loire Valley cycling trip: Day 4, La Daguenière to Montjean

Slowly but surely, we are getting our posts and pix up about our cycling trip through France’s Loire Valley! It’s just pretty hard to sit down at the computer and sort through photos, look back at the maps, and write up the posts, when the summer weather has been so good! But we are almost there – here is Day 4 of our 5-day, 220 km trip.

Throughout our whole trip, the weather in France  (in Nice, riding to Monaco, and over the first few days of this trip) had been hot and muggy. But this morning, as we ate breakfast

Loire Valley cycling trip: Day 3, Chinon to La Daguenière 86 km

We both loved our two-night stay in Chinon but it was time to move along and we had an 86 km day ahead.

Leaving Chinon

Loire Valley cycling trip: Day 2, getting to know Chinon

We really didn’t have the time to research exactly which towns to visit in France ahead of time. Our decisions were made pretty hastily, mainly based upon cycling distances between towns. Well, upon arriving into Chinon around 7pm, we were really glad that we had planned to stay two nights here. We passed through what seemed to be normal industrial suburbs – a bit disappointing – then descended down to the town centre, a medieval village with the river to the south and vineyarrds to the west. We were thrilled to discover that the accommodation that I had booked us was right in the centre of the old town, an ancient stone inn.

In some ways it’s better to do your research in advance. But there is more of a sense of adventure when you discover things as you go. Over our day in Chinon, we found out that nearly one thousand years ago, Chinon had been the centre from which Henry Plantagenet had ruled as king of England as well as

Loire Valley cycling trip: Day 1, Tours to Chinon

Dave and I had been looking forward to this for months. After racing his Ironman in Nice, France, we would head north to the Loire Valley and do a 5-day cycling trip!

We took the TGV train (très grande vitesse – it means very high speed), which regularly travels at speeds of 200 km/hr (and is capable of much, much more). There was no direct route from Nice to Tours – we had to pass through Paris. It was a 5 hour ride from Nice to Paris. We just had time there to drink a bottle of wine at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, go out for dinner, and