Saturday 13 September 2025

Cycling – 35.6 miles. 3 hours 38 mins ride time.

I suppose this is where the story of this cycling holiday really starts. The first day of exclusively cycling.

But, let’s delay that for a moment for another Airbnb review. This time we were in a loft apartment close to the centre of Angers. It was compact, but very comfortable and quiet, despite the proximity of traffic and nightlife.

It featured a couple of interesting quirks. The first being the other “residents” of the building: another Airbnb and a small dance/exercise studio, all off one staircase.

The second was the access – the building was in the corner of a large shared courtyard. Within which was another courtyard, accessed through iron gates. From which we accessed a third, inner courtyard through a locked door.

From there you only had to negotiate a locked door which gave access to the stairway to our locked apartment. We stored the bikes in our bedroom! Normally you’d say you can’t be too safe. But in this case we probably were!

With rain falling we delayed our departure until it stopped at about 9.30 before heading across Angers’ centre to pick up our route out of the city and down to the River Loire.

Some good bike lanes made the city riding pretty stress-free and we were soon onto dedicated cycle trails heading SE towards the river.

These took us through a post-industrial landscape dominated by old slate mining infrastructure, slag heaps and flooded quarries. It was faintly reminiscent of similar locations in the Lake District and Snowdonia, except that it was an otherwise largely flat landscape – not a hill or mountain in sight.

This strange landscape ended at an old canal, where we found a self-drive (i.e. unstaffed) chain ferry. Three French cyclists were loading themselves onto it and they offered to help us. It all felt slightly overloaded as our companions hauled us across, but we all survived! They had less English than we had French, but none of us had any ferry-related vocabulary in the others’ language. So we made do with some heavy gesturing and lots of smiling and nods of encouragement.

At this point we entered a farming-dominated landscape of ripe sunflowers, stubble fields and autumnal smells. All leading us down to the Loire, where our thoughts began to turn to lunch.

At a boulangerie in a small village we picked up some snacks whilst admiring a recumbent bike hauling a trailer designed to hold two handsome dogs, which was parked outside. The owner was buying bread and the dogs were happily relaxing by their master’s unusual vehicle.

Moving along, we had lunch in St Mathurin-sur-Loire, a pretty village built on one of the huge flood-prevention levees which bracket the river in this flat and flood-prone area.

Crossing to the south side of the river, the second half of the journey was largely on quiet country roads, close to the river. A couple of forays into the hills on this side of the river slowed progress in the afternoon, but brought compensatory views and visits to tiny villages.

The journey ended with a rather convoluted and contrived cycle route into Saumur, which avoided the worst of the busy roads, but made the final mile seem endless. But eventually we found ourselves in sight of Saumur and one of the lovely bridges that span the river here.

Saumur is a stunning place, combining the Loire at its most majestic, with some eye-catching architecture and town planning, most of it using the distinctive pale limestone of the area.

But all were interested in was a cup of tea and an ice cream.

Saumur was also where Olivia joined us. We kept in touch via Whatsapp all day. When we left Angers (9.30) she’d already left London and was under the Channel on the train. We arrived in Saumur at just before 4pm, only to find that she’d beaten us by half an hour.

Olivia found us just as out tea was served and we shared news and laughs in late afternoon sunlight.

Julie then rode off to explore our latest Airbnb whilst Olivia and I visited the local bike hire shop to find her something to ride.

Olivia’s boss had leant her a pannier, so we were looking for something with a rack snd came away with a robust looking Giant with dynamo lights and a Dutch-bike vibe. 70 Euros for a week’s hire seemed pretty good value, even if Olivia wasn’t entirely sold on her rather staid looking steed.

Bird of the day: cattle egrets amongst horses in a field near Saumur. Like the more familiar little egrets, but with yellow (not black) beaks and a somewhat grubbier hue to their white plumage.

Julie adds: a comedy moment came when Phil stopped at the edge of the road and got caught by a bramble in the undergrowth. A thorny branch attached itself to his shorts. I tried to disentangle him but the branch kept swinging back. All I needed to do was take his bike so he could walk free!

Today was a longer and hillier day in the saddle than I expected. We finished the day by cooking a spaghetti bolognaise for dinner au maison!