We had our last breakfast in the lovely dining room and said our goodbyes to Simone and Rene. We packed up everything but left some, which couldn't be made secure on the bike, in the Belvedere's man shed then went without usual jacket/trousers to the canoe place in Civray. All the rain had made it slippery and we started the excursion with a mini crash where the bike skittered around a bit on the mud and then fell over. The boxes were on and one got squashed but must have protected our legs, and P twisted his ankle but otherwise no harm was done thank goodness. Was a bit scary though.
We put all our bits in a big plastic drum with a screw top to keep it waterproof, this is called a bidon. We got life jackets too and were transported along with our canoes up river to Montrichard. Getting it in the water was quite exciting, you have to carry it down step stone steps at the edge of a lock but I carried the bidon and P and the canoe guy carried ours.
It was very peaceful floating down the river. It's a Canadian kind of canoe so you each have one paddle and have to paddle opposite sides to keep it straight. I paddled away and P took some footage on the trusty go pro. We weren't exactly moving fast so this may not turn out to be his most exciting holiday video but it was nice to be there in person. And as you can also film underwater we might discover that our boat was surrounded by massive bitey fish. Probably not as P had his ankle in the water to soothe it and didn't get so much as a nibble. We saw lots of damselflies and water birds flying down and feeding on the little insects. The best was a kingfisher. There were several egrets too but they flew off whenever we tried to sneak up on them.
The serenity was occasionally interrupted by a weir, similar to where we got in in the first place. The weirs are in 3 sections across the river as you head towards them; a normal weir section in the left where the water just goes over the edge, a pin weir in the middle where the flow can be increased or decreased by lifting wooden 'pins' in and out and the right section which is a lock. Unfortunately they won't operate the lock for something as small as a canoe so you have to climb out at one (steep, narrow) set of stone steps, drag your entire canoe up after you, carry it the length of the lock and then repeat in reverse to get it back in the water. P was a crucial person in this procedure, the canoe was really heavy and bulky and can't imagine how we would have done it if it had been me and mum instead. At one point half way up a steep set of steps the go pro, which was attached to an oar at the time, slid or of the boat and back down onto the quay face first and got a scratch :-(
We pulled up on the bank one other time to have our lunch. Very peaceful and quiet which was suddenly broken by a French granny coming out of her picturesque red shuttered cottage and blowing a vuvuzela for some reason. It turned out to be a method for calling her grandchildren in from the river and a few minutes later lots of little kids came running up in their swimming cozzies.
We paddled about 9km and then came to Chenonceau with its bridge across the river. We took Scenic Photos (much better without the rain) and paddled in and out of everywhere and i tried my narrow archway navigation skills (poor) and we visited the Queen's Bath, not really a bath but where boats with Provisions could pull in under one of the arches immediately below the kitchen.
At the end we went for a quick panachet by the river and pondered our next step. We're going to see Mairead and her family but it was too late to go all the way there. We went back to Le Belvedere and got kitted up and put everything on the bike, then decided to head north an hour or so and look for a room somewhere. Along the way P spotted a sign for Chinon so we decided to go back there (we cycled there one day and I had the amazing meat/cheese platter) This didn't really get us very well on our way but it is a nice town. We got a room in the first hotel we tried, not bad for a Saturday night, including a locked car park for the bike, and wandered up to the town stopping for a rosé d'anjou on the way (still not convinced of the point of rose wine). We checked out all the many dinner options and got a very nice one on the square, involving steak of course and a nice bottle of a Chinon wine called Fosse des Loups. The waiter was the first bantery one we've had and all in all was a lovely evening.
No comments:
Post a Comment