Nantes to Montsoreau, France: Biking the Famous Loire à Vélo
19-21 July 2019
Back on the 4th of April, we started our trip up the Loire River Valley by cycling from the mouth of the river to Nantes. Back then, it was quite a bit chillier, and we were following a section of the Loire that is heavily influenced by the sea. From there we headed north, to cycle across Brittany and spent several months biking through the UK. From Scotland, the Loire Valley seemed far, far away.
Nantes to Montjean-sur-Loire (19 July 2019, 73.6 km, 45.7 mi)
But now we’re back in Nantes, and ready to resume our eastward journey. We’re heading east on EuroVelo 6, from the Atlantic to the Black Sea. In this part of France, EuroVelo 6 is also called the Loire à Vélo, a very well known and popular cycling route. For 800 km, we will mostly bike in the floodplain of France’s last, great, free-flowing river. Because the route rarely strays into the surrounding hills, the terrain is fairly flat. That makes the trail particularly popular with families.
One of the things that has really hit us over the head is how much warmer it is here. When we started our ride this morning, it was already almost 18 C (64 F), and the high today is expected to reach 27+ C (the low 80’s F). We’re not used to these summertime temperatures. In Scotland, the daytime highs were rarely over 20 C. This is not going to be pretty.
Fortunately, the temperature felt comfortable for most of the morning. We took an early pit stop, to top up the pressure in our tires, clean/lube our chains, and move our mirrors back to the left handlebar. Although we eventually became accustomed to negotiating all the UK traffic patterns in reverse from what we’re used to, it was always a little bit stressful. You’re constantly at risk of making a stupid mistake. It’s wonderful to be back in a country where they drive on the correct - that is the right - side of the road!
If there’s one thing the Loire Valley is famous for, it’s the chateaus. There are over 300 chateaus lining the river, where members of the medieval and Renaissance royal courts preferred to spend their summers - rather than sweltering in Paris. In Nantes, of course, we saw the Chateau of the Dukes of Brittany. But even tiny towns usually have a a castle. Not far outside of Nantes, we caught a glimpse of what looked like a fortified tower. We weren’t sure what it was, but that just made it seem more mysterious and interesting. It turned out to be the medieval tower of the Chateau of Oudon, a town with approximately 3,700 residents.
Mystery tower seen from the bike trail. It turned out to be the Chateau of Oudon, France. Copyright © 2018-2019 Pedals and Puffins.
In the shade of a woodland just past where we saw the tower, we came face-to-face with a small herd unusual looking cows, busily scratching against some oak trees. The vast majority of cows in these parts are all white. But these were a creamy brown color, with distinctive horns. They turned out to be the rare, Nantaise breed. Apparently there are only around 900 of these cows being raised on farms, all in the Loire valley. They seemed a little bit nervous about us - not sure whether they should ignore us or run away. They stared at us long and hard before deciding we were probably safe, and going back to scratching their itches.
A fine specimen of a very rare breed. La Varenne, France. Copyright © 2018-2019 Pedals and Puffins.
One of the things we love about being back in France is the abundance of picnic opportunities. The French are champion picnickers, and we can usually find a table in the shade not long after we start getting hungry for lunch. Not only that, you can almost always count on having a nearby trash can - saving us the trouble of carrying our trash with us for miles. Once in a while, there’s even a restroom on site. Maximum amenities. We found a picnic site with all of those things just outside Champtoceaux, and enjoyed our first aire naturelle lunch since being back in France.
Shaded picnic tables right next to the trail. Excellent. Champtoceaux, France. Copyright © 2018-2019 Pedals and Puffins.
After lunch, things really started to heat up. And for the next couple of hours, it was quite hot. For the first time since February, we are both riding in shorts and short-sleeves (I’m also wearing lightweight, white arm-coolers, that help protect my arms from the sun). But we were comfortable in these outfits at 22 C (72 F). At 27+ C, we were sweltering.
There it is! The mighty Loire River. Oudon, France. Copyright © 2018-2019 Pedals and Puffins.
We’re planning to camp tonight, so we needed to stop and buy groceries. But there weren’t any stores, to speak of, along the trail. At the town of Ancenis, we had to bike pretty far off route to find groceries. But as a bonus, we ended up cycling right past the attractive Chateau of Ancenis.
The Chateau of Ancenis, France. Copyright © 2018-2019 Pedals and Puffins.
There’s one thing that just has to be mentioned because it was such a big change from all the previous riding we have done on this trip. Without a doubt, we saw more bike tourers today than if you added up all of the others we have seen since we started cycling in February. That means we saw more bicycle tourists in one day than we had seen while traveling through four countries. It was mind-boggling. We expected the Loire à Vélo route to be very popular, but the number of touring cyclists was even more than we expected. Every few minutes it seemed like we were passing folks with Ortlieb panniers heading the other way. That gave us the chance to say, “bon jour!” a couple of hundred times today. A large percentage of the people on bike tours are not from France. Germany and Holland seem to be particularly well represented.
With the warmer weather we are seeing more animals along the way, particularly reptiles. Over the course of the day we saw two snakes (not identified because they scurried away too quickly), lots of little brown lizards (probably European wall lizards), and one big green lizard (probably a western green lizard).
Our goal was to go 40 km. But we covered that ground really quickly on the smooth flat trail, and we still had plenty of energy. So we kept going, and ended up cycling another 30+ km.
A dirt section of the Loire à Vélo, Bouzillé, France. Copyright © 2018-2019 Pedals and Puffins.
By the time we reached the next campground, we were both a bit fatigued by the heat. Even though we drank a whole lot of water, it was still a little more tiring than normal.
And wouldn’t you know it, the Wood Pigeons are still out in force, and menacing us in the campground. We had hoped they would quiet down by this time of year, as many birds do in the summer. But that’s not our luck. Once again, we’ll be serenaded to sleep, and probably awoken in the morning, by the constant coo-cooing of the pigeon choir.
There’s also a possibility that we made a mistake in selecting our campsite. After we set up our tent, we discovered that there were a bunch of chickens wandering around on the other side of the thick hedge next to us. You’d think we would have learned by now: you should always investigate what’s on the other side of a hedge before choosing your camping spot. But we forgot to look, so we now have chickens as our close neighbors. Hopefully they will be late risers in the morning.
Our campsite in Montjean, France. Just on the other side of that hedge, we have a bunch of chickens for neighbors. Copyright © 2018-2019 Pedals and Puffins.
The night should be a lot longer here than when we last camped in Scotland. Sunset is around 9:30pm, but sunrise isn’t until 6:30 am. Even with the twilight, that’s almost eight hours - double what we had in the north. We’re looking forward to a little bit more darkness at night.
Montjean-sur-Loire to Saint-Gemmes-sur-Loire (20 July 2019, 37.5 km, 23.3 mi)
After a bit of a late start this morning, we stopped in Montjean to get food at a supermarket. That set us back even more, and we weren’t done with breakfast until after 10am. I guess it was really brunch.
After yesterday’s ride in the heat of the afternoon, we decided to take it easy today. We took our time, stopping often to take photos or just enjoy the scenery.
Taking a break along the way, gazing out at the Loire River. Loire à Vélo, France. Copyright © 2018-2019 Pedals and Puffins.
A big highlight for today was the sunflowers. We passed several, large fields in bloom. They were as stunning in person as they appear on TV, when the Tour de France helicopter swoops low over the fields to highlight how beautiful France is. Gorgeous.
The sunflower fields are truly a spectacular sight. France. Copyright © 2018-2019 Pedals and Puffins.
The other big crop in this area of the floodplain seems to be corn. Later in the day, the trail briefly climbed up onto the ridge bordering the floodplain. There, we passed several of the Loire Valley’s famed vineyards. Many people who visit the Loire come here just for the wine.
We continue to see tons of bike tourers. Many of them are probably out just for the weekend, or tackling a ride of a week or less. Those folks are not carrying that much stuff. But once in a while we pass people who are hauling lots of gear. Unlike in the United States where you often stop to chat to bike tourers going the opposite direction, there are so many touring bikers here, it would be impossible to stop and try to talk with them all. So we are left to wonder where most of them are headed, and how far they’ve come.
In the smaller towns and villages along the Loire River, time seems almost to be standing still. If you take away the cars and the street lights, the images could be right out of the 15th or 16th century. Even in bigger cities, the core is deeply historic, with a mix of medieval and Renaissance buildings. You never know when you will come around a corner into a picturesque, ancient square, or turn down a narrow, cobblestoned street that hasn’t changed much over hundreds of years.
The Church of St. Peter. Savennières, France. Copyright © 2018-2019 Pedals and Puffins.
La Pierre Bécherelle is an eye-catching outcrop along the bank of the Loire. For centuries, it was used as a navigational aid and boundary marker by boatmen on the river. These days, it’s used for rock-climbing training. Savennières, France. Copyright © 2018-2019 Pedals and Puffins.
Today we seem to have stumbled upon an even rarer breed of domestic animal than the Nantaise cows we saw yesterday. Grazing placidly on the side of the road, beneath a highway overpass, we spotted three very odd-looking mules. They appear to be bred from the extremely rare, shaggy-haired, Poitou donkey, that comes from a region of France just south of here. Before the widespread use of tractors, the export of mules bred with Poitou donkeys was a huge business. When that economy crashed, so did the population of donkeys. Today, they think there are only about 200 pure-bred Poitou donkeys in the world. Their primary use is still the breeding of mules.
You never know what you’ll see along the road. These appear to be a rare breed of mule, bred from France’s Poitou donkeys. France. Copyright © 2018-2019 Pedals and Puffins.
We caught a glimpse of a chateau behind this wall. But if the grounds are accessible to the public, it’s not from this side. The imposing wall ran along the trail for a couple of hundred meters. Saint-Gemmes-sur-Loire, France. Copyright © 2018-2019 Pedals and Puffins.
This part of the Loire has many branches, with lots of braided channels, sand bars and islands. We biked back and forth, crossing over multiple branches of the river, and sometimes riding on islands in between. It became hard to tell when we were on the main stem, and when we weren’t.
One of the many, braided channels of the Loire River, near Saint-Gemmes-sur-Loire, France. Copyright © 2018-2019 Pedals and Puffins.
Tonight’s campground is on an island between a couple of branches of the river. The campground snack shop is run by a guy from San Francisco, so he spoke perfect English. Everything he sells is healthy and organic. We bought a couple of glasses of blueberry juice from him, to go with the dinner salads that we bought at a market in town. The juice was delicious, and we almost wished we had waited and bought some crepes from the snack shop as well. But we try to eat salads when we can get them. Fresh veggies are not always easy to come by.
After dinner, we walked along the river to the next town. Some earlier rain showers had helped to cool things down, so it was a beautiful evening to go for a walk. There was a housing complex right along the water that looked like it was fairly new, and the homes looked big. We wondered what businesses supported the building of new houses out here. Many towns we pass through look like they’re not growing or changing, so seeing a new development was intriguing.
Back at the campground, there was a musical program in the evening. A woman played the flute for about an hour. She was quite good, and the music was pleasant to have in the background.
Saint-Gemmes-sur-Loire to Montsoreau (21 July 2019, 65.4 km, 40.6 mi)
At 7am, we knew it must be Sunday. A nearby church started ringing its bells, which lasted for at least five minutes. We’ve also noticed that French churches are much more likely to ring their bells on the hour throughout the day, than the churches did in England or Scotland. It gives the churches a much higher profile in France - while also being a handy way to keep track of time.
We were out on the trail earlier today. It was nice to be cycling in the cool morning. Plus, we saw some animals along the way, including a couple of rabbits and three deer.
We’re adapting to the fact that grocery stores are very uncommon along this part of the route. It looks like bakeries are going to become our primary source of breakfast for a while. Fortunately, they usually carry some mini-quiches or breads with sauce and cheese, in addition to all the sugary and buttery items like chocolate croissants and fruit tarts. Most of the time the items are pretty fresh, and usually they will have a few tables outside where we can eat. So, we should be able to stay well fed.
A couple of kilometers up the road, we stopped at a bakery in La Dagueniere for breakfast. After considering our options, we both decided to get a slice of wafer-thin, cheese and mushroom, pizza-like bread, with a cold drink. There weren’t any tables or chairs outside this bakery, so we made ourselves comfortable on a brick window sill, and savored our meal.
Our route alternated back and forth between a busy road and off-road dirt today. We didn’t follow the trail exactly. There were a couple of times when the trail headed up onto the bluffs at the edge of the floodplain, probably because they thought it would be better to keep cyclists off of the main road. But we didn’t take those detours. We opted to keep biking along the road, staying close to the Loire River. It was definitely faster, and a little bit less strenuous.
We were surprised to see two giant trees growing at the entrance to a long driveway. They looked like big, old redwood trees. Saint-Mathurin-sur-Loire, France. Copyright © 2018-2019 Pedals and Puffins.
Along the river, we spotted some traditional, flat-bottomed boats, called toues. They served as the primary form of transportation on the shallow Loire for several centuries, carrying goods and people up and down the river. There are still quite a few of them anchored along the shores of the Loire, in various states of repair (or disrepair). But these days they’re mainly pleasure boats. And quite a few of them are available to hire for a boat ride out on the river.
Traditional toue boats in the Loire River. Le Thoureil, France. Copyright © 2018-2019 Pedals and Puffins.
As you’d expect, the area of the floodplain between towns is used almost exclusively for agriculture. The soil here is clearly very fertile. We passed more fields of sunflowers, corn and grapes. But today there was also a little bit more variety to the crops, including beans, beets, apples, asparagus, and squash.
Stopping along the trail to soak up the view of the sunflowers. It never gets old. Le Thoureil, France. Copyright © 2018-2019 Pedals and Puffins.
During one off-road section of the trail, PedalingGuy‘s front tire went flat. Surprisingly, this was the first time we’ve had a flat tire in a place where there wasn’t a convenient place to sit and fix it (like a bench or a stone/brick wall to sit on). Luckily, we were in the forest when it happened, so we had shade to protect us from baking in the sun. We got out our camp chairs and changed the tire.
The culprit for the flat this time appeared to be a shard of glass that had sliced through the tire’s thick lining. It left a pretty big hole in the tube, which was easy to find. So instead of putting in a new tube, we decided to attempt a field patch of this one. That probably wasn’t such a good idea, because I was wearing rubber gloves. The gloves helped keep my hands clean, but I had trouble getting a good seal between the glue and the patch. As PedalingGuy noted, “it was not my best work.” Hopefully it will hold.
When all the channels come together, the Loire River is very wide. Samur, France. Copyright © 2018-2019 Pedals and Puffins.
Between Samur and Montsoreau, the floodplain got a lot narrower. Steep, white bluffs came in quite close to the river, and we started seeing lots of wineries along the road. Just a block or two away from the river, the houses and wine cellars (caves) were built right into the bluffs. For many kilometers, we marveled at the extent of these cave structures, up on the cliff.
Later we learned that these are called troglodyte houses, built within caves that were created when the tuffeau stone was quarried, to built the grand chateaus along the river. There were once thriving communities, where most people lived in the caves. Now, the majority of the caves are abandoned. But quite a few are still homes, and others have been converted into hotels, artists’ galleries, and restaurants. It would have been very interesting to see what the houses were like inside. Some of the structures looked very old, but some were quite modern on the outside. What would it be like to live in a cave house?
Troglodyte cave houses on the bluffs of the Loire River. Turquant, France. Copyright © 2018-2019 Pedals and Puffins.
When we arrived at the campground, we were disappointed to see that the tent area set aside for cyclists didn’t have any shade. We were tempted to pay more for one of the shaded sites for caravans, but decided it wouldn’t be so great to be squeezed in among the vehicles. We chose a spot we thought might get a bit of shadow later in the day, and started setting up camp. Pitching the tent was excruciatingly hot. Luckily, the campground did provide picnic tables in a nearby shelter, where we could rest out of the sun. Once we had our showers, we felt MUCH better.
We had dinner at the campground restaurant. Both of us finished off a whole, medium-sized pizza. No doubt about it, our cycling appetites are coming back. One of the best things about dinner was the unlimited, cold water. The proprietor just kept the water coming, all through dinner. It was tap water, but it tasted very good. We each drank almost two liters.
Back at the campsite, we discovered that we must have put our tent very close to, or on top of, an ants’ nest. My side of the tent was crawling with ants, and some of them were getting into my panniers, which I had left in the tent’s vestibule. It was really a bummer, and made me feel grumpy. PedalingGuy helped me brush off the tent and smush as many of the ants as we could, but, like he said, “ants are like leaves on the trees.” You’re not going to get them all, no matter how hard you try. I took my panniers over to one of the picnic tables to shake them out, and brush off as many ants as I could. I then stowed them inside the tent, so the ants wouldn’t get inside them. That was about the best we could do.
A late evening walk into town helped us relax. Looking back down the Loire river, the sunset was really beautiful.
Sunset over the Loire River. Montsoreau, France. Copyright © 2018-2019 Pedals and Puffins.
