Day 70: Ste Luce to Nantes and back

April 16, 2024

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Our plan for today seemed well conceived and should have been swell. So why am I chilled and just starting the blog at 10 p.m.? The idea was to ride with Michel into Nantes, to Sardines a Velo, where mechanic Josephine would reasonably quickly replace our drive trains, disassemble and lubricate our Nexus hubs, replace brake pads, and improve my stand. It sounds like a long list, but would not be too bad. Meanwhile we would walk off the Machine Island where Sardines is, and go see the Cathedral and other central Nantes delights.

The day started quite cold , at 9 degrees, but we can handle that. So let's ride to Nantes:

We have never quite gotten a sense of Ste Luce as a town, with a well defined centre. But here is Dodie buzzing by the bakery, which could qualify as being the centre.

The ride into Nantes is not very noteworthy, but here we are, arrived outside the Jardin des Plantes, which is just by the Nantes train station.

For the drive train rebuild we needed a front chain ring, a chain, and a rear sprocket, in addition to the disassembly and lubrication of the Nexus hubs. Sardines had the parts for this, save the chainring (38 tooth), so the plan was to reverse the existing rings, and pray. Now as we cycled toward Sardines I noticed bike shop, and its door was open. This was Urban Cycle. Worth a try? We zipped in, and hey! they had our two 38 tooth chainrings.

The chainrings, with the eye watering 56 euros each price stickers.

We showed up at Sardines before their 10 a.m. opening time, But Josephine welcomed us in.

We dropped the bikes, after testing that Josephine could really reach us in "England" (i.e. +44) with her phone. She would call when the bikes would be ready. Meanwhile, Michel headed back to Ste Luce to await further developments, and we walked into downtown.

Some of the first buildings we saw looked pretty plain to me, but these were University buildings, and Dodie argued correctly that they were a legitimate part of the Nantes cityscape.

But of course it was the older stuff that was more interesting. In this case, much of the interest came from the fact that they appeared to be sinking in the Loire mud.

See the upper left window, one in from the edge - it shows the sagging of the building.

The buildings here are leaning on each other for support.

And here the brasserie is cozying up to the cinema!

We came to a branch of la Mie Caline, and decided to store away some sandwiches for tomorrow on the road. These French bakery sandwiches are really great - made from real ingredients, and suitable to keep cyclists going indefinitely.

If you throw in some eclairs, you have a nutritionally complete meal!

Even at a chain like la Mie Caline, there is great attention here to the origin and quality of foods. The sign below shows the national origin of meats in the sandwiches.

We were now more or less in the centre of the old town, not at the cathedral (which is not exactly central), but near the St. Nicholas Bssilica.

A central fountain, with typical buildings.

Inside the basilica. A lot of the stained glass had a rather modern geometric design, that we we not much impressed by.

There was the requisite Joan of Arc statue.

The main altar sort of reflected the building's gothic arched design.

One tower outside had some nice golden angels.

Nantes isclearly a big cycling city, where we see lots in motion and lots stacked up in front of businesses, on bike paths, and at the railway station. Among the bikes there seems to be a greater than average number of cargo bikes. The most common use of these is to ferry kids around, but we also noticed, for example, plumbers operating out of a bike, or as below, an electrician.

This handsome half timbered house sticks out in downtown Nantes. It often pops up in tourist materials, but so far I know nothing more about it.

This building I think was the stock exchange.

Overall, old Nantes has a rather Parisian air.

Some commerce, on the way to the cathedral.

Google Maps had listed the cathedral as "temporarily closed". That was sort of accurate. There had been an arson fire in 2020, and cleanup was still in progress. This would be followed by structural repairs, presumably.

The cathedral, started in the 15th century, was under construction for several hundred years. But it was battered by bombs in 1944 and had a major fire in 1972. Then there was the 2020 one, which was started by a Rwandan church volunteer. I so far have not found the motive.

Restoration efforts, high up an exterior wall.

Just by the cathedral stands the Port St Pierre, one of the original gates of the city.

Just beside Port St Pierre is the installation of a playful sculpture of a beaver. This is just a little quirk of Nantes.

As a big sea trading port, Nantes was in the way of many imports, travelling along the Loire to Paris. This included exotic plants and trees. They ended up in a botanical garden, just near the train station - The Jardin des Plantes. We ended up there too, and we we found not only many named plants and trees, but ponds and lawns containing ducks and geese.

In Jardin de Plantes - a flower bed with poppies.

A number of the ducks and geese were new to us, and we gleefully got their photos, adding quickly to our tally of birds spotted this year. Others were old favourites that we have seen before:

It looks like Dodie may be arguing with this lady, but they are just having a chat, likely about walking poles.

It was a really exciting walk through the gardens. We landed up just outside, at something called the Cafe des Plantes, I think. We went for the plat du jour, at a reasonable 12 euros. It was a cheap cut of beef, chewy but not tough, and of course, undercooked by our standards.

We now began our trudge back to the machine island and to Sardines bike shop, where we figured the bikes would surely be nearing completion.

By the station, the bicycle orientation of Nantes could be seen in the bike storage facilities. One luxury one, with 220 spots, was advertised as secure. For the general run of people, bikes were stacked in a two level rack with a bring your own lock system:

General bike storage rack at the station.

As we walked back toward Sardines, Michel had set out from home again. He would track us down on the way, and we all proceeded to the shop.

We arrived to find Josephine still working away. She had run into a glitch with Dodie's bike, which I will try to explain in a couple of sentences: Dodie's real wheel attaches not with the traditional slotted dropouts that allow back and forth/ sort of up and down sliding of the wheel, but with a system that allows the chain to be tensioned by turning some screws. We have that, plus the fact that unlike with a derailleur system, the Nexus chain is a fixed length, and it is always to be taut. Also the wheel can not be too far forward, else there will not be enough clearance to the fender, and mud will get stuck. These are all factors that mean there is not a lot of flexibility in how the rear wheel and chain are installed. Into this I had thrown the monkey wrench of asking that Dodie's rear cog be changed from 21 to 22 teeth, to give her a little lower gearing in general. Josephine had been puzzling over this, because no length of chain that she cut was right - either too tight or too loose. The final solution was to go back to 21 teeth. Evidently the manufacturer of the bike, in choosing the tires that were on there, and with everything else, had to have 21 teeth. This compares to my bike, from the same manufacturer but with the slightly different wheels and mounting system, that had 22 teeth.

Josephine struggles with the chain length issue.

The front had 38 teeth, something Josephine also thought was a little weird.

It added up to us having to wait for the job to complete. There was not really space inside the workshop, that we saw at first, so it put us on the street. And there is little or nothing nearby in terms of existing or open cafes or restaurants to perch at. Meanwhile it started to rain. The photo below shows my phone, with rain starting to accumulate on it, while the weather app assures me it is sunny in Nantes!

We stole some chairs from what appeared to be a nearby closed cafe, and huddled with them under and overhang. In this way, we were emulating down and out street people. The cafe owner came and bawled us out, but Michel gave as good as he got, and the man left us alone, at least until he totally closed up and took his chairs.

Meanwhile, I would periodically duck into the workshop to kibbitz with Josephine, who did not mind explaining what was happening. But eventually we had to leave her alone, to get on with it. It was now past the 6 o'clock closing time of the shop, but Josephine hung in there for us! The shop has a policy of supporting long distance cyclists, but she was also just so sweet, and devoted to the job.

Once we were kicked out of our street people spot, Josephine found us a perch behind the shop, and there, with Michel, we waited.

It looks like it might go together! Steve now sees very well how the gear wire goes through and attaches to the "cassette".

Josephine at last brought forth Dodie's bike and invited her to try it out. Dodie had been walking all day and her knees were quite glitched. So when she got on the bike and could not quite manage to pedal it, it seemed at first it could be the knees. But Josephine looked at the scene and had an "OMG". She grabbed the bike and disappeared back in to the workshop.

Meanwhile one of the other workers in the shop was quitting for the day. His cat had sat all along by the shop computer, but now it was time to go. The thing is, this cat was trained to walk on a leash. For this photo he was a little balky, but generally that is how he travels.

Josephine re-emerged. She too had been getting tired, and she had attached the crank arms not at 180 degrees to each other as they of course always are, but about 10 degrees crooked. That had screwed Dodie up big time.

About an hour after closing all was done and we settled up our bill. I think the maintenance had cost about 600 or more euros. But after 20,000 km on each bike, this did not seem so terrible. I also ended with an effective new stand, and we bought an extra eight brake pads. These are not cheap! The shop had an amazing box full of them. We had scoured Portugal for these, and are convinced there are none in that entire country!

Wow, a box of Magura hydraulic rim brake pads.

The season must be moving on, because well after 8 p.m. we cycled home to Ste Luce still in daylight. But having sat out in the rain or otherwise for some time, and in 11 degree temperature, we were definitely chilled.

Fortunately, Jeannette had the ideal meal ready to go. At the heart of it was "raclette", which is a type of cheese, but also a cooking technique, akin to "fondue". The cheese cut in triangles is melted in a cooker made for the purpose, and meats like sliced ham may be added on top. Then the melted cheese (and ham or whatever) is scraped (racle, I think) over boiled potatoes.

Tomorrow we will beetle on up the river, now heading for Paris. We will do it with shiny new drive trains, and the memory of yet another great visit with Michel and Jeannette!

Today's ride: 37 km (23 miles)
Total: 3,416 km (2,121 miles)

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