A stop at Beaugency resulted in a start up conversation with a retired couple who live in Paris and were on holiday with their campervan, heading south to Spain.
He’d noticed my New Zealand cycle top and made comment that New Zealand is the most beautiful country in the world. They’d lived in Whangarei for three years after sailing there. In fact, they’d sailed around the world and only last year swapped out the wind in the sails for a bedroom with four wheels.
Of course, rugby flirted into our chat. The French have a sincere passion that the only team worthy of playing have always been the All Blacks. You could see it in his facial expressions.
But what was more humbling than that was his wife who spoke extremely limited English and wanted us to have their phone number in case we needed any help for the remainder of our cycling, regardless the problem. So we exchanged phone numbers. It was their pay it forward for receiving the same hospitality down under on the land of the long white cloud.
We parted company with heart felt confidence that such unsolicited interactions like we’d just experienced are alive an well.
There was another purposeful deviation off the EV 6 a little further along the cycle way.
After hanging a left, we rode our way towards the Chateau de Chambond.
A high walled fence had us in awe. The google blue dot still had some distance to scroll before reaching the castle icon on the screen. Your guess was as good as ours as to what lay beyond it as we rode through an entry point. Signage heightened our excitement with pictures of deer and wild pigs having the right of way. So the search was on riding the long stretch of road with forest either side and evidence of rooting beside the tar seal, trying to keep the bikes centred even if we were riding to the right side of the road, so as we didn’t venture left and become road kill by passing traffic.
To see a wild pig had us quickly pull up and stop. Trying to shuffle the camera out, we caught the mother and about eight younglets scooting off on a diagonal path. We’d seen the papa one and hadn’t spotted the missus and kids initially. He more meandered following and I managed to get his back and rump. Thinking that made our ride, we pushed forward some more, eyes still flicking right to left and left to right.
And rounding a roundabout, to the left, the forest was cleared and boom, the chateau came into view. That was enough to nearly have us arse off our bikes trying to find an exit off the round about alone. From that google maps blue dot, it just looked phenomenal and spectacular.
What pigs?
And so, we cycled towards the thing.
It is one of the most recognisable chateau in the world because of its very distinctive French Renaissance architecture. It was build for the King of France, Francis the first between 1519 to 1547 and is 57 metres (184 feet) at its highest point. It was built to serve as a hunting lodge but Francis I only spent 7 weeks there in total. After he died from a heart attack in 1547, it wasn’t used for almost a century. Today, it’s a major tourist attraction and it’s image is widely used to sell commodities, from chocolates to alcohol to porcelain alarm clocks (Wikipedia).
We rode around to view it from the back. Cripes, that lawn spewed outwards for as far as the eye could see. We decided not to go in, one hour wouldn’t have done it justice. Easily set aside two to four hours. Instead, we were happy to park up and just gawk at the beast licking a two scooped ice cream each. That and the fact we still had some distance to ride to our hotel in Blois.
It is absolutely stunning and the diversion was worth it. Tomorrow the weather is supposed to turn foul again so coming back wasn’t an option. Reconnecting with the blue google map dot, we traced our way towards another exit point. Reading the signs was very important because one wouldn’t like to be lost inside the fence line on the 5,440 hectares or 134,000 acres or 21.0 square miles. With wild pigs with tusks.
Fly spray just wouldn’t cut it!
We arrived into Blois crossing over the Loire. We’ve ridden twelve days in a row and because the forecast isn’t blue sky but grey, we’re having a rest day to give the mind, body and soul some recovery time.
Walking around Blois exploring is kind of like a rest isn’t it?
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