Olivia’s hire bike had to be back in Saumur by 6pm tonight, so we all travelled back to where we were a week ago. Olivia heads for home on Monday, so we’re spending the weekend in the town.

The journey from Amboise involved a couple of trains (changing at Tours). We’d pre booked places for ourselves and for the bikes. The French love a bit of admin, so this involved two separate booking processes. But we got it done and the journey went to plan.

Once back in Saumur, the rain has stopped and having a couple of hours to wait before our Airbnb became available, we went for an exploratory ride along the Velo Francette route, which we’d originally planned to ride a lot more of.

We did a 10 mile loop, visiting a couple of very pretty villages along the way. Almost every service, shop and attraction in the villages was “ferme” and we couldn’t even get a coffee until we’d returned to Saumur. This experience rather vindicated our decision, earlier in the holiday, to re-focus our cycling on the Loire valley and its cycle routes and attractions, which don’t shut at the first whiff of autumn.

Here are the three sections of today’s short ride including a bit of the Velo Francette and featuring a range of closed facilities.

Airbnb Review: the last two nights have been in another quirky Airbnb – a house just outside the centre of Amboise.

The chief quirk here was the second floor bedroom, accessed by a very steep spiral stairway. Olivia took one for the team here as Julie and I would probably have broken our necks on the stairs.

Otherwise it was a really comfortable (and very lived-in) home. Many Airbnbs are spartan and pristine, but rather soulless as a result. This house had a bit of clutter including a kitchen where every cupboard and drawer was stuffed with implements, crockery etc. And it wasn’t quite as clinically clean as some have been.

But we cooked, relaxed and slept comfortably and it got the thumbs up from all three of us.

Bird Report: green woodpeckers seem quite prolific in the Loire and we saw several and heard more at various points of the day.

Julie adds: after a rest day yesterday and a morning train ride I was relieved my legs had recovered fully, so able to enjoy our short afternoon ride. Yesterday’s heat had receded with the rain leaving warm, humid conditions.

We finished the ride with an ice cream followed by Hoegarden beers at the same cafe in Saumur where we met Olivia a week earlier.