Week 8 UVJ departs

Monday, June 18 2018

Back to Richelieu and internet civilization after two days of slow WiFi and no WiFi.

 From our delightful little hideaway at Villefranche-sur-Cher we drove to Vierzon, just another town like hundreds in France, mid-size, ancient past, ruined castle, old church.  As we came through the outskirts there was the end of some sort of protest that we walked back to see.

(Click on photos to enlarge)  It seems the maternity hospital is to be closed and people, understandably are upset about it and were going on strike (en grève).  We willingly signed the petition to keep it there otherwise the town would not be able to support this place

where we had our morning coffee and raisin bun and we would not have been sitting at a table watching as some guy kissed his wife good-bye and then climbed out of the open window

and took off up the street.  We assumed he was the hubbie.  He may have been the lover sneaking off as the hubbie was coming through the back door.

We found the Tourist Office and asked them what was worth seeing and they gave us a map of a walking tour to follow with all the highlights of the town

I don’t think this was meant to be one of them,

but there was a very old section of town

with some houses no longer quite on the perpendicular,

 and what remained of the castle

and the 12^th century church.

It doesn’t matter how many churches we see, we can’t help but be impressed every time at the age of them and their sheer size and solidity and marvel again at how they knew the engineering techniques necessary to construct such enormous buildings so many centuries ago.

We saw evidence that Oz isn’t the only place that suffers from vandalism

and were then shocked out of our booties again at a further example of the rampant indecency that proliferates in France.

We strolled along the banks of the River Cher

and noted the post showing the high water mark of floods in May 1940.

One family was getting in early for ‘Christmas in July’ celebrations

and as we strolled around we were reminded once again that it’s not only when riding that one needs to point out and call hazards as soon as spotted.

TUESDAY, 19 June 2018

Delighted to report that mother and babies all doing well.  When we visited the pond this morning, this was the sight that greeted us. 

(Click on photos to enlarge)

Two fluffy chicks though we’re not sure what is happening with the other 4 or 5 still unhatched.  Mother seemed to be covering them with litter lying around so maybe they are still going to hatch.  We’ll check them out again tomorrow. 

  Pretty soon mother was in the pond and we could hear her telling the little ones what to do.  They followed her in close formation.

 Amazing so young and already they have the basics of drafting under control.  Some people have been trying for 60 years and still don't get it! Mama was diving for food and they stuck really close; one in particular seemed to want body contact all the time.

We’d planned to visit the trifecta (chateau/chapel/garden) in the afternoon at a small town close by but it was closed.  Monday and Tuesday are bad days for touristing as lots of things are shut.  Instead, we drove to a town, Loudun, about 20 km away, another place that’s been around for hundreds of years and has old buildings, though none decorated in fancy colours like Orleans, churches, but, surprisingly, no castle.  We now know the rap is to head for the Tourist Bureau and ask for a map of a walking tour of the town, which we did.  First stop was an old Romanesque church.

Named 'Holy Cross' after a relic of the true cross was brought here in 1121 (that makes enough wood for 3 crosses from relics we have read about so far) the church was also the scene of a bit of demon possession in the 1600s and one unfortunate priest found himself accused of witchcraft and burnt at the stake in the square in front of the church. 

In we went and found the inside is a church no more but used for expositions,

and one was running of art by the local art association. The theme seemed to be music and dancing. It was brilliant.  We caught a few images of dancers

 and one of them reminded us very much of Monsieur and Mmselle Twinkletoes.

We found one painting of a proper subject

then, would you credit it, more erotica.

Fortunately, ‘someone’ was down the other end of the room so I moved on quickly without saying anything.

We exited the church and continued our walk, noticing a building for sale in need of a little tlc.

Someone needs to spend some time doing a bit of gardening on the weekend.

On the roof?

And this is the fate of churches that are the wrong faith.

WEDNESDAY, 20 June 2018
Mama swan went honk, honk, honk, quack,
but only one little swan came back.

No one was in sight on our morning visit and not only that but the eggs looked like they were unattended.

(click on photos to enlarge)

Eventually mamasan emerged from the reeds further down the canal but with only one baby in tow.  No idea what happened to no 2 chick; maybe taken by the old crow, a snake, a fox, or, best situation, we haven't seen daddy swan around at all which according to Google is unusual as they mate for life, though they occasionally 'divorce', so it may be possible it's his custody day and he's taken the boy off for a bit of father-son bonding.  We'll check again tomorrow.  As for the eggs, it doesn't look like there will be any new cygnets as again, from Google, we learn the mother will stay sitting on them while she can feel movement inside.

After recovering from this sad event, we took a bus trip to Tours to give UVJ a view of the countryside from a bit higher up.

The first thing we noticed was a dreadful fashion faux pas;

I mean, checks on checks, come on!  Or maybe this guy was also running late and dashed out still in his shortie pyjamas. He looked like he was still asleep.

When we first came to France we were struck by the deep green of the fields of crops but they have quickly ripened and now look like this

or have already been harvested.  And all around now we can see the fields of sweet corn and sunflowers

 which from previous visits to France later in the year were all we remember ever seeing.

A reason for going to Tours was to do a short tour of a garden in the town which is classified as a 'Remarkable Garden' by the Ministry of Culture.  It was laid down in the 1870s and contains a large variety of exotic trees, but apart from that, we thought it the least remarkable garden we have seen.  Mind you, we're not up with the criteria for the 'Remarkable Garden' award, and unless they specify a pair of spring blossoms in the rockery

we can't work out how this one snuck in.

THURSDAY, 21 June 2018

Walking to see the swan this morning the ladies in pink

strode off ahead and were gossiping full bore as usual and frightened off the swan which took off at such speed we couldn’t see if the little one was in tow or not.  The unhatched eggs in the nest have all been roughly covered over with twigs and other bits of litter and abandoned, it seems.

(Click on photos to enlarge)

UVJ has decided we have reached the limits of our usefulness and announced she is off.  To help us recover from this bitter blow, she treated us to lunch at ‘The Cardinal’s Inn’, where we have dined before, and they welcomed us back with open arms, or would have if they had been able to remember we had been there previously.  The girls wasted no time in getting into the drink and by the end of the afternoon had totted up an impressive array of corks which they piled up behind them.

The 3-course menu was very impressive,

this main course being ‘porc something or other exotic sounding in French’. Michelin 1 ★ it might not have been but still very good.

Strolling round town afterwards we were surprised to see a notice for ‘Faye – the musical’.  What's that all about?

We then wondered how far these guys would go in their jobs, having already got to the top of the ladder.

FRIDAY, June 22 Nantes – Rouans 1

Saw mother and baby in the canal this morning. 

(Click on photos to enlarge)

 Mother was being very protective and baby was sticking very close.  We also saw this customer.

 Not sure if it’s an otter (possible, though Prof. Google indicates scarce in these parts now) or some kind of water rat or vole.  We spotted this creature (or one like it) with her litter on the same little island the swan was on so don’t know how much of a threat it was to the swan and her babies.  The eggs are still there so it hasn’t eaten those, but this morning, when it swam close to where mother and baby were, mother swam towards it and shooed it away.

Around midday we set off for Nantes to take UVJ to the airport as she heads off for further adventures in Basle.  She gave Pierre an affectionate kiss good-bye

then, quite, bizzarely, broke down and sobbed.   Honestly, you’d think he was real instead of just a stupid gnome.  Pierre was quite unmoved by it all.  At the airport she was all smiles, though,

 and couldn’t wait to take off while big brother had to try hard to hold back the tears.

SATURDAY, 23 June 2018              Le Pellerin to Paimbeouf

With the sun on our backs and a strong tailwind, we travelled the 25 kms from Le Pellerin to Paimbeouf,

 and then back again, though the return journey was considerably harder,

(click on photos to enlarge)

 along the La Martinière Canal. 

This white elephant was built towards the end of the 19^th century when the Loire River was silting up, took ten years to build, was used for a few years then abandoned as improved dredging techniques enabled the Loire to be cleared. 

  If you don’t believe that, then read all about it.

Nowadays it’s part of the ecological management of the area and is much used for leisure activities. On a beautiful cool summer Saturday there were lots of people out along it fishing, picknicking, camping, riding, of course,

 as it’s part of the Loire à Velo cycle path, 

and some of them just chewing the cud.

As we are in Nantes and it is only about 50kms from the Atlantic coast, we are taking the opportunity to ride some sections of the path while we are here. 

After 3 weeks off the bike, it felt great to be back in the saddle again. The path was flat, a strong breeze blew us all the way to Paimbeouf and there was the occasional delightful garden along the way.

 This port town is not particularly noteworthy.  We read that many of the houses were quite brightly painted,

which they were, and we spotted a novel way to deal with a lack of storage space;

just hang everything outside your house.

And we also had the worst meal we’ve had here.  The menu item said ‘merluchon’ and I asked the waitress what it was (as the other two choices didn’t look up to much) and I thought I heard the French for ‘meat’ in her answer so I asked her what sort of meat and thought she said ‘pork’ and ‘veal’ but what she actually said was “ it’s hake and we poach it so that it comes out all soft and squishy

and it tastes horrible but if you wanna' try it, be my guest as nobody else ever orders it and we’ve bags of the bloody stuff to off-load which we do on unsuspecting tourists.”  And she was right, it was disgusting, and it came with a clump of rice that looked like it had come from the fridge and been warmed in the microwave, and some orange stuff that may have been pumpkin squeezed out of a tube.  We tried apple pie for dessert, as at least we understood that, but it turned out to be almost as inedible as the fish…..but what hurt most was that it cost more than the beautiful three-course meal we had on Thursday at ‘The Cardinal’s Inn’.

SUNDAY, 24 June 2018  Nantes to Mauves sur Loire

Today’s ride took us east from Nantes which was good as it meant we went into the slight headwind on the outward journey, so had the tailwind on the return when fatigue had started to set in.  The whole journey was a 34 km circuit, 22km on the left bank and 12 km on the right before re-joining the left -hand side.  Nearly all of it was cycle path or barely used local roads along the banks of the river with lots of other cyclists out there: family groups, couples, long-distance riders with their loaded panniers, serious riders who we could tell apart as they had helmets on, and us, two lone Aussies just struggling to survive.  The way was flat and the signposting was brilliant, apart from one small occasion after lunch when Google Maps was needed to find the bridge we had to cross.  The highlight of the day (for Faye) was getting stuck in the toilette at the small bar we lunched at and after banging on the door to attract attention and being given a host of instructions in French as to what to do and not understanding any of them, they had to call in a mobile crane, remove some roof tiles and the second floor ceiling and haul her out through the roof.  I was oblivious to all this as I was engaged busily studying the map book and trying to decide whether we needed to turn left or right after leaving (in the event it was neither as we had to do a U-turn and head back the way we came) and when Faye re-appeared after two hours, I was able to get in a little dig saying “About bloody time.  I didn’t realise it took that long to powder your nose”, to which there was, to my mind, a somewhat sharp and unnecessary rejoinder.

This is one of the attractive bridges across the Loire

we crossed to get back to our car, except that it was the wrong one and we were two bridges too early.  We eventually made it back to Bridge Willy Brandt and drove the 29 km back to our Air BnB accommodation.