Thursday 1 October 2009

La Buale to Tours

Monday 28th September.

Yesterday I woke up to find that I had a puncture in my front tyre. Fortunately Monsieur (who had an 800cc Gold Wing Honda) had all the kit to deal with such a disaster (he also had a 33ft yacht at our convenience but failed to tell us this until we were leaving). Madame was more concerned about presenting us with an enormous jar of fig confiture from her own garden which exercised us a tad as we don’t have a spare square centimetre of space in our luggage. They lived in the most ideal situation overlooking the salt marshes and a quarter mile from the sea. They make their own pressed apple juice for breakfast, and have two pussy cats called Romeo and I won’t insult your intelligence.
12 miles later we stopped at the walled medieval town of Guerande very similar to Lucca in Italy which was enchanting. Particularly St Martin’s Eglise which had a very special atmosphere. The streets were full of Charcuteries, Boulangeries, Patisseries, antique shops etc and there seemed to be a lot of school children having their lessons sitting in the square in front of the church.
We then cheated a bit and caught the train from La Baule on the coast all the way to Tours with a change at Nantes which exercised us a little as it was the rush hour and an awful lot of people seemed to want to get on when we had 11 minutes to get bikes and gear off and to another platform. Anyway we did it and on a blissfully comfy train (aren’t all the French trains) we arrived in Tours and realized we really don’t like big cities. But thinking positively we went to the Tourist office who found us a B and B/Gites thing for the night which was very central and comfy and allowed me (Alec) to make Vivi a cup of tea “in bed” in the morning. We had supper in a moderate brasserie in the 15c Place Plumereau surrounded by 20 year olds (Tours is a University city) expecting to see the Capulets coming out of one corner and Othello from another (ha caught you there eh!!) After that we found an internet cafe - whole new experience and even used Skype!!

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