I Stumbled Upon This Castle While Bikepacking In France

I'm riding the Eurovelo 3 from Paris to Bordeaux and after a couple of rough days battling the heat and the traffic in Paris I'm finally at the highlight of the whole trip, the Loire Valley. The Loire by bike trail offers some spectacular and easy ridden stretches along the Loire River. And this day promises to offer some fantastic sights in the form of a castle taken right out of a Disney movie. An impressive cathedral and of course you'll get to see me almost hitting the wall again in the afternoon due to the heat. I'm having a bit of a rough time right now. All in all a fantastic day here in France. Good morning and hello from the Loire Valley in France. As you can probably see it's been a super damp morning here. Everything is basically wet. I talked yesterday about the benefit of having a picnic table by your camp spot and that is really making itself worth now here in the morning. I've spread out all my things across the table in order for me to pack everything down inside of my bags. Unfortunately the way I pack my things is that I start with the tent first. So that's why I need to have this chaos of everything going in into the bags afterwards. I put the tent in first and the sleeping bag and then everything follows after. The rainfly and the groundsheet is pretty wet so I'm gonna have to pack the tent a bit wet. There's some sun here but it won't do any effect on drying the tent now. I'll just pitch it early tonight and it will probably dry out in a couple of minutes later on. Let's bring all of this chaos inside of my bags and hit the road. I've made it to the city of Orléans where New Orleans probably got its name from. I'm trying to make it over to the very impressive cathedral that I can see in front of me. So I just have to zigzag through the streets here. I'm standing in front of the cathedral of Orléans and this church was built back in the 13th century. It is also the seat of the bishop of Orléans. The cathedral has these dark stained windows and that's an homage to Joan of Arc. She was a very frequent visitor to this cathedral. What a lovely city Orléans turned out to be. Really dig the old architecture all over the city here. By now you should know that this is one of my highlights of the day. Look what I just stumbled upon here along the Lalois Velo. They have a sort of service station here for bikes with a pump and also a bike stand with a couple of tools you can use if your bike isn't behaving as it should. I think I'm actually gonna take advantage of the pump here and see if I can put some more pressure into my tires. I'm glad I have sunglasses on because there's a lot of small flies that are in the air all the time. Otherwise I would have to stop every now and then to rinse my my eyes from the bugs. But the glasses work as sort of a windshield for the bugs. I passed through a city after 1 pm and spotted a little store from the road. I figured it was time to make a stop to buy some lunch. A typical lunch for me on this trip consists of a ready-made salad, some juice and perhaps bread or a small piece of pizza. Hello! The guys who just passed me here, I think I met them two days ago when I left Montages the first time. So even though the number of bike tourists and bikepackers have definitely increased over the last couple of days, I still happen to stumble upon people that you met a couple of days ago. So I'm making pretty long days but I'm quite slow since I have to stop and film. So it's kind of a tortoise and the hare scenario. So I'll probably catch up to these guys later on today. So now we've entered the hottest period of the day. It's just about 1.30 in the afternoon here. So I'm making the most of this time and eating my lunch in the shade under this nice tree here with a lovely view of the Loire Valley behind me. And today we also pass two nuclear reactors on the other side of the river here. It don't seem like these two are in working order though. They might be retired nuclear reactors. So I'm doing a little bit of multitasking here. I'm drying my shirt from the clean yesterday but it didn't get totally dry. So I just put it out in the sun now for maybe 15 minutes or so and it should be completely dry for tomorrow. So I have two of these identical shirts that I sort of switch between. That's why you see me in the same clothes all the time. But I really like these ones. They're made out of merino wool. I'm able to use them for the whole day, for a couple of days without them starting to smell or anything. I just rinse them off in water every day or so. Every other day I mean. I was supposed to continue in that direction but I'm actually gonna drive over this bridge instead. Because there's a really impressive castle over there that I really want to stop and see called Chambord. So we're making a little bit of a detour but we'll join up with the trail later on today. So I've made it to the chateau of Chambord. And if you're only visiting one castle when you're here in France I would suggest you to visit this one. Built in the 16th century being the largest chateau in the whole Loire Valley. This chateau was built as a hunting lodge for the king Francis I. The chateau features 440 rooms, 282 fireplaces and 84 staircases. So just a quick detour to this fantastic castle here. Now I think I'm gonna make it back onto the trail again. I'm about 75 kilometers into this day so I still have a couple of hours left. There are campgrounds all along the Loire river valley here. So I don't think I'm gonna have any problems finding a campsite later on here. So I'm having a bit of a rough time right now. It's about 5 pm and I don't think I have that many hours left in me. So I've started to look for a campground. And I found one or two about 14 kilometers from here. That will make the total for today at about 110 which is just fine for me. So I've loaded up on some energy in the form of a handful of cashew nuts. And I'm heading to the next town here and see if we can find the campground. I made a huge navigation error back there in the last town here and took the wrong road. I missed the sign somehow and ended up on a farm rural road. And after a couple of minutes I realized, hey shouldn't this be very marked? So I checked the map and realized I had to turn back. So I think I had an extra detour of about three or four kilometers. And I'm blaming it all on my head being so goddamn tired. I'm just about two kilometers outside of the town that I'm planning on staying tonight. So it's been a pretty rough day here. I mean when I was cycling in Sweden the last time with Ryan we did almost 160 kilometers. Or 100 miles each and every day. And those days were picnics compared to this. I'm so not used to the heat. If it's like 20 degrees celsius that's the ideal temperature for me. But when it's like today or actually today has been a little better. But yesterday I think it was over 35. It just drains your energy out of your body. I think this is the campground on my right here. But I think I'm going to go to the supermarket first and get some dinner. And then I'll head back here. I've just come to the campground now and I haven't set up my tent yet. My things are still hanging off a clothesline here. It was a nice French couple who lent me their clothesline. So I'm able to dry everything off. It was super wet from last night or this morning when the condensation took over. So I really think I underestimated this adventure here. I planned to make like 120 kilometer days. When I was cycling back home in Sweden a couple of months ago. When we did the 160 kilometer days. I sort of felt like making 120 down here where it's super flat would be a piece of cake. But I didn't calculate in the temperature. And we've had like a heat wave now for the last three days. I think today was a little bit better. Maybe it was like 34 or something last night. Yesterday was 37 which was horrible. That means I have to take a lot of stops. And plus all the time it takes to find water sources all the time. Because even though my bottles are pretty full or at least one is full. I still want to swap out the water for a new fresh cold one. Every time I have the possibility to keep me fresh. Today I actually felt like I was very close to bonking. And it was all my fault because I hadn't really eaten anything since I ate lunch. The other days I've been snacking on candy and stuff like that. So I have to remember that for the coming days. To stop every hour or so and get some energy in. These stupid beginner mistakes that you do all the time. Even though you've been doing this for the last 10 years or so. But I really enjoyed the visit to the Shambal castle. That was super nice. It was kind of like you're in a movie or a Mario Kart or something. So I can really recommend taking that detour if you're ever thinking about doing this trip. Like going along this lower valley is super easy. Okay the heat is bad but everything is very well signposted. And if you just keep your eyes open you don't really have to have a GPS to navigate. Just watch for the signs. So now I'm gonna eat my usual dinner. I haven't been able to go out to any restaurants yet. I really hope to do that in the coming days. This campground is a bit far away from the nearest city. I think it's about three kilometers. I should have done that yesterday. I was living right by the town back then. But it was too late for me. I hope to go to a nice restaurant here tomorrow or the next day. So I hope you've watched the previous videos from the tour here. And if you haven't I can really recommend you to watch last week's episode. And you can do that by clicking the link up in the corner here. Otherwise until next time. Have a good one.