2023 - La Loire à Vélo: Day 37: Thu 29 Jun - Decize to Digoin, 70km; total: 830.5km

14-29 degC, sunny and pleasant

We were rolling away from the hotel at 8:31am, to be precise. About two minutes later we met our friend the Lateral Canal of the Loire. Our route to Digoin took us on the canal for the first 17 and last 20km. The remaining km was spent on the D15 road that was mainly a farm machinery road, but also had big trucks and smaller cars. We travelled through wheat, sunflower, and young maize, together with cattle and sheep farms. At one stage when we were on the D15, we rode past a sizable crop of young corn plants that had been shredded recently. Hail from the weather system that passed over most of France last week was the most likely suspect. There were also numerous trees, some of them quite large, that had been blown over, divested of a limb or two, so simply snapped in half. Some of the wheat was also laying over in these places. We arrived at our home for the next two night, a two-room apartment called T2 Les Pichies about 2:15pm. The cleaner was still cleaning, so we sat on the internal stone steps and waited for him to finish.

We didn’t do any side trips today as we knew we would have at least 70km to ride. We stopped for mornos at Gannay-sur-Loire, a small village with a large’ish church. Greg’s bike has developed a nasty clicking noise, so we spent a bit of time investigating and removing a few stones from the delraileur region. That didn’t help, so a few km up the road, we stopped again and Greg cleaned a bit of muck off the chain hoping that would help; it didn’t, so we had to ride the next 50km odd with a bike making a clicking noise that drove Wendy mad!

Lunch was had from a patisserie at Beaulon, where the lady didn’t know one word of English. We ordered two different quiches thinking they would be warmed up. Even though Wendy knew the word for warm, the lady said “Non”. There was no negotiating to be done. So we sat under a tree and ate our cold quiches, that were not too bad.

Back on the path for about 7km then we stopped for a water break and rest. The last 20km were on a smooth path beside the Loire Lateral Canal (LLC). Appropriately we crossed another canal bridge to get into Digoin. Whilst nowhere as spectacular as the one in Briare, it was still quite long at 243m. It is an arch bridge, with a width of 10.12m and a height of 2.3m. It was opened in 1838, expanded in 1870, and redesigned between 1890-1896. The ride today finishes the LLC for us this trip. It has 38 locks, three canal bridges and some lovely cycling infrastructure. We can’t begin to imagine how much money it brings to the region in all sorts of tourist activities. There are 100s of hire canal boats on it alone.

Finding our apartment building was very easy, and the owners had given us precise instructions on how to get access to the apartment. It’s all done by remote control these days; codes and key lock boxes. All so easy, when you know what you are doing.

Greg left Wendy to move in to the apartment and took his bike to the nearest bike mechanic. Because we are here for two days, it was easy to let the man have it overnight, and he told Greg to come back at 3pm tomorrow. Greg said the man was extremely helpful and appeared to know his stuff.

On Greg’s return we decided to eat in tonight so made our way to the nearest supermarket, aka corner store for dinner and breakfast supplies.

While the clothes were in the washing machine for their first machine wash in a little over five weeks, we ate our microwave meals and chatted. We finished our meals about the same time as the washing finished so while Greg did the dishes, Wendy hung out the clothes. We will do another load tomorrow morning before we leave for the days activities.