Day 2 - Saint-Florent-le-Viel to Chênehutte (65 miles)

Yesterday my 70 mile route became 80 miles and took over nine hours. Today my 60 mile route became 65 and took nearly nine hours. Not quite the six or seven hours cycling (with stops) to cover 60 to 70 miles and arriving mid afternoon at my destination with time-a-plenty to recover, relax and plan the next day. The extra mileage and long hours are almost entirely due to the flooding: retracing my steps a number of times; the stop-starting when planning an alternative route (a good half dozen times today); and those routes often being longer and slower than the original.

Not that it has all been bad today. After giving up on the EV6 first thing - around Saint-Florest-le-Viel it seemed largely underwater - I managed to join it some ten miles on at the little riverside town of Mauges-sur-Loire where the cycle path follows a road on an embankment. I stopped for coffee by the river, watched the brown waters flow downstream - powerful, steady and fast - and then followed the southern bank past small stone cottages, set back against a cliff face and overlooking the Loire. A footbridge took me across to an island in the river; the Loire is much narrower here than when I started but it is still wide and there are a number of islands midstream. Some are big and sparsely populated, others are small and obvious at the moment only due to their trees poking from the water. 

I cycled the island's narrow, raised lanes through pasture, often flooded and looking like paddy fields, and passed through the occasional tiny settlement with its handful of small traditional cottages, all stone and shuttered windows. The morning rain had been replaced by blue skies and bright sun and it was warm, dry and peaceful. With only the sound of the breeze, birdsong and frogs for company, I remember thinking all was at it should be.

I left the island and enjoyed the route for a little longer along another raised narrow lane; on my right the drowned flood plain of pasture and woodland, on my left the occasional neat stone cottage, with neat gardens, sitting in a lush green landscape. But it was not to last. The route dropped back to the level of the river, which I would have followed to Angers but for the flooding forcing me to seek a longer, hilly and more tiring alternative. Between this and the other setbacks I arrived at Angers nearly two hours later than planned, the idea of a relaxed lunch and exploring the city now another casualty to the floods.

Angers

Although I managed to follow the EV6 for most of the afternoon, as with yesterday I felt that I was playing catch up on the morning which detracted somewhat from my enjoyment of the route. Stopping only for a few supplies I headed off through the outskirts of town, eventually reaching an area on the city's edge that clearly once supported mining and quarrying, now sympathetically converted into a park area. It was then onto small back lanes that paralleled the river taking me from tiny village to tiny village, most bearing the suffix 'sur-le-Loire', first along the north bank then crossing to the south. 

I am now in a comfortable room on the edge of the village of Chênehutte pondering tomorrow’s route, my intention of eating in a recommended restaurant thwarted by rain and sleep. Fortunately my panniers were well loaded with spare food.