Day 4 - Near Questembert to Near La Poissonière - France, Top to Bottom

April 28, 2023

Day 4 - Near Questembert to Near La Poissonière

The day started ominously. As I brought my bike around to load it up, I noticed something small fall off the rear derailleur and discovered that the bolt holding the cable on had sheared off. The owner of the bicycle hostel asked me what was wrong and when I showed her she said “Oh! Okay.” as if sh had been waiting for this occasion for years. She rushed off and returned with a complete kit of bicycle tools and began diagnosing the problem. A couple of the French cyclist took a look and began pointing and conversing in French. One of the French cyclist pointed at the nut holding my rear fender to the frame, suggesting I could use that nut for the derailleur. This was silly because the Ogre has numerous mount points for bottles, racks, fenders, etc., all filled with unused nuts. So many that it seems the frame’s primary purpose it to hold nuts. So, I took one of the 14 unused nuts from the front fork and it fit! Problem solved. Crisis averted.

The cycling today was to and then along the Loire Valley route. This is mostly on country roads, but with very little traffic. It is all super well signed, so though we were following our GPX files with our Garmin’s, one could easily just follow the signs.

One thing I am learning is that every town has a church with a tall steeple located in the center of the town. Every town also has a boulangerie, usually also located near the center of town. So, the church steeples are effectively boulangerie locators. This is useful because the boulangerie’s have everything we could want during the day. Baguette sandwiches for lunch, and pastries for morning snack, pastries for desert after lunch and pastries for afternoon snack if needed. So, any time we are ready for lunch or a pastry, we just look for the next church steeple and go there.

Tonight’s stay is at a chambre d’hotel near La Poissonière. The owner had prepared an excellent quiche for dinner, along with cucumber salad, bread and strawberries. She was into herb and medical plant farming and spent a bunch of time getting Google to translate the French words for some of her ingredients into English. Problem was I didn't know what they were in English either.

It was Doug and Donna's 39th wedding anniversary today. Happy Anniversary and thanks for spending it with me on my France bike trip idea.

The route was extremely well signed, like this one. Also, notice the boulangerie marker, also known as a church steeple.

Where I live, they periodically do a "lane diet" where they turn a four lane road into a three lane road (two lanes + center turn lane) with bike lanes, and there are always loud complaints from those who are sure it will create traffic problems. Here they do lane diets on two lane roads, turning them into single lane roads with bike lanes. I think it's great.

The chambre d'hotel had two very friendly dogs. This one took it upon herself to guard my bicycle.

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Today's ride: 54 miles (87 km)
Total: 224 miles (360 km)

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