Western France and Northern Spain, Sept. 2010

[FJR-UK]

Day Twenty. Saint-Emilion to Amboise. 234 miles.

Breakfast in the Auberge de la Commanderie was actually pretty good. At least Joanna drank her coffee.

The rag I keep under my bike saddle was already saturated and couldn’t cope with the morning’s dew, so I started the day with a slightly damp back side.

It was cool, bright and clear. Traffic was heavy heading toward Libourne this Saturday morning. The intention was to pass through the city and pick up the N10 to Angouleme, but I latched onto the first Angouleme sign I saw and we ended up meandering though villages all the way up the D674.

Some shifting around on the pillion seat suggested it was time for our coffee stop as we entered Voeuil-et-Giget. Le Don Camillo seemed closed, but the Spanish host accommodated us with a couple soup bowls of coffee and a rather large bill. Admiring his collection of wine bottles and watching his preparations, I was rather disappointed that we were too early for lunch.


Le Don Camillo, Voeuil-et-Giget

Jo found a reason to stroll off and it took me a while to get us back on the road.


Voeuil-et-Giget

This time picking up the N10, we made good time through pretty unspectacular scenery. It was lunchtime and we were approaching Poitiers. Jo and I had spent a few fruitless hours there many years ago, trying and failing to find a hotel room. Conventions, apparently. I didn’t fancy the hassle for lunch, so we stopped just shy of the city in Vivonne.

The town was pretty enough, with a tree-lined park opposite the restaurant we spotted. Lunch was pretty unremarkable, but I couldn’t help but notice our young African waiter, who was getting plenty of advice from Madam while he served us. I noticed because he was pretty much the first black man we’d seen in the last three weeks. I also couldn’t help but notice the elderly French man on his mobile phone. His two female companions kept shushing him because he was pretty much shouting down his new-fangled invention all through lunch.

As we left the restaurant, it started to rain. So we were delayed as we had to unpack the rain gear and return to the restaurant’s terrace to put everything on.

I worked up a sweat trying to back my bike off the gravel parking spot out into moving traffic. I had to get off the bike to pull it into the street, hoping that the cars would stop when they saw me. God, that thing is heavy when it’s fully loaded. There was no drama in the end.

We were further delayed when I noticed that the tank was empty and I had to unzip most of the rain gear to pay the attendant at the filling station next door to the restaurant. Jacket zipped up. Rain jacket zipped up. Glove liners on. Gloves on. Finally away. Nothing is bloody easy. I was sweating and cursing under my breath. The rain stopped five minutes later.

We hammered up the N10 to Tour, crossing the Loire and heading east to Amboise, our destination for the night. We were returning to the same hotel we’d stayed in during our previous visit in June, 2003. Any hotel that will let you pull your bike into their courtyard overnight for free is okay with me. (Well, things change: this time parking was up the street in a covered garage, €3.)

For me, the best part of visiting Amboise is the approach along the river on the D952. Today, the sun was breaking through a gap in the clouds and lighting the town up like a little jewel, the bridge crossing the Loire and the Chateau creating quite a picture. No turnouts and heavy traffic mean you don’t get a photo. You’ll just have to take the trip yourself! (Or, you can cheat and Google one up.)

The reason for the return was A) Joanna wanted to visit Clos Lucé where Leonardo da Vinci spent his last days. They have a lot of exhibits dedicated to his work and a park were many of his inventions have been recreated. And B) it was easy to fit Amboise into my travel plan.


Clos Lucé, Amboise, Loire Valley


Leonardo da Vinci invented the pedal boat, apparently

We spent hours walking around the Chateau on our previous visit and, after you’ve seen that and Leo’s pad, there’s not much else to do, except walk. We went to the river, checking out restaurants along the way. Our first choice for the night was fully booked. I didn’t like the looks of the second choice, so we settled on Le Lion d’Or opposite the river. That’s when we spotted these guys:


This is not my idea of sport-touring

Who takes the initiative in a group like this? How many that start the trip, finish the trip? In the time it took them to organise themselves, jockey for position and cross the bridge, I’d have been halfway to Tours. Well, different strokes...


Also not my idea of sport-touring, but certainly worth a photo

Having sorted our restaurant, we went to find a glass of local plonk. Vouvray is just the other side of the bridge. So, I had a glass of that, standing at the bar in Chez Bruno. It was that good, I had to have another. Joanna was drinking a glass of Marie Louise sparkling white. This, too, was delicious and they were offering bottles to take away at €8. A steal. If I had been driving, I’d have bought a couple cases. We didn’t even have room for a bottle on the bike. Damn shame.


Amboise, the Chateau and the gorgeous blonde I travel with

We went for another walkabout and followed the noise of internal combustion engines.


Rally stage and much local excitement

There was music and speeches. I thought I recognised a couple pretty famous names painted on the car windows, but I don’t follow rally car sport that closely. It was dinner time.

We were feeling pretty jolly when we arrived at the Lion d’Or. They seated us in the American ghetto, as we could tell from the conversations all around us. At the table next to us turned out to be a very nice couple who lived 10 miles from where I grew up. It made a nice change to have a conversation with strangers over a very nice meal.

We hit the sack relatively early. In the middle of the night, I got up to shut the window that overlooked the street. Joanna didn’t complain.

[FJR-UK]

Day Twenty-one. Amboise to Chartres. 100 miles.

Another hotel breakfast, another disappointment. This time, the only table available was next to the coffee machine and I had someone’s ass on my shoulder most of my meal. Oh, man, can I be grumpy in the morning.

We didn’t have much ground to cover this morning, so I planned a visit to Chateau de Chenonceaux just nine miles to the south on the River Cher. It was maybe the coldest morning of the trip, but it was sunny and I kept the speed down and the heated handlebar grips on.

We got to Chenonceaux by 10 am and the place was already buzzing. I had no idea this would be such a big tourist operation. They even had a special motorcycle park with rails to keep the bikes separated. It was cold enough to wear my leather, but I left my tank bag on the bike (just keeping my cash and passports with me). We spent a lot more time in this place than I would have guessed and I must say it is worth a visit.


Chateau de Chenonceaux, north view


Chateau de Chenonceaux, River Cher, east view


This shot is across the width of the hallway that crosses the river, bottom level in the shot above

My photos do not show you how crowded it was in the rooms of this fabulous building. I kept wanting to flee, but there was another room that just had to be seen.


Tapestry detail. Many of the rooms had tapestries that covered entire walls


Bedroom ceiling painting


Each large room had a flower arrangement design to suit the room. I don’t mind saying that they were a main attraction for me. All the flowers were grown on the grounds, I believe.


Rich people’s bric-a-brac


One of the many kitchen rooms

Then, we spent as long walking around the grounds as we spent in the house. It’s quite the place, as long as you can deal with the crowds.

Feeling we’d spent enough money on the Chateau, we shunned their cafeteria and found a hotel bar in town for coffee. Again, we were surrounded by North American accents. It was a nice place to sit, but time was pressing now, so we hot-footed it back to the bike and were on the road again.

We got just 30 miles up the road and it was lunchtime. Blois was a lunchtime stop in the past, but it was pretty dead this Sunday afternoon. I parked near the terrace of a nice looking restaurant and we had our helmets off when Joanna said, “It’s Japanese.” She’ll eat Japanese in London, but not in France. Back on the bike.

I saw a traditional brasserie on a roundabout and pulled up on the pavement opposite, following the “park anywhere you want” motorcycle guidelines. Inside, the couple next to us were English and the waiter had a good-natured laugh at my French. We were getting closer to home.

I had just finished my rather delicious omelette when a commotion started outside. A couple cars had stopped at the lights on the fairly major roundabout. The occupants all jumped out and started dancing to blaring Arab music. As the lights changed, they got back into their cars, but not before one of the lads took out his automatic pistol and fired five or six shots into the air. A wedding, obviously.

They were gone and I was hoping he was shooting blanks. Jeeze.

An hour and a half later, we were in Chartres. The last time we were in town, all the hotels were booked and we ended in Evreux for the night. Chartres was the reason I had booked all my hotels in advance for this trip, and I must say it worked a treat. We were in the Hotel Chatelet, which had turned us away three years ago. I’m glad we persisted. Chartres was a nice place, and the staff in this hotel were very pleasant and helpful.

I was just as impressed with Chartres Cathedral as I had been with the one in León. The stained glass was beautiful. It was small, but perfectly formed. We were also very lucky to be treated to some sort of evensong mini-mass, a call and response affair between two priests with fine voices. Such sound in such surroundings, it’s easy to get into the spirit of things.


Chartres Cathedral from our hotel window


Chartres Cathedral, north side entrance


Chartres Cathedral detail


Chartres Cathedral detail


Chartres Cathedral detail


Chartres Cathedral detail


Chartres Cathedral detail

The by now routine search for a restaurant followed. France is worse than Spain on a Sunday. Everything on our list was shut


Le Moulin de Ponceau, shut on Sunday

We ended up in a hotel restaurant, the first one we saw opposite the cathedral. We weren’t expecting anything more than a large bill, so were pleased when the food was good and the bill reasonable. Even the infant in the pram the size of a table next to us behaved himself. (Turned out the parents were guests of the hotel.)

It was raining again as we returned to our hotel.

[FJR-UK]

Day Twenty-Two. Chartres to London. 300 miles.

I was looking forward to my own bed tonight, but we weren’t home yet. Last trip, my closest call came two miles from home. I still had 300 miles to negotiate and it was raining as we left Chartres.

I planned a little detour to avoid the N124 and pass through Nogent-le-Roi, because of something I’d read somewhere. And it was a pretty little town, indeed. But I was not in the mood to stop. It was too early and road deviations had me in a cranky mood. I had to turn around after five miles when my compass suggested I was on the wrong road out of town.

Soon we were passing through Dreux and Evreux, getting to be familiar names. I got by Rouen without any problem, managing to keep to the by-pass this time and we were soon on the A28 to Abbeville. We were beginning to get down the wet weather toll booth routine by now. I think they should just let bikes through for free on wet days. I mean, why hold up those car drivers unnecessarily?

I had planned to stop near Abbeville for lunch. The Auberge du Colvert was on the D928 south of Abbeville and I could get there from exit 3 without having to go through the town. I just wasn’t sure if it was open on a Monday. We found the place so easily, it was like I’d been driving to it all my life, and it was open.

We have had so many bad “last meals in France” I didn’t have my hopes up. But, what a treat! This place is going to be firmly marked on my route plans in the future. There was no English spoken here, this was France. My steak with peppercorn sauce was perfect, one of the best on the trip. A nice send off.

We got to Calais early and the Shuttle put us on the next train, no extra charge.


Le Shuttle, Calais

We shared a car with three Beemers and a Buell. The couple on the 2003 BMW were from Maine. They had purchased the bike in Scotland, toured Europe for (was it three weeks or months? I’ll have to check with Joanna). They were leaving the bike with a friend in Yorkshire who was going to sell it for them. They figured it was cheaper than renting. The bike ran perfect, they said.

We would have chatted more, but as soon as they were on the train, they got out their phones and were elsewhere. The chap had a pocket on the leg of his chaps for his PDA. They had a bluetooth intercom and sat nav. I didn’t get to see their iPads or laptops, but it would explain the extra bag on the topbox. Nice couple, though.

When we hit the M20, the other bikers were off, as I stuck close to the speed limit. The rush hour traffic I feared never materialised and we got home without a hitch.

A perfect end to a pretty damn near perfect trip.

[staedtler]

 

niice... ur giv'n Team Orson a run for their money.

What a nice civilized tour, roughing it in Style...
I heard great things about Oviedo from a friend of mine, seems like there's a lot of public art all over town like he said. Too bad you didn't make it to Bilbao and check out the Guggenheim.

[FJR-UK]

ur giv'n Team Orson a run for their money. ... Too bad you didn't make it to Bilbao and check out the Guggenheim.

Thanks. High praise, indeed.

We flew to Bilbao and spent three nights in January 2005, going especially to see the Guggenheim. Bilbao is another place where you can do a great pintxos crawl. Nice town. I even did a trip report and now can't remember where I posted it!  

[MisterSmooth]

Awesome stuff here, FJR-UK.     Thanks for taking the time and effort to share it with us.

Like Notarian's ride earlier this summer, this ride report takes a couple of visits to soak it all in.

You took some beautiful photographs, too.  And I completely agree with you about Orson (and Daniel Kalal, and XLR8).  How do they get "those shots"?  I think some people just see them intuitively (I do not see them intuitively, but rather treat the subject of ride report photography like a relationship with a woman.  Each day it's wise to get up and immediately apologize to your significant other just to get it out of the way; each ride report I begin with an apology for not being Orson, and proceed to load my mediocre shots and get on about my business.   )  Anyhow no apologies needed for your pics; they're great stuff.  

It seems like if you're not on the Spanish schedule (i.e. lunch at 2:30pm, dinner at ten pm) you have Spain pretty much to yourself!    Worth knowing.

Thanks again.

[BIWOZ]

Thanks for a fabulous ride report. What you have just done has long been a fantasy of mine, but one I'll likely never realise. At least now I know a bit more of what it looks like.

Thanks again.

[Orson]

Back on the road and remembering the quest for a “proper biking photograph” I stopped for a couple of feeble attempts:

 

While I may capture "biking photographs", my photos are at a distinct disadvantage to yours in capturing "Life's Rich Pageant" of European culture. When my riding stops, so do my photos it seems, while your photos are just beginning  

Love the food descriptions and pictures   Pity the European traveler who doesn't have an adventurous palate  

Thanks for the great detail  

[Maggellanos]

Very nice report

Thanks for posting...

[FJR-UK]

Thanks for taking the time and effort to share it with us.

My pleasure.

A trip report like this serves a couple purposes for me. First, it helps make the trip longer. We were only on the road for three weeks, but from the time I booked my first hotel to the time I finished writing this report took five months!

Also, it's a memory exercise. It makes me try and remember exactly what the heck I got up to for three weeks. I have trouble remembering what I had for dinner yesterday. (I exaggerate, it was lamb shank.)

Joanna keeps a diary when we're on the road and updates it every night before we turn out the lights. I tend to remember the trip from my snapshots. (5+ gigabytes on this trip – I wonder what I saved on film processing?) I may have to start taking photos of every meal, every receipt, every sign I stop to read...

I don't think I took as many rubbish photographs when I was shooting on film.

Anyway, thank you for the compliment.  

[notarian]

Superb, superb report!

Ride / travel narrative = I was travelling along with you and, being a lover of fine food, greatly enjoyed the 'Tour de Cuisine'. Normandy cidre is the best on a hot day, goes with all foods and the low alcohol content means you can a drink at lunch and still continue with the ride. Selections in the French outdoor markets are amazing.

Not being a lover of riding cities, I have a tendency to avoid them unless they are about the size of Vernon. Since your route is similar to a couple of my previous rides, your pictures and descriptions are much appreciated in seeing what I missed. Like Orson I have a tendency not to take many photos after a day's ride and in doing so miss much in having pictures of what touring is about when off the bike.

3 weeks at a pace and quality that gives time spent for on and off the bike equal pleasure - well done and nicely researched.

As 'Smoothie' says, "the ride report takes a couple of visits to soak it all in."

Anyone who has toured Europe can identify with the ritual of paying the motorway tolls and often waiting in lengthy queues to do so. 'Wait in line, gloves off, rooting around for coins (can't be done with gloves on = dropping a few is a nightmare), out of the toll booth and pull over to the side to put the gloves on... I don't do many toll roads in France but have found the best bet is to buy a 20 euro prepaid ticket even though I may have a few euros left on it = I didn't average 100 mph on a boring motorway to get somewhere quickly only to waste the speed advantage sitting in a line waiting to pay for that time advantage. Especially if its raining or melting in 100F.

You missed the N135 out of Pampalona which is a shame, but understandable given a total lack of sign posting when travelling west to east on the ring road. I went about 8 miles past the turn off and doubled back. Sure enough, it is sign posted coming from the east - go figure. Its another 15 miles until you see another sign leading you onto the N135 and is easily missed. Guess you'll just have to try again next year! If so, there's a less frequented road off N135 that parallels it - the N138 and well worth it.

You had a fab trip. Again, well done indeed and thanks for taking us along!  

Note

(ps) Please tell the gorgeous blond you travel with if she fancies a bike ride and you can't make it, that I don't snore.  

[FJR-UK]

You missed the N135 out of Pampalona which is a shame, but understandable given a total lack of sign posting ...

Ahhh! Thank you very much for clearing up the mystery of the phantom highway! I though I must have gone to sleep for a few miles to miss such a major road.

I didn't try too hard to find it for a couple reasons. We did a Pyrenees trip in 2007, so I had a good idea what I was missing, and it was starting to rain. In the rain, I'd rather be on a motorway, frankly.

I used to travel with an SLR and lenses in a camera bag that rode in my tank bag. I missed a lot of shots because it was such a damn nuisance to lug around. I've got a camera that slips in a pocket now, and I take a lot of pictures that I would have otherwise missed. (I didn't realise until after the trip that the camera actually has a "food shot" setting on it!)

Toll booths: yes, you understand. What you didn't mention is riding in to one on a wet day and also having to watch that you're not stopping on a diesel slick and having your foot slide out from under you. I was also leaving the bike in gear and hitting the kill switch so the bike wouldn't roll while I was fiddling with my wallet.

Jo and I got the teamwork down pat by the end of the trip. Who needs bluetooth intercoms? (The pre-paid ticket is a good tip. I'll look into that next trip.)

By the way, I'll mention your proposition to the gorgeous blonde I travel with. But, be warned. She snores, too.  

[FJR-UK]

Thanks for the great detail

Are you sure?  

All your bandwidth are belong to us!  

Cheers.

[Skee]

I only made it this far; I can't look no more; it's just TOO GOOD.

[CosmicCowboy]

Great report.

[Guy]

Excellent report. It only took me an hour to read!   Just another area in Europe to put on the "someday list"

[Gaw]

Great ride report Jerry

Glad to see you like Spanish wine, I will add a glass of wine to my "pimientos de pardon tapa" invitation. See you in Madrid soon?

 

[Smarti]

Thanks for this one!

[FJR-UK]

Glad to see you like Spanish wine, I will add a glass of wine to my "pimientos de pardon tapa" invitation. See you in Madrid soon?

Your offer gets even more tempting! I'll have to see if an airline makes an offer we can't refuse.

Cheers!

[skippy69]

Awesome pictures and trip.
Thank you for sharing with us.....