Day 38 — Tuesday 7 June 2011

Bonneval – Maintenon

My ‘best laid plans…’ were washed away by heavy rain that persisted from mid-morning until about three o’clock, so I never got into Chartres cathedral. I had breakfast in the camp café and set off along the D17 to Le Gault-St-Denis where I turned due north on the D127 aiming straight at Chartres. The sky was an unbroken sheet of low cloud from horizon to horizon that slowly descended to ground level. It started to rain, so I stopped to pull on my Rainlegs, waterproof overshoes and Gortex jacket only just in time.

By the outskirts of Chartres my cycling gloves were a soggy mess so I stopped in a bus shelter and rung them out, cycling on with bare hands. Extraordinarily I have found the bus shelter on Google Street View, on the D935 just before it goes under a railway bridge. I followed the road signs to the cathedral, and passed by without stopping. It was shrouded in cloud from the apex of the roof upwards, the spires disappearing from view into the cloud. The thought of leaving my bicycle in the rain while I sat soggy and cold in a restaurant for an hour and then paddling round the cathedral was too dispiriting.

The map shows my intended route along the quiet D6 following the River Eure, but I found myself on the main D906 having missed the turning. I’d lost the will to map read and I just wanted to keep riding, thankful that I’d spotted road signs for Maintenon. The trunk road was dead straight and lined by trees striding across the wide arable plain with no shelter from the rain nor from lorries that buffeted me in their slipstream as they thundered past showering me in their wake; altogether pretty horrible.

I dropped down into Maintenon and spotted a small hotel/restaurant just at the point where the smaller D6 rejoined the main road, so I pulled up and walked dripping into the bar. It was half past one and I thought I might be too late. Madame took one look at me as I asked if the restaurant was still open and if she had a room for the night and beckoned me to bring my bicycle into the hotel lobby and put my wet clothes in her drying room. My Rainlegs had kept the front of my cycling shorts quite dry and my Gortex jacket had done its job above the waist. My feet were ringing wet despite wearing overshoes, but that is inevitable. My hands were in the worst shape and took about an hour before they began to feel dry. So much for skin being waterproof!

I washed my clothes and hung them in Madame’s drying room before walking into Maintenon and took a photograph of the chateau. The rain had died away and I suppose if I had stopped in Chartres there is a chance that by the time I was ready to set off again it may have been dry. Maybe I'll go back some day in better weather.

There is an aqueduct from Maintenon all the way to Versailles to feed the fountains at Louis XIV’s palace. I had a drink in a bar, wrote up my diary and sent a text message to Liz. I found a church open in a back street, sat down for quarter of an hour in the stillness and said thank you for being dry.