Day Seventy: Le Pellerin to Ancenis

June 5, 2017

Disenchantment with French business hours reached a peak (or trough) for us today. We began with the hotel lady, who had negotiated the 8 a.m. release time for our bikes. At 7:55 we were down there, with our bags. And as "promised" at 8:00 the lady exited the locked portion f the hotel and opened the door to where our bikes were. So far so so good. Then the lady asked if we had slept well, and we had. But when I said to her "Ah, but this must be a little early for you, you lost some sleep for our bikes", she replied "What do you mean, I have been in there (slaving over) the breakfast preparations for some time". "WTF", I thought. We have been cooling our heels upstairs for an hour and half and you have been down here all that time?

Oh well, at least the ferry was prompt in taking us to the other side of the river. From out in the river we had a good view of Le Pellerin - it really is a cute town. Too bad it was all closed yesterday. In the photo, you can also see our hotel on the extreme left. It was very cute and nice, except for its restaurant being closed and its iron grip on our bikes.

Famously, on the other side of the river from Le Pellerin is the bistrot Le Paradis. These pilgrims arrived at Paradis, but of course it was closed too. So we pedalled off looking for any other heavenly stuff.

Cyclists pile onto the ferry for the brief trip across the Loire

Le Pellerin, with our pink hotel on the left

The problem with anything heavenly today, though, was Pentecost. It seemed to create many more closures than Ascension Day. In fact from Pellerin to way past Nantes we found 100%, that is, 100% of businesses closed. That even includes Tabac shops, which are usually immune to closures.

Even though La Loire a Velo is one of our favourite routes, we had to admit that there was little to look at between Le Pellerin and Nantes. So we occupied ourselves running down French business practices. This was fuelled when we passed a truck from a security service with signage that bragged they would be at your place in one hour in case of emergency. One hour? In that amount of time an average team of burglars could load up your sofa and computer and be half way to Switzerland! At home, a security service would never dare to mention a time like an hour. Rather they would say "Immediate dispatch" - even if maybe indeed it could take an hour to get there.

By comparision, though, in the current terrorist attack in London, police appeared within 8 minutes. That sounds like a more reasonable standard.

Security service - maybe not the best example of on the ball business.

We have many fond memories of Nantes, from visits when we were guided by Michel. This weekend he is down south with German visitors, so we essentially just blasted through. Still we appreciated passing by the former merchants' houses by the river, the warship museum, the island of the Machines, and so forth. Then we headed out to and beyond St. Luce, where Michel lives, zooming on toward all the wonders of the Loire.

Former merchants' houses line the quai at Nantes.

While we were zooming, though, we were mainly thinking about food. This of course is a major theme of this blog, but in this case it was getting a bit serious. Along the route, at any rate, we had seen not one single commerce open at Nantes. We ate the last of our Jeanette cake, and that helped, but it is hard to cycle on so little. We had hopes for Mauves sur Loire, and even gambled on going off route looking for something open. All we found was a strange pizza automat thing that claimed to bake you a fresh one in 3 minutes, once you drop your 12 euros in the slot. We passed on that - not quite desperate enough yet!

How about La Varenne? They brag about being on the Loire a Velo. But they are not into it enough to provide either a bike lane or any services other than the closed bakery in the square at the top of their hill.

Ok, what about Saint Simon, or Champtoceaux? Nope. Well lookit, Oudon is a big place, and we had met Michel there once in front of the Carrefour Market - closed!

Fine then, Ancenis. Could we possibly go 60 km from Le Pellerin and not find a single open business? I had some secret hopes about Ancenis, because I happened to know of a kebab place just beyond the bridge. Nope, all closed. Whole town, closed.

We phoned to a hotel we knew of, and at least they were open, but their restaurant? Closed. We decided to go anyway, so we would at least have a bed to crawl into and die. But hey, in a little corner of a little mall opposite the hotel a kebab place was open. Hooray for Islam (at least in this case). The people running the place were from Tunisia, and were very sweet. They prepared huge plates of chicken, beef, fries, and salad. They even understood about cooking beef well. It was the kind of food that Dodie generally does not really go for, but this time, she ate it all!

Tomorrow we expect France will wake up, reopen, and say "What was the problem?". Then we will be back to wall to wall bakeries and great towns, with our next major target being Angers. A few chocolate eclairs and a few great churches and all will be forgiven!

There were many fields of nice looking leeks. How about leek soup?

Our hotel at Ancenis. Michel had sent another suggestion, but we missed picking it up in time. Still, our room here has a nice desk, good for blogging!

Non Pentecost observant guys saved the day for us.

What they were watching on the TV. It was not Al Jazeera, exactly, but a channel called Arab24.

Today's ride: 60 km (37 miles)
Total: 3,308 km (2,054 miles)

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