Tour of Tours

Monday 29^th September

Managed to kick the laptop power supply back into life – which means that I am writing this on Monday. We have been to Tours today. It rained all through the night, and we were expecting it to rain on us today – but we have been very lucky and escaped it. In fact, this evening has been very pleasant and we managed to sit outside for a while in the sun. This is a very nice site, and the showers are amazingly hot! I had a shock this morning and was desperately trying to turn the thing down.

We set off on the bikes, and despite the fact that the site had given us a useful map as to how to get to the cycle track it still took us fifteen minutes to get there – a few wrong turns – and I got the blame of course! We got onto the track eventually, and it was very good. Most of the track into Tours was alongside the river Loire and the scenery was great. 

We saw many birds – egrets, cormorants and others. The track was fairly level and easy to ride. I think that we both pedalled all the way in; hardly using the motors at all (I did use it to start off once or twice when I had stopped in the wrong gear).

We reached Tours in about forty minutes, and chained the bikes up outside the Saint Gatien Cathedral. Wow! What an impression the cathedral gives. It is amazingly impressive from the outside, and the inside is a feeling of space with wonderful stained glass windows. I feel that it is almost on a par with Chartres, and personally, more impressive that Santiago de Compostela. Pictures can’t do it justice, the feeling of devotion is almost overwhelming – and I’m not a religious person. It has undergone a renovation program and is looking amazingly clean and bright. The current building was constructed between 1160 and 1547, but a religious structure has been on the site since about 350 AD. A volunteer guide came over and told about the cathedral. He struggled for some words, but his English was good. He was obviously very proud of the cathedral. We had a good look around.

The only thing that we didn’t like much were some modern ‘stained glass’ windows, which were a kind of photo montage on glass. They seemed to jar a bit with the age of the rest of the building.

We left, unchained the bikes, and went for a tour around the city. We found lots of half timbered buildings in the ‘old town’ – very attractive. Most had been turned into café’s and restaurants in the lower halves it seemed. 

I did a small shop for lunch and bought some cheese, bread, tomatoes, some Serrano ham and a bottle of water. 

We rode to find a bench – the one we chose was near a grassed area close to a statue of Descartes. We continued our ride after lunch. 

We found one weird glass fibre ‘statue’ which looked like a monster from a very blocky video game – reaching out for you. Could find any info on it there – will have to look it up. Close to this statue I bought a ‘Tartelette au Fraise’ in one of the patisseries. I would have that with some coffee later.

The sky was threatening rain as we rode around – but we found Charlemagne’s Tower and the Collegiate Church of Saint Martin. 

We also rode along the tram tracks that cross the centre of Tours – and headed for one of the bridges over the Loire to take some pictures. Then another bridge to take a picture of the bridge that I had taken the first picture from (!)

 

We rode back along the river to the camp – taking advantage of the electric facilities of the bikes – we thought that we would be rained on at any moment. As it turned out, we missed the rain, but when we got back to Les Ville Aux Dames, we found that it had rained a lot there – so we were lucky.

As we were putting the bikes away the sun came out, so we sat outside drinking coffee, and I ate my tartelette – I shared the strawberries with K – but she couldn’t eat the pastry as it had wheat in it.

We managed over an hour before the sun faded, and then retired to the van where I cooked chicken with salad and potatoes. We listened to some more audio book, and then tried to get an early night, as we had a way to go in the morning.