Saturday, 29 May, 2010
I’m running out of superlatives to describe this part of the trip so I won’t even try even though the weather did its best to spoil our journey along the canal. First though we had a chat this morning to two fellow tourers who arrived late in camp last night, turns out they just did the Loire Valley from Orleans to Nantes and were now going along the Nantes to Brest Canal, exactly the opposite direction we plan to take so they had lots of good tips to give us. Bit of an oddball couple though, two gents about our age, I suppose they say the same about us.
Again, as we were having breakfast it started to drizzle and it got gradually worse, quick mail check on departure and then the path along the canal, us not minding the drizzle at all, it somehow suited the environment. This fellow also didn’t seem to mind:
All along the canal people were trying to outdo the heron, sometimes in the oddest places but they seemed to catch mostly rats, pretty similar to South Africa where they catch mainly sandsharks.
Just before lunch we managed to get hold of a few baguettes at a baker not far from the hotel but shelter from the rain, which was quite heavy at this stage, was hard to find until I asked a lady at one of the sluices for advice and she promptly offered her veranda where we could chew our tough bread and have a teamtalk what to do next. The advice was to find someplace to stay in Suce_Sur_Erdre some 10 kilometers away. Unfortunately we had to leave the canal and go on the main road with the cars swooshing by in the rain. We thought it prudent to stock up at the earliest supermarket. I asked advice about places to stay and got told to rather go to the tourist office which we did and the very on the ball lady got us a b&b nearby. The owners are away for the weekend but we were told that the key was under a flower pot in the garden and let ourselves in. So we did and it turned out to be a lovely garden flat with all the mod cons we need to make ourselves comfortable, even tv, pity it is French 🙂
Now we hope for better weather tomorrow.