clairedavieswriter

France et Suisse 2022 – Day 9: La Rochelle to Saintes, 83k 523m climbed

Today was a glorious day on the bike – cycling south east with the sun on my face and the wind at my back, with scarcely a hill in sight. Bernard may be relieved to know that, notwithstanding his performance over the last couple of days, I would happily ‘adopt the bicycle’.

It helped that he behaved himself impeccably, not requiring me to wield my new improved toolkit, despite some unspecified distances of poor surfaces…

And he got his just reward in Saintes.

Once out of La Rochelle, we joined a section of the coast-hugging Vélodyssée, aka Eurovelo 1:

Which took us right onto the beach…

We then branched off, heading inland along some classic French roads:

But the last 25k of our planned route was meant to be on a long, ominously straight D road, part of which went by ‘Route de Bordeaux à St Malo’, which left me in no doubt what to expect. Not wishing to spend another moment parrying lorries’ backdraught, I went back to the drawing board when I reached Cabariot, south of Rochefort.

Bafflingly, my route planner of choice, RidewithGPS, happily came up with an entirely different route, avoiding the D137, and following a cycle route called La Flow Vélo.

Guillaume, not clever enough to upload new routes on the move, took a very dim view of the change of plan, which also meant that I would be taking my instructions from his bossy big brother, Hugo Headphones (aka RidewithGPS on my phone). Hugo has his own little foibles mind you, telling me at one point: “in five and five thousand six hundred and fifty kilometres, turn right”. It turned out he meant roughly 500 metres.

Anyway, regardless of the eccentric instructions, the new route was only 8k longer but a whole heap more pleasant, with plenty of views of the Charente..

A peaceful spot for lunch:

And some imposing architecture:

It was a day bookended by southern sights and smells – I saw the first hoopoe of the trip near La Rochelle, and was greeted by the scent of jasmine on arrival in Saintes. In between, Rochefort smelled of broom, lilac and elderflower, and I even saw two otters swimming in this quiet section of Le Moussard, a tributary of the Charente.