Monday 7th July, Blois to Chaumont-sur-Loire

It rained heavily overnight so we ended up packing up the wet tent and rode into la Chaussée-St-Victor, a suburb of Blois to a Carrefour supermarket to buy some groceries before heading in to see the sites of Blois (Australian phonetic pronunciation "bluewa"). David managed to pick up a puncture along the way which he fixed while Catriona visited the inside of St Louis cathedral and was able to listed to someone practicing on the organ. 

After David had a look inside the cathedral we rode down some quiet cobble stone streets ( I don't know how they do it on road bikes in the Tour) to St-Vincent-de-Paul church and then back up to the Chateâu.

This is a view from entry level but it looks much more spectacular from the river level. We rode back down again to St Nicholas church 12th-13th century, through crooked old streets. The church had huge vaulted ceilings like many of the churches we had visited but this one is falling apart as there was netting up above where the congregation sits that had pieces of masonry in it.

We headed over the Pont J Gabriel where we had the menu de jour with a good view over the Blois skyline.

We set off at 1pm through fields of wheat, sunflowers and corn to Chaumont-sur-Loire, set up our tent and headed up the hill to the Chateâu. It is a lovely castle with most of its original furnishings. It was owned by Catherine de Medici and Diane de Poitiers.

Another fairy tale castle. It remained clear until around 7pm when the heavens opened and it bucketed down, but luckily we were in the tent by then.Total km for the day 30km.