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Today we had a large variety of towns to visit, a variety of trails and roads, a variety of scenic value, and some hills which made the day more interesting than in the past where we had been watching the canal go by for days. When we left Cosne Cours, we were on good bicycle paths all the way to Belleville which is where the nuclear plants are. It started out with ordinary scenery and the nuclear plants didn’t add much natural interest, but they were fascinating in that the bicycle path went right around the very perimeter of the nuclear plant. You wouldn’t get within 5 miles of one in America.

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After the nuclear plant, things began to change and we had quite a bit more variety in the day. The scenery improved but the paving became worse; some of it was gravel.

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The 4 km ride into Briare was gravel. Although it was reasonably good condition, it still was slow.

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Briare did not have an open grocery store, but it did have a tourist train and a big cathedral

In Briare, we started looking for the campsite and decided to go into the center of town and see the church and ask information about camping and the marketplace. Well, it was 2 o’clock in the afternoon, but the Tourist Bureau was closed for the day. So were the markets. We rode by two supermarkets both of which were closed.

That being said, we decided to move on to the next town and hope that the supermarkets there would be open and that we could find the camping so onward we went to Gien which would be our destination for the day and a fantastic choice it was!

Little did we know that the route most of the way to Gien was gravel with grass growing up through it which is Anne’s least favorite surface. It shows on the map as being a paved surface so we ground ourselves slowly along the route and this is where we met our first hills for the day; it was quite hilly through the entire section.

Onward we went through more small towns; we haven’t been through towns very much in France at all. Most of the trails have been along the canals. So it was interesting to meander through some of these towns even though the hills were quite steep.

We finally approached the Loire River once again and saw the beautiful town of Gien on the other side of the river. It’s hard to describe so the picture will have to do it for us. A Castle looms over the scene and there are many houses all stacked together; all their chimneys rising above the roofs; the same color chimneys, the same color roofs; it’s quite a picture. The old stone bridge that leads across the Loire with the Big Stone buttresses is most impressive.

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