Day 36 — Sunday 5 June 2011

Valençay – Muides-sur-Loire

The day dawned with clouds and bright periods after a warm night. I was up at seven o'clock and after packing up rode into Valençay for bread and cheese for the day. My memories of the morning have largely faded away, but I remember stopping for coffee somewhere and met an English lady who used to live in Gibraltar, was brought up in Solihull, had bought a house in France and moved out permanently. Later I came into Mur-de-Sologne where there was a town fête. I stopped at a restaurant and sat under an umbrella on a street-side terrace and had a splendid Sunday lunch. My credit card was not accepted for some reason and I was not allowed to offer an alternative card but had to pay in cash. As I ate a procession of veteran cars drove past all honking their horns.

The afternoon was spent riding through forested parkland leading to the chateau of Chambord, where the final approach drive was about seven kilometres long. The chateau was an amazing fairy tale concoction of sugar plum turrets and towers that knocked most English palaces into a cocked hat.

I got to Muides-sur-Loire just a group of bikers were leaving the campsite. I pulled over to the side to let them up onto the road but they all stopped and insisted that I ride down in front of them, so I tried not to fall off. It was a huge joke and everyone was laughing: all these huge motorbikes with tattooed guys astride revving their engines giving way to a solitary cyclist.

The site was spacious and dotted with trees and not quite empty. I chatted to a young French couple on bicycles and set up my tent at a polite distance under the next tree. The facilities block had all the showers and toilets on the first floor and the laundry sinks at ground level. There was an open sided rest area with tables and chairs where I later sheltered from a huge thunder storm. The site manager shouted "Ooh la la!" as the thunder rattled around us. Before the storm I went into the town and did some shopping. I was sitting in a small park as the clouds gathered and some young people ran through looking anxiously at the sky, so I started to walk back to the site. I was nearly back at my tent when the first drops started to fall. I dashed across to where I had hung my drying from a tree, bundled it all into the tent and ran over to the covered rest area to write up my diary. It rained hard for about half an hour and the thunder circled round the site with lightning flashing from cloud to cloud above the ground.