A shortish day of cycling, but lots of things to enjoy along the way.

Almost straight out of Saumur we were onto the Loire cycle route, which includes some intriguing opportunities to cycle through the cave dwellings in the cliffs above the river.

Little side-roads took us into these highly unusual “troglodyte” structures.

Much of it was rideable and was some of the most unusual cycling I’ve ever done.

Our main target of the day was the Fontvraud Abbey, which reached in time for a lunch in the adjacent village square.

The Abbey is nearly 1,000 years old and has strong links to the Plantagenet dynasty (and therefore English history) and is the burial place of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of France and England, her husband Henry II and her son Richard the Lionheart.

A stunning building, it had periods as a prison and factory and has lost almost all of its ornate interior decoration. But the shell, in the pale local limestone, is almost luminous with the sun streaming through its windows.

Julie and I visited the Abbey on our first trip to France together in 1996 and the place has special memories for us. It was fun introducing Olivia to it.

We ended the day in Montreiul-Bellay after a total of only 21 miles. But with strong headwinds almost all the way, we were happy to reach this very pretty little town. We enjoyed probably our best meal of the holiday so far at L’Auberge des Isles, a modern restaurant down by the river below the chateau.

Bird of the day: black redstart – a very rare bird in the UK. Males are a sooty black around the head fading to dark grey down the body and tail. But with red and orange under the tail. We saw a couple at Fontvraud on the high walls.

Julie adds. Our first night in a hotel. The bicycle storage was outside in the spacious hotel grounds with limited cover in an open air shed. Phil wasn’t happy and the owner stressed this was normal so we persuaded him to accept it. Olivia did a great job conversing with her in French and explaining our hesitation.

The hotel was an attractive, historic building rated 3 stars with a small outdoor swimming pool and pretty garden a terrace. We had a shared room with a put-up single bed for Olivia, having refused the sofa bed originally offered! Olivia’s French continued to come in handy as we got the owner (husband) to book us a table at a nearby restaurant. (she did however mistake the word Reserve for Theresa!!).

Wet weather and a poor forecast meant that day 4 we stayed put in Saumur. But this was no hardship as it’s a town full of interest.

We began the day with a bit of research which revealed that the local equivalent of Harvest Festival was taking place in the chateau.

A brisk walk into town took us to this striking building, where a crowd had gathered to see the official ceremony of the wine “brotherhoods” who welcome the harvest of the year’s grape crop and induct new members.

Against the backdrop of the fairytale chateau, there were demonstrations of wine pressing plus a collection of stalls selling local produce.

A short and rather jolly ceremony officially opened proceedings with lots of traditional dress, speeches and the occasional trumpet fanfare keeping things moving along.

We thoroughly enjoyed the spectacle and free entry to the chateau that is available on these special occasions.

Whilst the contents of the chateau were not especially engaging, the setting, architecture and views were more in line with its World Heritage status.

Fast food from the many stalls on site for the festivities kept us going, before we dropped down into the town for an ice cream and a coffee.

As you can see, the promised heavy rain hadn’t materialised and we realised we could have cycled. However, we were all a little tired and the day suited us well.

In the afternoon we visited one of the area’s famous troglodyte caves, which housed a museum of fungi alongside a commercial mushroom business.

Troglodyte caves have bern used for many purposes in the area and take advantage of the soft “tufa” limestone, which is both easily extracted for building and tunnelled into to create living spaces, wine storage and, now, mushroom production.

The mushroom museum was faintly bizarre, with big displays of fungi sealed in glass, plus mushroom-related gifts from around the world.

More interest lay in the commercial growing sections which extended deep underground in cool, damp, man-made caverns.

It’s one of the more unusual attractions you’ll come across and perhaps not one I’d especially recommend. But it did at least give us the chance to explore a genuine troglodyte setting, for which the area is famed.

A wet evening gave us the chance to pop back into Saumur for an excellent evening meal.

Tomorrow we’re back on the bikes and with good weather forecast for the rest of the week, we’re hoping to make steady progress along the Velo Francette route.

Grilled chicken cooked in pesto

Julie adds. Fantastic food tonight in a low key but delightful restaurant. We drank a local bottle of red wine and enjoyed the ambience before a walk back to our accommodation.

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!

Travel: bike to Caen, train to Angers

Cycling: 11.3 miles

A quick Airbnb review: we stayed overnight in a two room annex to a family home about a mile from Ouistreham ferry port. It was a typically quirky little space but the basics – a comfortable, quiet bedroom, hot shower and relaxing furniture – made it a winner. 

The coffee machine was predictably tricky to work. Like the kettles of old, it only performed when you’d given up hope and moved onto other matters. Then it stuttered into life, dribbling out a bitter and slightly stale tasing brew. 

We popped out early into the town for a decent coffee and croissant. It was really chilly – definitely autumnal. Our puffa jackets, which we hadn’t really expected to use on this holiday, but had packed due to their light weight and compressibility, were immediately pressed into action. 

However, two hours later, as we headed off to Caen to catch a train to Angers, the sun had emerged and late summer had re-asserted itself. 

The 16km to Caen was on a lovely tarmac bike track which followed the canalised river Orne right into the city centre. We passed or were passed by numerous other cyclists of all types, plus almost as many runners. 

Mid-route we rode by the famous Pegasus Bridge of D-Day fame. 

Even within Caen, the bike routes and Komoot kept us safe and largely traffic free: apart from crossing a handful of roads, the only tarmac we shared with vehicles was the final 200m to Caen Station. 

We’d pre-booked tickets for our journey to Angers, including bike spaces. But no one ever turns up for a train journey with a bike without, at least, a sense of trepidation.

Lugging two heavily loaded bikes up and down staircases to reach our platform was tricky and reminded me of bike and train travel in the UK (i.e. bikes are an afterthought). But the train had dedicated bike spaces, complete with hanging hooks and we also found seats. 

Despite being delayed by a technical issue, we made our connection at Le Mans where we again tackled a pretty unfriendly stairway and boarded a second train, this time with more rudimentary cycle provision – a space by the toilets. It was good to see wheelchair users getting dedicated support from friendly station staff. We could have done with something similar. 

One final set of steps at Angers station and we were free from public transport (hopefully) for the time being.

Angers is a big and busy city and there’s lots of redevelopment work that’s not been finished. Footways and cycle paths are hard to differentiate as nothing is labelled. This meant a “make it up as you go along” journey to our Airbnb.

Having left the busy centre passing the chateau and crossing the Maine river in the process, we then had a few short cobbled streets to contend with before ending up in a leafy suburb. Our Airbnb is on the top floor of what appears to be a dance school.

Evening Update:

An evening in Angers revealed what a busy and vibrant city it is. It’s also hilly and has some spectacular architecture. At bit like Bradford would be if it was in the Loire region.

We picked a busy restaurant full of families and enjoyed a very good chicken burger (Phil) and seafood salad (Julie). Plus beer and ice creams.

A dusk wander through the streets included another more leisurely look at the awesome Angers chateau, which is more of a traditional castle than many of this region’s famous chateaux. Its distinctive banded stonework is very striking and the whole building is remarkably intact and massive.

Julie adds. Angers is definitely worth another visit. It has a lot of green spaces and also according to the guide books a very impressive tapestry depicting the Apocalypse housed in the castle!

Travel – drive to Portsmouth, ferry to Caen.

Cycling: 3.2 miles

Travel is going to be a key component of this holiday. But there are different kinds of travel and today’s was of the “to be endured” kind rather than the “to be enjoyed”.

A six hour drive to Portsmouth was happily without incident but also almost completely devoid of interest. So we’ll skip to the next stage.

We’d booked parking at a restaurant/bar car park (£50 for 2 weeks) on the east side of Portsmouth where we unloaded the bikes, popped the panniers on the Kinesis and carried out a final documents check. 

Komoot then handled the 15 minute ride across town to the ferry terminal. It wasn’t a great route, but it was probably the best available. A stiff and chilly breeze kept us on our toes on our heavily laden bikes. 

We passed through the Brittany Ferries check-in in the same lanes as the cars, but then found ourselves directed to a pre-boarding lane dedicated to cycles and motorcycles.

To our surprise we were the only cyclists. A quick customs check – rucksacks run through an airport-style scanner – and we were cleared for boarding.

After a short wait we – the cyclists – and the motorcyclists were directed up the boarding ramp (we were asked to push which was fine as the ramp was steep and looked slippery). 

All other vehicles were held back until all two wheeled machines were safely stowed. A French crew member showed us to an alcove on the car deck where he lashed our bikes to railings with a rope.

We then had the luxury of having the entire ship all to ourselves for perhaps 15 minutes until the motoring masses began to join us.

The absence of children (term time bonus) was notable and the ferry felt perhaps 25% full. Another bonus! 

The Channel was pretty choppy so our crossing was marked by a number of staggery walks to buy food and drink.

Arriving in Ouistreham in the dark, at 10pm, we had to wait for the vehicles to disembark before leaving ourselves.

We then rapidly overtook most of the vehicles as they waited to go through customs. A heavy rain shower doused us during the ten minutes ride to our Airbnb, but we found it promptly and our host was waiting to put our bikes in his workshop/shed before giving us a quick tour of our accommodation.

A bit damp and chilly, we soon settled in and headed for bed!

Bird(s) of the day: On the crossing we encountered small groups of gannets and fulmars low over the water, using the winds.

Julie. Arriving late in the day and tired from travelling I struggled to focus as our host went into a detailed description in Franglais of how to work the coffee machine and boil water in the microwave as there was no kettle for tea making!