It was another sunny morning and we set off along the river. It was nice to see signs forbidding cars, motorbikes and mopeds as we sped along with a nice little tailwind. Apparently there is  500 miles of cycle route along the Loire, and we were on a particularly nice section. We took our time, stopping to admire the views on a number of occasions, but it occured to me that we needed bread for lunch, and being 11.45 there was a good chance the boulangeries would be closing presently. We veered off the river side road into a sleepy little town that had a very smart village map on a flowery verge, and a large church, but not much else. We cycled up and down its little streets a bit but found no shops at all. Just then I heard a car horn and instantly recalled the noisy bread vans we’d been missing lately. I pedalled off towards the sound with Kez chasing behind and sure enough we caught up with a little van delivering bread to the boulangerieless village folks. The driver was pleased to sell me a wonderfully fresh baguette. It might sound like we’re food obsessed, but when you can only carry a day’s worth of fresh produce, the purchase of food becomes quite important.
We rolled into Saint Mathurin-sur-Loire and visited the tourist office who had a booklet mapping all the cycle routes up the Loire. Following the directions we crossed a huge green bridge and bumped into an Australian woman who was cycle touring in the opposite direction. We swapped info on the routes we’d been taking and she said her name was ‘Poller’. I thought it was a slightly oddly name but said ‘pleased to meet you Poller’. She was the first proper cycle tourist we’d seen since we left. She told us there were plenty of other we’d meet up the river, and that she was heading for Turkey. I didn’t question the fact that she was going the wrong way. Later Kez pointed out to me that ‘Poller’ is Australian for Paula, and I probably sounded a bit stupid repeating it back to her.
The scenery got even better as we went on today and we debated whether to carry on another fifteen miles or so, but we weren’t going to have long on the Loire so we decided to take our time, and when we rolled into Gennes around 2pm we found the camp site and pitched up in the sun. Again, half the site was under water, but that didn’t spoil the beautiful scenery and it seemed to have given the noisy frogs that spent a lot of the night croaking at each other, somewhere new to sit.
A walk through the town found a good supermarché where we bought bits and pieces for a nice salad, and a bottle of Saumur wine, which was a place we’d be passing through tomorrow, and an excellent big bag of bargain ‘pain aux raisins’ for breakfast. The wine was marginally better than the Anjou, but we still prefer the really cheap stuff.