August 13, 2017
Mung Bean Jelly For The Market Day: Day 6 - Saumur to Tours
When we lived in Saigon many years ago our daughter used to watch Chinese Operas on Korean TV with English subtitles. She would then reenact them in her own inimitable style.
If you think you have a vision of this, you're probably not even half right.
You're also probably thinking "what does this have to do with biking through the Loire Valley?"
Good question. The answer depends on how your synapse are wired.
It's Sunday, and one of the first towns we come to after leaving Saumur, Montsoreau, has a Sunday market in full swing, with crowds spilling out into the roads and all the locals inspecting and picking over the beautiful produce. As we're approaching this on our bikes, K and I simultaneously break into song "Mung Bean Jelly For The Market Day" while theatrically bouncing up and down on our bikes, sort of like our daughter used to do.
Yeah. Weird. But it works for us.
Today was another extremely pleasant (ed. note - overuse of word) and easy day of cycling with a mix of dedicated bike trails and rural secondary roads. Over the entire day, the bike to car ratio was still about 10:1. The most dangerous thing about the shared roads was remembering that they were shared with cars. They were so infrequent that you would forget about them!
Today also marked a 'expectation reset' for us. This trip is not going to be about jaw dropping natural scenery or epic biking distances that leave you exhausted and quivering with adrenaline.
This one's going to be about seeing the perfect mushroom in a market, savouring the morning coffee and croissant, watching the locals heading home with their baguette protruding from their backpack or carrier bag.
That was today.
Saumur is one of the main centres for sparkling wine in France (they use basically the same method as the Champagne region but different grapes). As we were leaving town, riding along the Loire flood plain, there were steep cliffs rising to the south of us, maybe 30 m high. Most of the Chateaus and villages were built on the top of these cliffs, but there were houses, and what were probably (wine) cellars built into them. It was pretty cool.
Over half our biking route today was along the levees of the Loire, nearly all of it paved, and as noted previously, virtually carless.
We rolled into Tours around 4, having booked an Ibis hotel room (didn't realize it was Ibis Budget ... we'll spring for the additional 10 euro's next time), showered, washed clothes, uploaded pic's .... and went out for another great dinner at La Chope (a seafood place). We seem to be on a roll with ordering wine from the 'next' place we're going to be, so tonight it was a lovely bottle of Sancerre (I had oysters to start and I looove Sancerre with oysters).
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Song of the day:
Only the Wine by David Gray
I was listening to the Boom for a little while this afternoon while we were on a relatively isolated section of the route along the levee. When this song came up (random play of my fav's) it really seemed to sum up our attitude transformation at dinner last night. That wins song of the day. I was listening to it again tonight while writing this and I realized that 'synapse' and 'levee' may have subliminally worked their way into today's narrative .... naw ... that's only the wine talking
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Today's ride: 82 km (51 miles)
Total: 381 km (237 miles)
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