On our second day in the Loire valley we left out camp at Amboise on the Loire River and cycled south to the Cher, one of the smaller rivers that flows into the Loire. There, on the Cher we found the magnificent Chateau de Chenonceau.
While the Chateaus were certainly architecturally amazing, historic and the reason we were in France, I still found plenty of things of interest along the way between castles.
This was mid-may that we were cycling through the region, so spring showers were to be expected. We experienced a light rain on occasion and ran into at least one good afternoon thundershower(but these memories pale against the marvelous thing we saw.
These few days in the Loire valley were a lot of fun and I have given only a briefest description of our experience but hopefully you get the idea. Next we would soon be making our way north to the Normandy coast – stay tuned for more photos and stories.
This May day was the start of the prime reason we had come to cycle in France – to see the famed Chateaus of the Loire Valley. There are many monumental building through this valley and our goal was to visit two or three each day as we cycled 80 to 100 Km.
From our campsite in Orleans, we packed up our tents, loaded our panniers and hit the road. There is a main highway that runs along the North side of the Loire River but we chose to cycle the smaller, quieter roads on the south side for the most part. while most of the sites were on the Loire itself we did visit one chateau on the Cher, a tributary of the Loire.
The first stop was a couple of hours ride from Orleans at Chaumont-sur-Loire, with it’s cylindrical fairy-tale turrets.
As we were to discover, the attraction of the chateau is not only their magnificent architecture, and inspiring gardens but most allow visitor to see the interiors with historical artifacts.
We toured the inside of this the Chateau d’Amboise, which interestingly enough is the site of the tomb of Leonardo de Vinci.
There was a great view of the town of Amboise and surrounding countryside from the top of this chateau.
We camped this night right in Amboise at a campground right on the Loire river. It was the most amazing setting I have ever camped in. Our tents were set up facing the magnificent castle which was lit up at night. Although not a great photo, this one shows what I saw as I laid in my sleeping bag to go to sleep.
The view not withstanding (and the inability to keep my eyes open while sleeping), sleep was needed because we’d had one good day of cycling and there would be more road to ride and more chateau to visit the next morning.