Tuesday 10 July 2012

Day 19

View across the Loire from our room.
The Loire is next years trip.
Mileage 53 miles.  85 km Total  miles  599  ( 958 km) Le Pellerin to Blain After a good meal and night in L'Esplanade, we made an early start. We caught the free ferry across the Loire and headed into Nantes. The route in was reasonable and we were quickly in the centre. Although busy we were in bus and cycle lanes and very few buses so that worked well. The centre was one of those places that will be nice when it is finished. Big building projects, new tramways and new railways all added to the disruption . We failed to find the Tourist Office, signed everywhere but very well hidden. We left the Loire and found the Erde. Now travelling north again. Once out of Nantes the route was erratic. If we lost it we just stayed close to the river until we found it again. Closer to the canal the signs improved and we managed to speed up a bit. By mid afternoon we were on the Nantes Brest Canal. This will take us a long way. We won't leave it until just south of Roscoff. It is a wide canal, and very picturesque so far. There are very few boats though. We did not see any working boats and only a handful of pleasure boats, yet all the locks are working and manned. The paths are pretty good, some short bits of Tarmac, but mainly a  compacted surface. This is still quite fast, only the wind and occasional lock slows us down. There are paths both sides of the canal and very wide sides so we are not to close to the water as we were last year on the Canal du Midi. We decided to push on to Blain and got here about 5.30. The only hotel was full, the campsite had spaces. No restaurants open at all. The Relais next to the campsite was our only option. A 4 course meal, a bottle of red wine, a bottle of cider all for 11.50€ each. We were entertained during our meal by an English couple who could not find their gite. They used a laptop, satnav, maps, local knowledge and phone for over an hour, trying to find their gite, then booked into some rooms somewhere close, before having a meal. The campsite was quite noisy as we went to bed, and traffic started very early, so we will be glad to be packed and on our way along the canal, which was very quiet yesterday.

No comments:

Post a Comment