August 10, 2016
Touring from Tours: I Bike, Therefore I Am.: Bourges to Buxeuil (Descartes)
I'm beginning to hate the SNCF. Not only was the early train to Tours cancelled, the ongoing train the I wanted to catch from Tours to Chatelrault would leave without me. Alternative trains left me with a five hour wait in Tours, so it was from there that I began my ride. And getting there was by a round-about route through Orleans, where I had a one hour wait.
Getting out of Tours was easy for me because I knew the city well having been there many times shepherding tourists about. In Montobovon I got a map of the department and picked up the velo route de Compostella. I'm not a religious man, but those pilgrim routes are always well signed, and this was no exception. The countryside is very flat, i.e. boring, but the kilomèters rolled by quickly. Along the way, I parted company with the pilgrim way and headed toward Descartes, the town that renamed itself after its most famous son. Ther's actually very little in Descartes. The museum to the great philosopher is only open in the afternoons, and was closing as I got there. Descartes himself never spent much time there, moving to Paris to study and then to Holland, where he did most of his work. The most important bits of Cartesian memorabilia are all elswhere, and the really important ones, his books, are widely available. My closest encounter with Descatres was in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, where I got to see Newton's copy of Descartes geometry with Sir Isaac's hand written notes in the margins.
The tourist office in Descartes informed me that the campsite was closed, but there was a b-n-b nearby in Buxeuil, where I got a room. There was a restaurant in front of the building I was staying in, so that's where I went for supper. Not terrible, but not great either.
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Today's ride: 76 km (47 miles)
Total: 142 km (88 miles)
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