Day 28: Chateaudun to Vendome

September 23, 2023

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We had left the Veloscenie at Illiers-Combray, as it continued west to Mont St. Michel. We instead picked up the Loir - Chemin St. Jacques bike route, heading further south, toward Tours. You can see these two routes at Illiers-Combray below.

This is what we are following now:

We are rather tickled to be on the Chemin St Jacques, which is just a fun concept. And we are not imposters about it, because with a slight stop at Valencia for three months we are indeed on the road to Santiago, which we will eventually reach by the Camino Portuguese route, next Spring.

The signs, and our stored track brought us, as it happens, from the Ibis directly to the chateau in Chateaudun. The Loire, which we are soon coming to, is of course famous for its many chateaus, but the Loir has a certain number too, and some very attractive towns as well.

The Chateaudun castle is distinguished first by its tall circular Donjon.

But as we learned from the poster below, there are other sections of the chateau hard by each other, and each with a different style and no doubt date of construction.

There is a Sainte Chapelle here (left) and some other wings, in gothic and renaissance style. There are 8 centuries of history to the castle.

Just beside the castle was the Rue Saint Lubin, which was the main street of the medieval town. The street leads down from the castle hill to the lower areas by the river. It was fascinating to lead the bikes down it, looking at very old buildings with explanatory plaques, and the remains of a former church, plus the former city walls and gate.

The Rue Saint Lubin. This first house, at the top of the street, was of course famous. It's the Maison Louis Esnault, who was an architect from the 16th century. The half timbers form St. Andrew's crosses.

The street ends in steps. No bikes in the 16th century!

Remains of the Abas Gate, which was the western gate of the city.

Here is another angle on the gate. Dodie in particular is fascinated by ancient walls and gates.

Here is a view looking up at the back end of the chateau from below.

Here is a sort of random piece of architecture, below the chateau.

This house from the 16th century housed some of the architects of the chateau. It is for sale!

We left Chateaudun, crossing the Loir, which in fact we would be more or less following all day. The river is neither wide nor deep, but provides a lot of picturesque views.

We have been seeing a fair number of pheasants in the fields, but had not got a shot of one, either due to rain or to them running off at high speed. But I did get the guy below. They are more colourful than I had realized.

Earlier in the tour my bike had developed an inexplicable squeak in the front end. It drove us crazy, but none of our looking and researching could explain or fix it. At the same time by coincidence my rear brakes started to squeal. For that I cleaned the rim with wet wipes, and then with some kind of household cleaner spray, but there was no change. I even put on a very thin coat of grease - no change. Then came the first day of downpour rains, and magically all squeaks disappeared. Great. But today, after being rained on a lot yesterday, the bike developed another funny noise in the front. It was a clack-clack, something that in all past experience is caused by a zip tie flapping in the spokes. But no, no zip ties at fault this time. Riding and thinking, all I could come up with was ball bearings loose in the hub. I felt I could diagnose this if I could spin the wheel freely in my hands, while holding the axle. So in the town of Saint Denis Les Ponts we pulled into a small park. This had the advantage of a bakery down the street. While I played with the wheel, Dodie went and got the work of art shown below!

To take off the wheel you need to free up the brakes, making a good time to check out the pads. Ugh. The pads were totally worn out. OK, we had brought along a sort of adequate supply. I will have to delve into the other three sets of pads very soon.

Spinning the wheel, the bearing did not feel loose, but it also gave the impression of having no grease in it. I spun it this way and that, forward and back, trying to guess what the inside was like. We have no cone wrenches with us, which would have allowed some more positive action.

The wheel went back on and we set off (having inhaled the tartelette, of course). And - total silence. The bike rolled smooth as glass and silently. Go figure! Now, do we bring it to a bike shop (when and if we ever find one), or call it good?

Not only was the bike now quiet, but we had this perfect path to ride along.

As we approached the town of Montigny le Gannelon, a completely unexpected and quite beautiful chateau appeared above the river. It's towers definitely gave it a fairy castle vibe. It's a renaissance design, and apparently the family that owns it have lived there for 200 years.

Looking up the Loir, below the chateau, there is a water wheel from 1851 that was used to pump water to the chateau.

Shortly after the chateau we entered the rather neat little town of Cloyes sur le Loir. We are always alert for what we call "ants", which are people streaming away from a food source, usually a bakery - each carrying a baguette. If you follow the flow backward, then you too can score a baguette, or preferably an eclair. In this case, people were coming with baguettes from further along the main street, but also with market baskets holding the likes of carrot bunches, from a side street. We followed the side street, and came upon one of the few markets we have managed to hit so far on this tour.

The cheese truck had the usual vast assortment of often mysterious cheeses. But there is one that I really like, with whole peppercorns in it. Usually I don't find it, but it was here. Unfortunately I failed to get its photo, so I don't know the exact name. That's too bad, because some with peppercorns are still not good, and this one was great.

Here is that cheese I liked, sitting on its wrapping paper, which illustrates 20 kinds of cheese. We have sometimes thought we should do a cheese tour of France, because each cheese is associated with a particular town or region.

We left town, cruising town the attractive main street.

Soon we stopped at some picnic tables by the river, for lunch which included our treasures from the market. At this spot we could also watch some fishermen, this time equipped with inflatable boats, but seemingly also not successful.

One fisherman got his rod hung up in some branches, and the three spent about half and hour trying to untangle it.

The route now took us on some narrow roads, past farms and fields.

We ran into a crop that at first we thought might be sorghum again, but now we are pretty sure it was millet.

If this is millet, that sure is a lot of it!

This farm had a lot of buildings, made of stone. So different from Canadian farms.

Only 1654 km to Santiago. We could do that pretty quick!

We are entering the region of lots of chateaus. Here is a sort of random but nice one.

We reached Vendome a little faster than we had figured, and before the time when we had predicted for the BnB lady what we would be there. That was good, because to our surprise there was a lot to look at. Vendome has a giant Abbey and church, called the Holy Trinity Abbey. It was built starting in 1032 by Benedictine monks. Until now we had not really heard of Vendome (except on Booking) or its Abbey, but frankly the thing seemed as grand as the cathedrals we have been visiting, and the town so pleasant, with long walking street, the area in front of the Abbey, and around a tall bell tower, all forming a terrific town core.

We came into town from the back of the abbey, with a view also to the bell tower ahead.

The facade has an intricate tracery that is really impressive.

Inside there are arches seemingly as high as in the famous cathedrals

The stained glass was a little different in that it often portrayed figures, rather than designs.

Here we have figures flanked by kind of modern art glass.

The ambiance of the town relies on the abbey and other towers.

Here is a bell tower that stands in the middle of a commercial street.

This statue of Marshall Rochambeau stands with the bell tower in the background. Rochambeau led a French army that helped the Americans defeat the British at a critical battle of Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781. I had forgotten that the French helped the Americans, to rile the British, back then. This was already 20 years after the British had kicked the French out of Canada.

Our BnB is down this long walking street. See La Mie Caline, over on the left? It's open Sunday morning (tomorrow), with croissants and cookies!

This 12th century chapel, half way down the walking street, identifies itself with the Chemin St Jacques. I went in for a look and found it is now just an exhibition space, but still they will stamp your creanciale.

Dodie continues down this really nice street toward our BnB. The owners, Muriel and Gerard (might have to correct that) were standing in the street waiting for us, and gave us a really nice welcome. Our space is a small apartment. It would be easy to stay here for a much longer time.

As we were shown the various facilities of the apartment, we mentioned that we are normally too tired to turn on the TV. But our hosts turned it on just as a demo. Interestingly, it had major coverage of the Pope's currently ongoing visit to Marseille. I was surprised that the event had completely filled a large stadium, since French are touted as being mainly atheist now. A few random shots of the TV screen show me some inspired marketing. The event is billed as something like "Pope Francis and the Meeting of the Hearts at the Stadium" and their logo is "Mosaique D'Esperance", which is something like Coalition of Hope. I think it's cool. Only thing, Francis does look rather tired. But hey, he's 86.

Today's ride: 59 km (37 miles)
Total: 1,504 km (934 miles)

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Rich FrasierWe had a clicking issue during our "Lack of Imagination" tour in 2021. This was a Bike Friday tandem, and we were running rebuilt wheels so I don't know whether this would apply to you. In our case, the clicking came from the rear wheel bearings moving within the wheel housing. The bearings were a sealed package, and are designed to be press fit into the wheel. They should not move once pressed into the wheel. In our case, they were "rocking" back and forth inside that space. You would have to remove the axle to be able to detect this, I think.

We were able to fix the problem by epoxying the bearing race into the wheel, but two tours later we suffered a catastrophic failure of the rear wheel bearings.

So my advice is to continue riding, but be prepared to have the clicking wheel inspected by a reliable bike shop when you get home. And probably replace the bearings. Depending on what bearings you have, there may be different strength bearings, so you might be able upgrade the carrying capacity. It's worth considering doing this on both bikes once you get home.

Hopefully your problem is different from ours and all of this information will prove to be a waste of time! :)
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