Reversed itineraries

Here is a new possible itinerary:

Orléans - Blois	68	68
Blois - Tours	67	135
Tours - Saumur	85	220
Saumur - Chalonnes	84	304
Chalonnes - Nantes	78	382

Chalonnes is not very important, so we might be lucky to find anything there, but who knows! Angers is much more important but provides us with a long ride on the last day ):

Orléans - Blois	68	68
Blois - Tours	67	135
Tours - Saumur	85	220
Saumur - Bouchemaine	65	285
Bouchemaine - Nantes	97	382

Notes: (1) I haven't found a way of reversing the Mapometer maps.
(2) I've used Bouchemaine which is close to Angers, but we would need to add on a few km extra. But it is do-able, isn't it? And, given that we'll have a place to stay at Nantes, it doesn't really matter what time we get there.
(3) The total distance has gone up! This is because my earlier Mapometer map for Blois to Orléans used main roads instead of the correct Loire à Vélo cycle route (I was getting tired by that point and I decided to take a short-cut!) Expect the real thing to come to over 400 km!

Musée du Campagnnage, Tours

Click here for the link to that museum in Tours that I mentioned. Well worth a visit if we have time. I thought it was amazing!

Je regret, mais France est fermee!!

As promised I went to London yesterday to visit the French Tourist Office to see if I could get any details of accommodation for the Loire valley. They used to have a large facility on Regent St, south of Piccadilly but have now moved to a set of offices in High Holborn. Although it still says on the website that the public may visit between 10am and 4pm this is in fact no longer the case and I came away empty handed. I did take the opportunity to have lunch with my daughter who works in Moorgate so all was not lost.

Possible itineraries our consideration

Some of you must have wondered why I went to the trouble of plotting the route on Mapometer. It is to be able to easily compute distances between any places of your choosing. This is possible because Mapometer plots every km along the route (or 5km - I'm not sure how it decides which; it varies from map to map). Using these maps, I quickly came up with three possible itineraries, although there will be others:

Nantes - Chalonnes	78	78
Chalonnes - Saumur	84	162
Saumur - Tours	85	247
Tours - Blois	67	314
Blois - Orléans	57	371
Or
Nantes - Montjean	68	68
Montjean - Gennes	78	146
Gennes - Langeais	70	216
Langeais - Chaumont	78	294
Chaumont - Orléans	76	370
Or
Nantes - Bouchemaine	97	97
Bouchemaine - Saumur	65	162
Saumur - Villandry	64	226
Villandry - Candé	73	299
Candé - Orléans	71	370

Collectors please note! Some facts about the route Nantes to Orléans

Over the route, we shall be passing through the following départements:
Loire-Atlantique (44)
Maine-et-Loire (49)
Indre-et-Loire (37)
Loir*-et-Cher (41)
Loiret (45)
We shall pedal through two régions:
Pays-de-la-Loire
Centre
And we shall see 5 chef-lieux (county towns), all on the River Loire:
Nantes
Angers
Tours
Blois
Orléans
We've done 49, Pays-de-la-Loire and Angers before, but the rest are new!
*Note the missing e. This is a different river: le Loir, not La Loire, altho we don't get to see it.

Jan/Feb Meeting

Happy New Year!

Re: Jan/Feb meeting. I will be Skiing from the 5th to 12th Jan and in Burma from the 8th Feb to 23rd Feb. Any time outside of these dates, if possible, would be good. I have also been coerced into dancing lessons on a Thursday evening, so Thursday's could be difficult - sorry to be pain.

Maldwyn

Dates for the 2014 France Trip

"My" Heritage Railways 2014 Steam Gala is over the weekend of 24th to 26th May ie Bank Holiday weekend. I missed this event in 2013 as we had already booked to go to the Hebrides but I would like to visit this event this year. How does this affect anyone's already-booked holidays (Shawn specifically)?
Today I received an advertising email from Ibis so (tongue in cheek) I checked out a potential booking in Nantes in mid May and was offered 2 rooms for 5 adults for a total of 41GBP. Not bad!!