Andrew had enjoyed his few days cycling in France at the start of my ride to the Mediterranean last year, so this year he agreed to come with me in an attempt to ride down the Loire, from Nevers to St Nazaire, a distance of about 400 miles. There is a signposted cycle route all the way between these two towns - the Eurovelo6 - with much of the way being traffic-free cycle-ways or quiet back roads. And of course this route had the attraction, particularly for Andrew, of being all downhill, following the admirable example of the river. The main difficulty, we recognised at an early point, would be getting to and from the start and end points. It was difficult to determine which trains would carry fully assembled bikes, how to book the bike places and so on, so in the end we decided to buy bike bags from the internet (Tifosi, £36 each) and carry the dis-assembled bikes on the trains as luggage.
With that decided we booked hotel rooms for Calais, Nevers and Dover, booked train seats for Calais to Nevers and St Nazaire to Calais, arranged money and insurance, had the bikes serviced and made a checklist – very similar to last year’s. On the day my panniers weighed in at 10.4 kg this time, a bit more than last year. Finally to get down to Dover Trisha kindly agreed to come with us to the port then drive the car back to Ware. Thanks, beloved. And this is how it went:
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