We woke up to a grey cloudy sky and evidence of recent rain but by the end of breakfast, which took place in a room carved out of the rock, it had sorted itself out and was getting nice and warm. Paul popped into town to get a useful map and we set off.
Tandem riding turned out at least in the early stages to be a much more challenging skill to master than expected. I had my face squarely in Paul's rucksack as we set of down the narrow and steep cobbled road by the hotel and couldn't see a thing, which was pretty disconcerting. We rearranged some bits and set off again with more success until we turned down an innocuous-looking path going through some pretty woodland and down to the edge of the river. I fact it was much like the paths on Epsom common but on a road bike tandem it was like some kind of assault course. I couldn't see any bumps or turns or obstacles coming up so kept getting jiggled all about and losing my footing on the pedals, and navigating up and down short slopes and round tightish corners was particularly exciting with the pedals constantly catching on the ground. I have no idea how Paul managed to keep us on the paths and not fall in the nettles or the water but he did and we survived unscathed, and were both very glad to see a nice bit of concrete up ahead.
We headed West and downriver along the La Loire A Velo cycle route, (generally predictably signposted) through Saumur which is the big local town. Everywhere there are lots of caves (in the English and French senses) complete with tastings of the local wines and in the same kinds of places there are troglodyte dwellings. Pretty cool, and similar to the ones in Cappadocia in the centre of Turkey, although without the crazy rock formations. It's the same kind of stone.
A little while later we came to a small town where a market was on and parked up to get some lunch. I was thinking happy thoughts about salade de chevre chaud but as the only free table was for 4 the waitress refused to let us sit at it! Rude. As we left another table came free but we were sulking so carried on. The ridiculously strict lunchtime hours meant that everything everywhere then promptly shut and locked and barred its doors and we kind of missed lunch. We got a pot of peanuts the first place we tried then found a boulangerie in the next town (Gennes) where we bought a very welcome baguette from the hairy saleslady. We were allowed to eat our baguette from in a bar/tabac. That is a very civilised approach.
After lunch we moved away from the river and found some hills. Even in my opinion they weren't big hills but on the tandem were pretty hard work to get up. And coming back down was varying degrees of terrifying unless it was on a bend which made visibility better. The brakes took a lot longer to stop two than one as well, and in general having 2 people on must be quite punishing for a bike. It started up a general complaint which on investigation several miles later turned out to be the back wheel constantly rubbing on the frame. Oops. No punctures yet. We found some sunflowers to keep us going though, and overtook all the other cyclists we came across which is always nice.
I found the cycle not as hard as I might have in some ways (P was a whole lot sweatier than me though, which may have meant I was not quite pulling my weight, although not intentionally), but I got a bit of a sore back of knee which I have never had before, and by the end of it a very tired out Nether Area. I thought of pouring the very welcome first drink of the evening (a shandy) directly down my shorts but decided to just drink it in the end.
We definitely improved in our tandeming skills and were pretty happy with it by the end of the day, all except Paul's nose blowing which, a little bit grossly, landed on my leg. Ew. The day's cycling was a grand total of 36 miles.
We had dinner in the bar we went before dinner last night, and it was ok but not a patch on yesterday's semi-live steak. We also ordered 2 glasses if the same (red) wine and got one of them chilled and one normal. Weird. We people watched everyone coming and going at the bar and in the square, especially the bikers, then headed slowly back to the hotel taking photos of the sandstone in the low evening sunshine and trying to make the pigeons fly up off the chateau for an exciting action shot.
We finished the evening with a minty tea / glass of wine in our hotel's restaurant, overlooking the loire and our pretty pet chateau.
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