There is no escaping Joan

Like us, the Tour de France had a rest day yesterday, today they are cycling 172km from Dunkirk to Calais. To avoid confusion we cycled from Chinon to Richelieu on the voie verte, a 48km (30 miles in real distance) round trip along a disused railway line. It opened in 2017 and is punctuated with small stations and information Boards every 5km or so.

By our standards, we started early to try and beat the (30C) heat and headed out of town past vineyards, fields of sunflowers and nut trees, arriving in Richelieu, at the renovated station, just in time for a quick lunch.

The next stop was the Parc de Richelieu, a lovely quiet oasis behind a beautiful town square.

We took our time cycling back, mainly because of the head wind. In our experience, there is always a head wind on the journey home and never on the route out. Why is that? Is there a God of Cyclists that we should be praying to?

Halfway back we stopped to read about Chateau du Rivau, 1.5km off our route. It’s claim to fame is Joan of Arc stayed there while selecting war horses for her attack on Orleans. There was much eye-rolling from us and we chose not to visit the Chateau. Perhaps another time, the restoration of the organically managed gardens look interesting.

We returned home to see the last 60km of the Tour de France, which isn’t very interesting if you don’t know what’s going on because the commentary is in French and David Millar isn’t explaining precisely what’s happening.

As we write, two more ministers have quit the cabinet and yet again Boris is apologising with feigned sincerity, we know this as a couple on an adjacent dinner table have bet us, that Boris will be gone before breakfast! We think he’ll hang on longer although we are considering, on our way home, fishing Joan’s ashes out of the Seine. She’d soon have Boris sorted.