Total distance 2,050km (1,281 miles)Well..., we are on the high speed train right now from Lyon to Brussels, and the final post of this blog....
We spent 3 wonderful days outside Sancerre at the B&B of Christine and Jean Francoise Joly. They were great hosts for us even though they did not speak any English. Linda had good French conversation sessions with them. I just smiled and nodded a lot. We rode our bikes around on Sunday exploring the region further. It is a perfect place to bring either a road or mountain bike for a week. Lots of great routes winding through the vineyards with spectacular views.. Yes, there are quite a few hills!
We left the B&B on Monday morning on our bikes under grey and rainy skies, heading for the town of Nevers where we would stay one night and catch a train to Lyon. We really didn't mind the rain since we have had such unusually great weather all during our trip in Europe. It eventually subsided anyway. The route was mostly on nice bicycle paths, although we saw only 1-2 other cyclists all day. This was also the end of the official Loire Valley bicycle route (or beginning if you went westward). They had these brass plates in the path showing the kilometer marks. We stopped at the official start, "KM 0" and took a picture. The remaining part to Nevers was on the EuroVelo route 6 which continues another couple thousand kilometers to the Black Sea following the Loire, Rhine, and Danube rivers. Not this time...
Nevers was pleasantly nice to our surprise with a neat old area of town with classic narrow streets, yet very clean. Lyon on the other hand was a big disappointment. Much too large, busy, noisy, and dirty for us. The amount of graffiti was way more than we had seen anywhere else. I think this is a sign... A good thing that we couldn't find a room for another night and returned to Brussels a day earlier. Had booked a hotel room near our old house in Overijse, but Marianne wouldn't hear of that, so we will head to their beautiful place later today. She is such a wonderful friend! We will stay there a few days before flying back to the US.
So.... we both hope that you have enjoyed following along with us via this blog. As I said earlier, it will be a good way for us to later on remember what we did and where we went, so it was worth doing for that alone. All in all this has been a great vacation for us. We have not had any regrets of where we went or the stuff we brought. We miss not going to Provence, but the Loire route was very nice. We'll save the south of France for another trip. Really no mechanical issues with the bikes and we have pretty much worn every piece of clothing we brought, as it probably showed in some of the pics.. Yes, we will be glad to have other clothes soon!
Hope to see you all soon! Some more pics below of the final few days.. Linda & Walt
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| A flat section around Sancerre |
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| Lonely tree |
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| Beautiful wild flowers.. |
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| A small vineyard. |
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| With an old time grape press in front. Most of the working harvesting and wine prep equipment we saw looked pretty modern. |
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| Old wine harvest scene painted on barn door. |
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| Vineyard valley of one of the bigger producers. |
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| Looking down on the village of Chavignol where they make that magic goat cheese |
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| Us "Mountain goats".. |
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| Linda at Kilometer 0 of the Loire bike route. |
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| The brass plate. |
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| Nice final kilometers on bike into Nevers. |
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| Our bikes on the hook on train to Lyon. You are allowed to bring bikes on regular trains, not the high speed ones where we had to use our stealth bags to store them.. |
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| Heading to Lyon. |
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