This is a slow travel video about cycling in France from Angers to Saumur along La Loire A Velo Eurovelo 6 bicycle route. This video shows how a couple brought their bicycles on an airplane and how they reassembled them at CDG airport. Once in Angers the couple explores the chateau and half timbered houses. They delight in the cuisine and accommodations that Angers and Saumur offer. There is wonderful footage showing the scenery between Angers and Saumur.
That’s so funny. Okay, Patrick, where are we? San Francisco airport. And where are we headed? We are headed to Paris. We’re actually not really having We’re heading to Paris airport. getting on the train and going to France and we’ll stay there for a couple nights to get some good rest after a long flight, explore the city, and then and get our bikes all tuned up and ready to go on a big cycling adventure. Oh, I can’t wait. I know. I’ll see you in Paris. I’ll see you in Paris. Let’s go back a few days before we were comfortably sitting at the San Francisco airport to see how we got the bikes prepared to take them to the airport. Here we are putting the bikes into the boxes. We took the front wheel seat and pedals off the bikes. Oh, what you got there, Patrick? It’s been a long time coming. We are ready to leave. We got our two bikes in the recycled bike boxes ready to go. Are they e ebikes? They are not ebikes. They are analog bikes. We’re using ebike boxes. Yeah. Okay. Fished out fished out of a dumpster. Okay, great. So, now I got the two of the piurs here in this nice IKEA bag. Oh, you put the pers inside there, huh? Two of them. So hopefully it’s going to Can I see what that looks like with the two in there? They are. Oh my gosh. One, two, and two. So, are you going to check that? It’s going to be check luggage. Mhm. Nice. Okay. So, it looks like hopefully the IKEA bag is up to the task. All right. But We’ve heard good reports of that bag and it does seem to be the right size which is great. Well, now all we have to do is get all this over to the San Francisco airport. Yep. All right, let’s do it. A lot of stuff to move. Okay, let’s do it. Let’s we try to keep them under 50 pounds. Um, and we thought we had, but our scans have been off. So, we’re at the airport and we were told to, they were going to charge us $200 additionally if we didn’t bring the weight down. So, now we’re in back in them and trying to get the weight down on one of the boxes. We took a 10 and 1 half hour flight from San Francisco airport to Charles de Gaul. And upon arrival, we needed to put our bikes together. tired. Very, very tired. Okay. So, we flew from San Francisco to Charles Charles and spent I’d say a good hour and a half putting the bikes together. Um, and then we walked the bikes to the train station which is connected to the we got rid of the cardboard box. That was a big deal. Uh we left them and then we by the by a recycling bin. Yes. So the far more cardboard than the recycling station was intended to accommodate. Um and now we’re on a train to on an hard to get the bikes onto the train. Highspeed train. They didn’t believe we had tickets for the bikes. Said they had to be in boxes. And given that we had just unboxed unboxed our bikes. That was not what we wanted here. But then they checked our tickets and it said that we were allowed to bring our assembled bikes on. So, we’re good. We’re on the train. We’re on the right train. Okay, good. And what was last time was we slept a tiny bit and on the plane, but um our destination is on J. I think we’ve got another hour, right? An hour and a half. 9:30 I think when we get there. So yeah, another hour and a half at least. We’re tired. But when we get there, we’ll roll our bikes to a hotel that’s pretty close to the train station. And there we will rest for three days. Three nights. Okay, we got off the train and here we go into Novatel in an walking our bikes. It’s right next to the train station. We’re going to see if we can sleep tonight. So, we arrived at the Novotel in Aner. This is going to be our first day and we are tired. This is We came here from San Francisco. So, this is our first stop. We’re going to rest and relax and get used to the time change and then we’ll be on our bikes in about 3 days. Nice bed, nice little seating area. Nice husband. Nice husband. Thank you, Patrick, for getting us here. Bonjour. Bonjour. And it’s got a nice We have a shower room, which is neat. Very nice shower room and sink. and we have a toilet room which is convenient to have both. So, good night. Over the next few days, we went sightseeing around an chateau uh that was built um starting in the 9th century and went through many transformations until the present time. And after we finished looking at the uh on chateau an we walked through the old city streets um that have half-timbered houses dating back to medieval times. Uh I think those were the late 1400s and 1500s. They had beautiful winding streets. I think on Jay has over 40 to 50 halftimbered houses. One of the main reasons we chose to ride our bikes through France was for the food. Here Patrick is enjoying our first breakfast in the hotel. We didn’t waste any time in the culinary sphere. And at lunchtime, the day after we arrived, we visited this lovely restaurant. Most restaurants had a menu board outside, oftentimes offering three courses, the entree, plate, and dessert. Patrick will walk us through our first lunch. So, where are we eating lunch today, Patrick? This is Grand Hos in an nice little place with a wonderful menu for €18. Uh, salad, main, dessert. We’re just starting out with tomato soup with ham and cod further on a salad. And what is the name of this restaurant? Grand Del. Great. Enjoy. Okay, so now our main courses have arrived. Yes. What are we looking at? The water glasses so you can see. So we’ve got mackerel. S has mackerel with a citrus sauce. And I have um some kind of chestnut sausage in crust. Wow. See the Okay. And our appetizers were excellent. Okay. Now, dessert. So, we’re on the dessert course and we had two choices. We got both of them. We got the kafu tea with peaches and caramel and vanilla ice cream. That’s what we have right there. And then we have colier and samana. I think cows and goat. We quickly learned how important the buleries would be for us. Every bulingerie has wonderful selection of breads and you might even find kiche and pizzas and sandwiches. So we every day we would visit the bulerie and get us some bread and other nice snacks. That’s not our restful days in an It was time to get serious about our cycling trip. The first part of our fiveweek cycling trip, we would be going along the Lir River. And for the second part of our trip, we would be following the Rome. The very first day of cycling, September 5th, we got on our bikes and headed to Summer around 34 miles or 54 kilometers of riding. We would be bicycling on the path known as the Laoir Aello, also known as the Ullo 6. For today, we would roughly follow the Lir River. The moment has arrived and we’re ready to set off on our big cycling adventure. Oh, there I go. But don’t worry, I don’t go very far. I just go around the corner and wait for Patrick to complain to him about something, which you’ll get to hear in just a second. That building over to our left is the Novotel that we stayed at. And inside that Novatel, they stored our bicycles for three days in a in a little room. And there to our right is the train station. So Patrick’s taking off here and he’s going to catch up with me. I’m just waiting for him around the corner. I’m very nervous. It’s my first time riding a bike in France. Um everything’s kind of foreign to me and um all the um weight on my bike is kind of thrown me for um a loop. It’s really heavy and I haven’t manipulated a bike with that much weight on it before. So, my um handlebars feel really wobbly. I’m just not used to it. So, I stopped up here and you will get to hear me complain to Patrick about my bike. My handlebars are really wobbly. Really wobbly. Okay. You don’t want to try it? Okay. Um, let’s go over right now. Just look at it real quick. Tell me I’m going crazy. I decide to walk for a little bit just to calm myself down. Um, and Patrick being ever so patient follows me, which I really appreciated. And so once I could get myself feeling a little bit more um a little bit better about cycling, I get back on. And here you can see that there is um cycle paths through the city. Uh but it’s alongside cars and that still like freaks me out. I have to get used to it. Uh and I eventually do. So, all I can say is that if I can cycle through France, uh, then anyone can. So, don’t be, uh, timid to try it. And there we go. We’re off on our big adventure. Heat. Heat. So, we’ve made it further down closer to where the uh Loir Aello is. I’m not quite there yet, but as you see, I’m getting off my bike because I’ve seen a roundabout up ahead and I do not know how to manage a roundabout on a bike. I’m nervous about it, trying to figure it out. Um, but you’ll see to the left, there it goes, a guy on a scooter and another guy on the bike just just beautifully go around that roundabout. Um, and that’s how it’s done. But I was not quite in the head space to do that yet. So, I’m going to use the crossing walk, the crosswalk, and walk my bike. During all this, Patrick is trying to navigate us. He’s got um his phone right there on his handlebars and he’s looking down. You stay on this. Yeah. Uh I don’t really know honestly. Jenny, hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. You want to see around the corner what it looks like up there? Huh? Sure. If there’s no uh if there’s no bike lane, we aren’t going to take it. We’re going to go off to the left. Okay. And figure out where to go because Why don’t you look at your map? Well, sure. But yeah, it’s okay. We can go this other way, but we’re going to have to um we’re going to do a little detour here and go to the left here because this looks too too much. So, and finally, we made it down to Laoir Aello. We’re down at the main bicycle path, the Eurov6. And there you see all these cyclists that are joining the path. They must have come from the uh from an somewhere. And this is where we will cycle for the remainder of the day. We’ll be on this um path. And we do need to share it with cars. Um, which I didn’t realize until we were actually on the path, but it’s um you share the route, but only with um an occasional car. It’s not a main road. So, we’re off. So, we will follow the Eurov6 as it meanders through countryides and small towns until we get to summer. Hey. Hey. Hey. A couple hours into our ride. We arrived at this lovely picnic site that was looking over the Lir River. Okay, so this is our first picnic on the Lir. There it is. and we left um on J and we are headed to summer and we’ve stopped at this lovely little park. Um the church bells are ringing noon. It’s noon. Um and we are having ah we’ve got some little kiches. We had that for breakfast this morning also. We went to the bakery and we Oh, this bread is so good. We had this last night just for dinner. That’s all we ate. Um, what is this bread called, Patrick? It’s called pan noa. So, walnut bread. It is still Could you open it up cuz it’s so pretty inside. Um, and then we have some uh grapes. So, we went first to the bulerie, the bread place, and um got this bread. Yeah. And then we went to the fruits and vegetables store and it was just fruits and vegetables. We got some grapes and then we went to the cheese store and this very nice young man went through all the cheeses with us. This is a comp. It’s 30 months age. 30 months. Yeah. But he’s there were three different ages. This is going to have the sharpest taste. I believe the strongest taste. It’s the most aged. Most aged. So um yes. So bone appetite and see you again. After having a delicious lunch, uh we got back on the bikes. It was just a gorgeous day riding through the countryside and through small towns. Eventually we made it to summer. This is not summer. We kept riding our bikes. Um, but we did get there eventually and I will end with a little short video of our accommodations in summer. Here is our night in summer. The place that we have booked. Um it is a very lovely little um apartment little room. You walk in here. There’s a bed and a little kitchen. Little kitchenette and a little bathroom. Nice bathroom. Nice place to put stuff on the sink and the shower. I think we’ll have a lovely stay, right, Patrick? A lovely day. So, okay, let’s bring our stuff in. Yeah.