A note about comments: I appreciate that a few of you have left comments on the blog. They show up in my email (as well as on the blog), but I've not been successful in replying to them via the blog. Do know that I see them, but since they show up as Anonymous I've not been able to reply personally.
In this rural part of France there are not a lot of places that have both a place to stay and a place to eat, so today we had to test Ellen's knee with a longer stage. We covered 48 km for the day, and the first 16 km was very hilly, so it was a good workout. She did very well until the last five km or so of the day when things went south. Still, better than a few days ago. We had to use the granny chainring on two hills (first time on this trip) and hit over 48 km/h (30 mph) on one of the downhills, which is plenty exciting on the Bike Friday's 20 inch wheels.
After about 18 km it started to rain, so we stopped under cover by this lake in Bourbon-Lancy for about ten minutes till the shower passed.
Shortly after we were on a very nice path along a canal, and followed that all the way to Digoin. Good riding, but after the rain the path was slightly muddy; it was a major bike clean up at the end of the day.
We stopped for a rest break and lunch at a little bar in the very sleepy village of Pierrefitte-sur-Loire, just a block off the bike path.
At the entrance to Digoin we crossed the Loire on another canal bridge. These are amazing: a bridge carrying a large canal of water high over the river.
Our hotel for the night is the very elegant Hotel VillaPona. Our room has a balcony with a view that includes a piece of the Loire. Very nice dinner at an Italian restaurant in town. Definitely living large.
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| Courtyard of the hotel. Our room was one of the balconies |
Next day we rode from Digoin to the small village of Palinges: 32 km, with rain most of the time. Sometimes following a canal but mostly on rural roads and very hilly. No hotels so we stayed again at a campground, a very nice place right on the lake. No cabin this time: we rented a tent. It was adequately spacious for us and our gear (except the bike) and kept us dry. The campgrounds are very friendly. Lots of other cycle tourists were staying here.
Our British friend Jo, who we'd met along the path a couple of days previously, was there also. There is a small restaurant in a large tent at the campground, and they were serving a special steak dinner with local Charolais beef. It was served with the steak completely raw and sitting on top of an extremely hot stone; we could cut off pieces and cook to our own taste as we ate. The whole thing was delicious. If you look closely you can see that it was dumping rain during dinner.
