Au Revoir Tours

Le Gare de Tours

Time to Go

It's early Saturday morning.  After a week here in Tours, exploring the city and meeting and riding with friends we've been communicating with for more than three years it's time to move on. Dianne and I have to be out of our apartment by 10:00 a.m. so this will definitely be a short post! Although we're going by car - not by train as the photo above suggests - I thought I'd include this image of the Tours train station to set the tone. More about that later.

We've had an absolutely brilliant week here. There have been three rides: a short one on our own and then a couple more with the three guys we've been "virtual" riding buddies with via Strava for quite a while, plus an American named Michael who has been living here for more than a decade. We've also really enjoyed being right in the middle of the city, even though we're not really city people. I'll talk a bit about our last ride with our friends and then a bit about the city.

Going Further Afield

Along the Loire and past some beautiful chateaux

The first ride Dianne and I did was a short one to have a bit of an explore and stretch our legs. I just designed something that would take us a little way out of the city with some river views. The second ride, which Alain Gillot had put together took us to some nice little towns and a couple of wineries, one for a lovely little tasting in Mount-Louis. Our ride a couple of days ago went a little further afield, covering some ground we rode over on our last day of Lionheart and adding in some beautiful country riding past a number of grand châteaux. 

We detoured briefly for our excellent guide Alain to show us a glimpse of the property of a "famous writer". François Rabelais was born not far from Tours and is much lauded in these parts, so I wondered if there might have some connection there. We couldn't go inside the property because opening hours hadn't started for the day, but here's a picture I took through the gates ...

After leaving the city behind, for much of the first part of our ride we were travelling along the Cher River. Crossing a bridge we paused for a photo opportunity ...

Alain G, Alain A, Jacky, Dianne and Michael

Our first proper stop was at Bréhémont for coffee - which is where Francesca had arranged for us to have lunch on that last day of our epic tour. We were told by our companions on this occasion that it is regarded as one of the premier coffee stops for rides out of Tours. Certainly the lunch we had a week ago was wonderful.

Bréhéhat is just a small village, but it has a big history. The last of the river fishermen in this part of the loire still sells his daily catch from his shop in the town along the riverfront. It's also got a good sized church for such a small place. Here's a picture of it ...

Bréhémont church

... and another photo of us before we got back on the the bikes ...

Alain Gillot, Doug Bruce, Di Batten, Jacky Dorisee and Alain Avenet

Just past our turnaround point we rode directly toward a magnificent château for about a kilometre which was just past a bridge crossing the Indre River where we stopped for a photo ...

Conditions during our ride were just about perfect, fairly overcast, no wind and none of the heat we've been having for the past few weeks. It was a magic outing. As we started to get closer to Tours Alain took us past another beautiful château ...

Alain Avenet and Jacky Dorisee both had other commitments they had to get to so they left us a little early. Michael had disappeared somewhere between Bréhémont and this château so it was just Alain Gillot, Dianne and me who made our way back into the city together. Once again, local knowledge was a wonderful thing as we wound around some gorgeous small roads to get very close the the centre of the city. We arranged to meet Alain and his wife Catherine for crêpes after we three riders had got ourselves cleaned up, and then finished the day with dinner at their apartment, which brought to an end one of the best days of our holiday so far.

An appreciation of Tours

As previously mentioned, Dianne and I don't really regard ourselves as "city people". Yes, we live fairly close to the centre of Hobart, but it is really like a village compared to larger cities in Australia and around the world, The centre of Hobart is quite small and we don't actually spend much time there - but we are appreciative of the convenience of its proximity. So what is it we liked so much about this place? Well for one thing, like most historic European cities, it is "low rise" which means that the grand historical buildings are not overshadowed by soulless steel, glass and concrete towers. The big buildings were built for the people to appreciate, not for the commercial gain of some property tycoons. Places like the beautiful train station ...

... have space around them.

Other old buildings, like the Tour  Charlemagne and the Basilica of St Martin, which stand next to one another ...

... are not overshadowed and minimised by modern monstrosities.

But more than that, there is a really great feel about this city. People are friendly and seem to really like living here. It's an extremely bike and pedestrian friendly place. It appears that many of the one way streets were once two way, but have been reduced to having one direction for vehicles and a generous bike lane for cyclists. I haven't seen that anywhere else but I bet it exists in other European cities - unlike in North America and Australia where the automobile rules and the rest of us have to make the best of a bad situation. Here, motorists are amazingly considerate of cyclists. We are continually impressed by the different situations where they stop and give way. It makes us feel like we belong, not that we are some alien life form - which is the way most drivers at home seem to view cyclists. 

The other evening we had a wander along the river past le Pont Wilson, the largest bridge that crosses the Loire here in Tours. There were hundreds of people out enjoying themselves, some of them eating and drinking at makeshift cafes, others just chilling by the water or, like us, stretching their legs. 

I thought I'd like to share a couple of photos of the bridge I took that evening. Here is one of most of the bridge - but not all of it because I could not fit the whole thing in! ...

... and one of the fifteen spans that together support the traffic that crosses it ...

This bridge was badly damaged in 1978 ...

.... and maybe could have been replaced with a more modern structure but the original style was maintained.

Soon we'll be climbing into our rental car and heading for the Massif Central, where we've got another apartment booked just outside the small town of Sainte-Christine. This is the route we plan to take, travelling mostly on secondary roads ...

It's about a 250 kilometre drive, but we plan to take our time and drive through a few towns along the way. This next week will be very different to the one we've just passed in Tours. I've designed three rides that I hope will work out, and we've got some old friends coming to stay with us for a few days. I'll update you on all of that in another week or so. However, before we embark on the next part of our journey I want to say a big thank you on behalf of Dianne and myself on the great time that Alain Avenet, Jacky Dorisee and, especially, Alain Gillot have shown us while we've been here. It has made for a most memorable week and we hope to see all of them again before too long.