"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head—
Do you think, at your age, it is right?"
As avid readers of this blog, you are well aware that -- since late February -- I have written about little else other than my impending bike ride down France's Loire valley, and my preparations for that ride. Five essays, in all. So, you ask, did I do it? Did I survive? Was it a feat that any moderately handsome, suave, intelligent, athletic, and sincerely modest 84-year-old might accomplish?
To all such questions, I can only bow my head demurely and reply "Indeed. Yes. And here I am, standing before you."
In prior essays, I've focused on my concerns about the physical demands of the trip, but I want to save my comments on those questions for a later post. For now, I'll describe the trip in general, with any comments about its physical demands offered only casually where necessary.
Our trip was originally conceived by Jim -- by far the most experienced cyclist of our group -- as a marathon ride by himself, together with anyone who had the guts to join him, from Basel, Switzerland, through the Loire valley, to the French coast. No one jumped at the chance, but the Loire did have appeal to many of his relatives. So, kind fellow that he is, he compromised with a route limited to a ride from Orléans down river to Tours. This route attracted his wife Dorothy, his adult son Graham, his brother John and wife Ann, his sister Anne, and -- last but not least -- me. As part of his compromise, he and John decided to continue biking down river from Tours to Nantes, and then south along the coast to La Rochelle. Even as I write, they should be relaxing after the fourth day of this extension.
For Jim, I suspect, the attraction was primarily the biking itself. For many of the rest of us, certainly for me, the biking, like hiking, was a means of locomotion, and the objective was the chateaux and natural beauty of the Loire valley. For me, especially, because the horrors of arthritis make long distance hiking virtually impossible and biking offers an acceptable alternative. But for all of us, the fun of biking and the esthetic and intellectual appreciation of the sights and history we encountered are so intertwined that separating them makes little sense.
Our group gathered on May 11 in Paris, where we had booked rooms for three nights in a hotel near the Austerlitz station. For some of us, this was a first visit to Paris; for all of us, Paris offers sights that are well worth seeing regardless of prior visits. While still waiting for our room to become available, after a long flight from the U.S., Jim and I discovered that our hotel was almost adjacent to the Jardin des Plantes, sort of an arboretum for growing things smaller than trees. It was surprisingly beautiful, extensive, and interesting, and was but the first of many fortuitous pleasures we ran into in the city.
The next day we followed my suggestion that, rather than select a specific sight to visit, we should just begin walking along the Seine, which flowed not far from our hotel. We walked down past Notre Dame and through the Tuileries to the Place de la Concorde. Then, tired, after five hours of walking, we acquainted ourselves with the Paris Metro for our return to home base.
The two highlights of our Paris visit, for me, were (1) the Eiffel Tower, which I'd summited with my nephew Denny and our friend Chris in 1997, but which was every bit as much fun to do a second time in 2024, and (2) attending a performance of Scarlatti's "Stabat Mater" in the incredibly beautiful chapel of Sainte Chapelle.
But by May 14, we were itching to sample the pleasures of the Loire, and we left Austerlitz station by train, headed for Orléans. The next morning, a minion of the organizer of our unguided tour arrived with our bicycles and made sure each fit its intended rider. Jim, Dorothy, and John had normal road bikes; we other four had chosen electric-assisted bikes (which we were relieved to learn were by far the most popular form of bikes used by the hordes of cycling tourists). The truck then drove off. We were left with bookings at hotels in Beaugency, Blois, Mosnes, Amboise (2 nights), and Tours. We were also left with an app containing maps and directions, and, hopefully, with sufficient native intelligence and common sense to get us through the next six days.
Each day was the same in some respects. We had breakfast, usually quite substantial buffet breakfasts, at our hotel. By 9 a.m. or so, we were on the road. The mileage covered each day varied from 8 miles to about 30 miles. The suggested time varied from about 1½ hours to about 3½ hours, but we generally exceeded those benchmarks rather substantially. This was especially true for the last two days of biking, where frequent intersections or forks in the road caused our convoy to stop, study the situation and our maps, and proceed -- usually but not always without argument. Upon arrival at our hotel, we might rest a bit and then check out the sights. For the first couple of nights, there wasn't much but a small town to walk around in. But we visited the first of our major chateaux -- Chateau de Chambord, the largest chateau in the Loire valley -- en route to Blois. Unfortunately, we could only view the exterior, and the exterior from a distance, as there was an admission and tour charge, and firm fences fairly far away from the actual chateau. We were short of time because a defect in Graham's bike had taken time for the rental company to respond and to correct.
Once we reached Amboise -- the second to last stop -- we hit the chateau jackpot, however. We visited Clos Lucé -- the final residence of Leonardo da Vinci who had come to France at the invitation of King Francis I -- when we reached the city. The next day, we took a city bus about 20 minutes to the Chateau de Chenonceau --ignoring the official tour's instructions to bicycle some thirty miles round trip to Chenonceau during our "rest" day in Amboise. Chenonceau is probably the best known of the Loire chateaux, notable for its extension by way of a bridge, containing long impressive galleries -- over the River Cher. And then, after our return to Amboise, while others tended to various affairs, I explored the Chateau Royal which looms on a cliff over the Amboise downtown.
Our final day's ride was to Tours -- a short 17-mile ride that required about four hours to complete. The route deviated from the river and wound along an intricate network of roads through the famous Vouvray vineyards. The scenery was beautiful and the small villages we passed through possessed a quiet intimacy that was strangely attractive. But half way through the ride, the heavens opened and we rode for probably two hours through a continuous downpour. I had laughed at bringing rain gear, as the others had -- "Hey, I'm from Seattle. We don't dissolve when we get wet!" The temperatures were in the 60s, but eventually being soaked even at 65 can cause a chill to set in. I was glad when we crossed the bridge into Tours and located our hotel.
No chateau to visit in Tours. But instead, the dazzling Tours Cathedral, built between the 12th and the 16th centuries. Incredible interior, appearing to rise almost to the clouds.
A night in Tours, and then five of us took a TGV train to the Paris airport where we stayed in an airport hotel. The next day -- May 22 -- we were on our way home. Over way too quickly, but with lots of wonderful memories. (And the other two, brothers Jim and John, well, they're still pedaling along, and still have adventures lying ahead.)
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PHOTO -- Chateau de Chenonceau
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