We are well and truly heading up the Loire, having ridden today from Guerande to Nantes. The official mouth of the Loire is Saint Nazzare (SN). And we rode through SN. But the best thing about SN, at least from a cycling perspective, is seeing it in the rear view mirror. More on that in a bit.
Here's our (proposed) route for the day.
We knew that today's ride was a bit tricky in spots, so we tried to be calm and tranquil about getting lost on many occasions. Six by my count. I guess that's OK, but it does get frustrating.
We left Guerande fairly early since the day was gonna be warm. Coffee.
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Eclaires, which we skipped
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Pain Suisse, and Pain au Raison, which we didn't skip
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The route was nice on quiet roads until we hit some rough patches.
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How do I come up with these routes?...
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Ooops, let's try a path that has asphalt on it!
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Once we found a road that looked suitable, in no time at all we were in Saint Nazaire. SN is on the north side of the mouth of the Loire. The Loire bike route really starts on the south side, at Saint-Brevin. Trouble is, you need to get from north to south and the only way is a horrendous bridge that there is no way that I was gonna ride.
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The bridge from SN to Saint Brevin. No Way in the World!!!
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They say that you can ride over it, but reasonable people certainly would never do so. So I cobbled a route together a route along the north side. I am sure that there is some nice way to ride through SN, but I failed to find it and we rode through an industrial waste land. Argh!
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Industrial fires from hell.
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We rode through 20 km of industrial awfulness. Chemical plants, petro plants, smells, trucks. Yuck.
But we made it, and on to Nantes, which is really the start of our Loire journey. And what a big, very big, city Nantes is! We had no idea. This place is big (according to Wikipedia, around 400,000). But it has a lot to offer.
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A cathedral. All cities have those.
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A bored tour bus driver sleeping in the cargo compartment...that's new
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A nice waterfront with Navy ships...
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And yesterday's festivals...
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And a castle with an algae issue
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Nantes is a big and very pretty city, but the truth is, we were pretty tired today. So we splurged and went out to dinner at a French hamburger joint.
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French cow.
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A Nante Negroni. Or as Haley called it, a Nantesgroni. Yum.
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Tuna, we think...
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Lorie had pulled pork
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I had a burger. The waiter asked me how I wanted the meat done. I said "medium"? He said "oh, non non non, please let me bring it to you so that it tastes good." When in France...
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| A Chinon from the Loire valley. Certainly the highlight of the swaree. |
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We'll sleep well tonight, and tomorrow we are riding up river toward the wine county of Chalonnes-sur-Loire. A little bit shorter tomorrow, but I understand that we'll have no internet for a few days so y'all should find a series on Netflix to watch instead of tuning in here. 😊
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