2019 - Loire Valley by Bicycle with Bob: Day 8: Sun 8 Sep

Walk: 22km

A cool 6 deg early this morning and it stayed cool and mainly cloudy (12-15 deg) most of the day. About 1500h the sun appeared and warmed us up.

We both slept very well after our ride yesterday, nevertheless we were up early keen to check out Angers. Rode into the city and parked at the Tourist Inf Centre. We’ve cottoned on the self-guided city walking tour, just follow the line on the footpath and read the commentary off the tourist map. They hit all the highlights and you don’t need to work on your nav skills.

Number one on the map was the impressive La Chateau D’Angers, a massive structure that started its life way back in the 9th century. It has been growing ever since. The history of the Fort/Castle/Chateau is intrinsically linked to Angers every step of the way. A special exhibition inside was the medieval Apocalypse Tapestries a staggering 104m long depicting life at that medieval time.

The Castle was hard to match for the rest of the day but we did see some very old but nice churches and ex-churches, an Art Deco building only 100 years young, a Theatre from the 19 century and a whole stack of medieval houses which made for an interesting and fruitful day.

Upon retrieving the bikes, we went for a ride along the river and run into a full-blown food and music festival which occupied us for an hour or so. Just to give the legs a stretch we then rode to the Botanical Gardens/Amusement Park a little way out of the city. But we decided that the €20 entrance fee (it was mainly for the amusement park which we weren't interested in) was a bit steep, so we rode back to the city and after picking up some supplies for dinner headed to the cabin. Bob excelled again with a tuna salad accompanied by leftover sauerkraut and potatoes.