45.0 mi / 11.9 mph / 1169 ft. climbing
Home: Matthieu’s AirBNB

It feels like Rett just hasn’t been able to catch a break over the last week our more. The summer’s refusal to depart has been wearing her down, but then coming into Nantes, we had to ride through a day of rain. Which was actually going pretty well, until her knee decided to pop out-of-place. A few days of rest allowed that next tormentor to pass, only to make room for…allergies? In October? It started up last night, suddenly sneezing and snotting everywhere, which then made for an intermittent night of sleeping. The symptoms hadn’t resolved by this morning, but I reminded her to check if her big ziploc of pills had any allergy medication hiding in there. It did, because the last time allergies struck out of nowhere, a single (generic) Zyrtec was enough to shut all that down, so most of the blister-pack remained. Luckily she seems to be extremely-responsive to allergy medication, so once again her ability to breathe seemed to start improving with each pedal stroke. Unfortunately the pill can’t erase the sleep-deprivation.

Since we’ve left the Loire Valley and are now cutting “cross country”, we’ve had more ups-and-downs than the previous very-flat week of riding. That continued for the first half of the day’s ride, but then we dropped into an area for the last 20 miles that reminded of “The Somerset Levels” in England: so flat and low-lying that it’s criss-crossed by a network of canals to help better separate “water” and “land”.

While we’ve been heading cross-country in an efficient (relatively) straight line south, the EuroVelo 1 follows the twists and turns of the coast some 10 miles to the west. But as we both approach La Rochelle, EV1 bangs straight inland, crosses our path, and makes a big loop to the east before circling around into La Rochelle. When we joined the D10A road, I understood the reasoning behind EV1’s winding diversion.

D10A was by far the busiest “D road” we’ve been on in France, but thankfully it came with bike-lane-sized shoulders (not explicitly marked as bike lanes). So the riding remained comfortable enough for us, even if its something EuroVelo designers consider abhorrent. However, I was glad that I had scouted out options in the area, because I knew we would eventually hit a bridge over the Sèvre Niortaise, where the shoulder would disappear. Even with the incredibly-patient French drivers, I could now see that the amount of traffic we would be backing up would feel scary. So I called an audible, that added an extra mile to our already-long day, just to dodge half-a-mile of stress.

Returning to D10A after our detour proved that it was the right call, since we had to wait for a couple minutes for a break in the traffic streams to allow us to safely make a left turn onto it. Now past the river, we were able to quickly return to alternate roads for the last few miles to our destination. Our AirBNB was in another almost-entirely-residential village, though our hosts’ residence was a cool one, where we passed ourselves (and our bikes) through their street-facing door, through a short breezeway, and back out into an open courtyard with our detached outbuilding at the opposite side.