The last day of a tour is not always exciting, and today could be used to prove that point. I guess I could summarize it as: Breakfast in Tours, ride around in the city to kill time, train to Nevers (with a sandwich on board), train to Beaune, train home, and supper at home. But you never know what, or rather who, you might encounter on the train. Two other cyclists got on the Tours to Nevers train along the line, and had some difficulty stuffing their bikes in the space allowed. In Nevers, they got off with me, and I saw them pedal away. As an aside, the train we came into Nevers on promptly died in the station. It was supposed to head for Lyon by reversing in the station, but one of the two sets of cars could only go one direction. It was still there when we left again, an hour later. Anyway, because the first train was occupying the track my onward going train was supposed to use, I had to unload the panniers from the bike, take everything down two flights of stairs to a tunnel, walk it over to another staircase, back up two flights to another platform that was free, and then load it into the train to Beaune. Much to my surprise, the two cyclists I though had gone off for good reappeared and loaded their bikes in next to mine (this second train was newer than the first and had more room for bikes). Recognizing one another, we sat together and chatted about our tours.

They were Mike, originally from Liverpool, and Chiara an Italian. They had ridden from Italy over the alps to France, across France, through the Massif Central and up to the Loire valley. They were taking the train because their holidays were running short, and they needed to get back to Italy where they both worked. They planned to ride from Dijon to Basel, and then catch a train through Switzerland to Lake Garda, where they lived. Chiara was riding a custom made mountain bike made for her by the son of the man who made her father's bike, a fact I find interesting for what it says about cycling culture in Italy. Mike just had his old bike that he had used to tour on for years, all covered with stickers, and sporting a fluorescent air pump. (I'm writing this from memory, so if Mike and/or Chiara read this and find a flaw, contact me and I'll fix it!)Having a conversation about lots of things cycling related and not made the kilometers fly by, and so what could have been a boring trip was in the end one of the highlights of the tour.

So what do I take from this tour? First, I am going to try harder to avoid heavily touristed regions, at least during the high season. My tolerance for "art" shops is more limited that it used to be. I prefer cooler weather over heat. There is more variety to the regions of France than can be imagined, and each region has its charms. I prefer to sleep on the ground, but when the campground is noisy, I don't sleep well. I'm much slower than I used to be, but I think I see more. Oh, yeah, one more thing: the SNCF sucks.