Day 19: Ingrandes to Chatelain

August 28, 2024

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The breakfast offering at the Lion d'Or seemed reasonable (for France), though the 8 euros mentioned in Booking.com had turned into 10 euros. At that rate, we decided to take advantage of the bakery, just across the street. I had dropped in there yesterday evening, and had had some difficulty communicating with the man. I thought it was my broken French, but Dodie discovered this morning that the people were in fact from Morocco, and French was not their native language. It was intresting, because the bakery had all the earmarks of a traditional French bakery - the maroon exterior paint, "artisan boulanger" claim, and even the Banette affiliation. But on closer inspection, the people had added "kabob" functionality as well. The upshot was that when Dodie this morning asked for our traditional lunchtime "poulet crudités" sandwich, the people went off and cooked the chicken, adding their characteristic flavourings. It took over 20 minutes, but the result was great.

Poulet Crudités - chicken and veggies sandwich.

Dodie started off the ride with some bird spotting. There doesn't seem to be anything really fancy hereabouts, though perhaps a bird feeder and some time would turn up something. We were happy with these cute swallows:

We quickly found ourselves in a rural countryside, with fields and crops all around, and gentle hills - mostly up! We passed several towns and villages, each with the characteristic stone church in the centre, and mostly dull white, stone or stucco houses. The road had very few cars, making the whole outing just super pleasant.

Some houses, while still dull white, were very attractive.

The sunflowers were still trying to follow us, but they are getting ripe, and tired of swiveling around.

Of course this kind of countryside also features cattle and horses. We are tempted to call the white ones shown below Charolais, but their extra muscles have us leaning to Blond d'Aquitaine.

Some fields had special crops, that invited a closer look.

The yellow pods had white beans. Looks like for soup.

We found a "Proxi" market here in Le Lion d'Angers, good for some Babybel cheeses and not tree ripened nectarines.

Even if the nectarines were not 100%, Dodie was also given a scratch and win card, from Le Velo Francette. The Francette is the route we will be following up to Caen, and clearly it runs by here (begins at La Rochelle and goes to Caen). The symbol of the Francette is the cock (coq), and to win you had to scratch three coqs.

I'm a loser, but I still have a chance to submit a winning photo.

The Francette follows the Mayenne river.

As the day heated up, we ran into these refreshing looking passionfruits. But no, they were inedible.

We reached the Mayenne, by this attractive old mill.

and we began to follow the river on a dirt but very usable path.

The Mayenne looks navigable, and yes, here are a few boats.

We passed some really pleasant stone buildings on the route, like the one just below. Across the river and on a bit of a ridge, there also were some quite grand buildings.

During the day, Michel called to check on us. One thing he said was that flooding had damaged part of our route, and we might run in to route barrée somewhere. We agreed that for both of us, when we run into these things we wait for proof that the route is impassable, and never accept the sign at face value.

We had this in mind, as we encountered the sign below. A detour was indicated, to some town we had never heard of, so we just blew by.

Some kms down the way, we came to another route barrée sign, but this was the backside of it. So apparently we had been riding on the impassable path?

Looking back at this sign, we see that whoever put it up wanted cyclists to dismount and walk up the mountain to the right. Yeah sure.

We soon crossed the river, at Daon, which styles itself a tourism town. We did not see much of note there.

From Daon we left the river and headed off on a diagonal for a chambre d'hotes that we had found in Chatelain. This was both off route and out in the boonies, but that's how it worked out when we were looking for places, back when.

Meanwhile, the day had heated up considerably, with it now being well over 30 degrees, in bright sun. I was attracted by what looked like a roadside apple tree. I had to jump a ditch to get to it, but was dismayed to find that the "apples" were on branches with two inch long thorns, and were so firm that part of the top of one I tried to pick came off as I yanked. Yet, the fruit still looked like apple! I brought my prize to Dodie, who started to hack at it with a paring knife. It resisted mightily, and I was predicting that she would gash her hand or her bike seat or something with all the force that was being needed. We are still completely puzzled about what this darn thing was.

Despite the heat, we continued along, through tall corn fields .

We followed our GPS, to the point Dodie had plotted out as the location of our chambre d'hotes. We were getting really far out in the middle of nowhere, but a driveway did appear. This led us onto a property with several attractive buildings, a pond containing ducks and geese, and a pool. I spotted a woman moving among the buildings, a good sign, because at places like this it can be hard to nail down what is the place and who is your host. The woman glanced at us, but disappeared. So we proceeded deeper into the attractive property.

The property achieved part of its attractiveness from a deep coating of loose brown gravel over its driveways. Dodie took this opportunity to skitter in the loose gravel and once again ditch her bike. The bike hit the ground, and so did Dodie, but this time she got a foot out and avoided a total collapse.

Now a woman emerged from somewhere, looking on the crash scene with total indifference. "Quite a slippy surface you have here", I said, but got no reaction. We picked Dodie and the bike up, and announced ourselves as the Steve Miller party, with a reservation on Booking. "Yeah well" said the lady, or however you say that in French, "you can't have a booking, because the gite is closed (so get lost)". "But, but, we blithered, the Booking, and how about our pre-paid 85 euros??" "Not my problem", said the lady, "so go away".

At this point two things happened. I raised Booking.com on the telephone and Dodie began to explain our situation to them (out in the hot sun!). And the lady's husband arrived. "Hang on", he said, "we have several other possible rooms". The lady pointed out to him that these were rented out for tomorrow, and anyway were still being cleaned. But Mr. just asked us if we could hang on for an hour, until a room would be ready. We agreed, and in fact when we went to check on the room, the cleaning lady declared all rooms done. So we were in. Very hot, tired, and frazzled now, but in. Some slight glitches remained, like no towels, no garbage container, and a massive duvet on the bed, suitable only for the depths of winter.

We triggered a dispute between Mr and Mrs hosts.

The property itself is quite wonderful, with impressive buildings and cornfields out our window.

We will have fun crafting a flame for this place when Booking asks for the review, but for now at least we are not wandering about in the sun looking for a place to stay!

Today's ride: 66 km (41 miles)
Total: 497 km (309 miles)

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