Kat and I continued on to Decize. A small town where the several canals meet the Loire creating a “point” much like Pittsburgh.

We departed from the river a bit, going through hilly farmland. The hills and headwind proved to be a good workout, but we still made it to Decize in good time.

At one point, we rounded a large hill only to stumble upon an ongoing Formula 1 race. The entire area was filled with tracks and garages filled with race cars.

Further along was a WWI memorial of an old French-American field hospital. Of course the only time the wind wasn’t blowing was when I tried to snap a pic of the American flag…

We swung by a supermarket and grabbed our usual food of pasta, dried meat, and mushrooms (plus some French beers to try out) before rolling by a little hotel by the pier. We were planning to camp but the place looked so cute. Now we’re about to join the many people hanging out on the grass and cook us up some grub.

We left early from Saint-Satur and continued South. Kat had complained that her new cranks weren’t working quite right and were somewhat loose. These require a special tool to tighten so we sought out the next big town of Nevers to find a bike store.

The temps finally climbed into the 60s for the first time and we found ourselves quickly trading our fleeces for sunscreen. The scenery was lovely: large farms, baby animals, and canals greet us for most of the day’s ride. Despite some killer headwinds, we made good time travelling the 40 miles to Nevers and found a Decathlon sport store. The bike repair guy fixed and tuned up the bike in record time for a pittance. We think he did it out of principle when he learned their rival chain (Intersport) originally installed the cranks.

Afterwards, we grabbed groceries and retired to a tiny hotel for the night and made sandwiches for dinner (Kat’s favorite: sausage, mushroom, pickle, and mustard). We did some laundry and then went to bed. Around 9pm, an elderly lady mistakenly barged into our room. In a panic, Kat and I reverted to our most common French phrase “I’m sorry, I don’t speak French”, repeating this until the woman got the hint and left the doorway. Then we actually went to bed.

We said goodbye to Gien with some creme brûlée and enjoying the night time view. Apparently Gien was almost entirely destroyed during World War II, and most of the town was constructed during the 1950s. Going around France has definitely reminded me how young America is as a country. Riding along the Loire River, we’ve passed walls with markings of how high floods have reached in years past. I passed several marked 1785! We got back into the trail this morning and were greeted with great weather and a strong tail wind. We enjoyed a breezy 35 miles to Saint-Satur, riding along the Loire.

Maybe I’m just a little dorky, but by far my favorite thing we passed was this awesome little duck pond. It was just someone’s private back yard, but they had made a little duck heaven with a ton of exotic breeds. They even lined the fence with little signs talking about the species. I would’ve been content watching the ducks for quite a while if Kyle had let me…

We plan to bike another 35 miles tomorrow and see if we can find a good camp site!

Monday we biked around 30 miles from Montargis into Sully-sur-Loire, riding along the Canal d’Orléans. Here, we had a wonderful first experience with “Warm Showers”, a website where cycle tourist enthusiasts offer to host each other. We spent the night at Kevin and Pia’s, a young married couple who had previously biked across Europe. They were wonderful hosts, giving us a hot shower, a bed, and the best home made crepes we’ve ever had. Not to mention great company.

From Sully-sur-Loire, we started along the Loire River and headed south to Gien (only about 15 miles away) when I noticed my left pedal felt weird.

R.I.P. left crank. I’m assuming I accidentally cross-threaded my left pedal when we reassembled the bikes in Paris. Unfortunately the pedal ate away all the threading resulting in the pedal falling out and me needing a new crank to continue. My limited bike knowledge compared to kyle has been showing…guess I’ll live and learn.

We had only gone about 10 miles when my pedal went kaput so we pushed the bikes into Gien the remaining 5.

We spent this morning walking to the local bike store to buy and install the new crank. The rest of today we’ll be lazing around Gien and enjoying staying off our feet for a while. I’ve been really struggling with my posterior tibial tendonitis in both legs and maybe a day off will let them calm down a bit. We’re hoping that by taking it slow and lightening my bike a bit by moving stuff over to Kyle’s may stave it off. If anyone also struggles with tendonitis with cycling let me know if you have any tips!

Tomorrow we plan to bike around 30 miles (my legs willing). But for now we’re eating clementines in bed!

The next two days were very pragmatic. We biked farther south along the EuroVelo 3 bike path (a hodgepodge of backroads and trails someone neglected to label) and found a bike store which had a new saddle for Kat’s bike. We pulled into Melun shortly thereafter only to find our intended campsite was closed for the season and didn’t open until April. Fortunately, the campsite manager saw us looking forlornly at the locked gates and came out to talk. Even more fortunately, she agreed to let us stay despite the posted dates.

We explored Melun before returning to camp to eat a hot meal and play with a VERY friendly cat (until he overstayed his welcome and attempted to mark our tent)

The following morning was foggy and cold. We only biked about 15 miles as Kat wasn’t feeling great.

We eventually rolled into a small town on the Seine River and asked a nice lady in the bakery about the local hotel situation. She didn’t speak English but very generously spent 15 minutes calling around to find us a place to stay. We were then handed off to another woman who walked us (bikes in tow) farther into town. We arrived at an AirBnB that was sadly all booked. However, the owners Mike and Claire were incredibly kind and let us set up our tent in the back yard (and take a shower AND do our laundry). We were so grateful to have a nice place to stay! We got to see a peak of Claire’s studio upstairs, check out her art at http://claire-bianchi.com! Tomorrow we should approach the Loire River and start cutting east toward Germany.

We’re out of the city! I love Paris but cycling among the heavy traffic is a little terrifying.

We rode South about 37 miles along the Loire river on the “Euro Velo” path. This trail is super nice and mostly off the roads, with little signs pointing you in the right direction. We did get lost a couple times right outside Paris before we hit the Euro Velo, but luckily Kyle has his little GPS so we know generally how far off track we are.

We’re currently in a tiny town/suburb called Moulignon, a couple miles away from the large town Melun. Someone (me) made a rookie mistake and thought that putting lots of mileage on their brand new brooks saddle instead of little bits at a time would be fine. It was not and we cut today a little short because I have giant saddle sores 💀 oh well!

We went and grabbed dinner in the little town and one of the few things open was an American Western themed restaurant called Buffalo Grill. The place had country music, pictures of cowboys, and a waiter who fled for help when we asked if he spoke English. Along with bread we were served an interesting take on a south western salad and a random bowl of plain popcorn.. not sure how American it was but still good!

We’ve arrived! Well technically we arrived yesterday, but it was spent mostly sleeping after getting none on our red eye.

We’re happy to say the bikes also arrived, and with no damage. We spent this morning assembling them back together and packing everything into our panniers in preparation for tomorrow. They were left in our hotel room as we did some site seeing in Paris

We started our lazy day getting some espresso and chocolate croissants at one of the countless patisseries near by. I’ll never get over how good baked goods are in France. After picking up some camping supplies we walked to the Notre Dame, Louvre, and the Arc de Triomphe.

We’re currently laying on our hotel, full of duck and wine and looking for places to camp tomorrow night. We’ll be starting pretty easy tomorrow, going about 30 miles south to the town of Melun and camping the night.

Thanks for joining us!

Kyle and I start our journey quite anticlimactically: in a hotel of the Pittsburgh airport, looking forward to our 3 leg, 24 hour trip to Paris tomorrow. Our upcoming posts will hopefully be a bit more exciting 😉

A serendipitous photo in our hotel room!

I want to thank my sister Amanda for driving us to the airport and watching Calvin and Patrick while we’re gone. (But I know her kitty Gus is very happy for the company.) As well some wonderful friends for seeing us off ❤️