Saturday 12th July, Tours to Langeais

Woke up after a great nights sleep. Checked out and rode back in to the Tourist off is in Tours to buy some tickets to 3 of the Chateâux and an Abbaye we are visiting over the next few days, a saving of 10€ and a round trip of 10km. Our first stop was Savonniers for morning tea.

David had a hot chocolate and a chocolate éclair filled with chocolate mousse and Catriona had a coffee and a couple of gluten free biscuits we managed to find in a large supermarket. We called Chris and Bernie but they had dinner guests so we decided to call back later and headed off for the gardens of Villandry.

As we had pre purchased out tickets we were able to beat the queue and walk straight in. Our first sight was of the chateau which we had to enter to climb the stairs up to the terrace overlooking the gardens. What a spectacular sight greeted us from up there. We overlooked the ornamental garden of geometric flower beds surrounded by hedges.

Next we walked up through the wood and past the water garden, the sun garden, the maze

and finishing off with the herb garden and the spectacular vegetable garden.

We spent around 1 1/2 hours wandering through the grounds before leaving. We had lunch under some trees to try to keep out of the misty rain which had been falling most of the morning then we set off for Chateâu of Azay-le-Rideau. We stopped off at a large supermarket on the way to get some more breakfast cereal and out the front was a self serve milk dispenser. A couple of Spanish tourists filled up a bottle while Catriona watched on. (Knew they were tourists as they were taking photos and called the milk leche) It made mooing noises when the bottle was being filled! We also managed to speak with Chris while we were there before continuing on to the Chateâu. Again we were able to beat the ticket queue and enter passing a large crowd. It was another spectacular Chateâu. They have all had something different to present. In this one we were able to enter right up into the atic space where the servants were housed. The beams up there were huge and made of oak from neighbouring forests in 1522.

The weather was looking very threatening when we were leaving and we still had a 17km ride to our overnight camping spot at Langeais. We didn't have an exact route to follow as Azay-le-Rideau is a detour off the Loire-a-velo trail. After a few little detours we found our way, stopping off at a pizza van in La Chapelle-aux-naux for dinner. Total km for the day 55km.