Loire - Fourth Day

Day Four, we ride to Sache (accent on the e), and the summer home of Balzac. The road is starkly beautiful.

With hard shadows that seem almost painted on the road.

Some of us know a lot about who Balzac was, some know nothing and just think he had a funny-sounding name. The house is lovely, with an art exhibit of sculptures of him - several by Rodin, and far too many by a modern artist who took excessive liberties and made him look like Jabba the Hutt (why?). Rodin thought he looked like this and that’s good enough for me.

And here is the museum.

It is a lovely place, and you can see him there writing, entertaining and exchanging ideas with friends and colleagues. At his death, a well-known friend (can't remember who) wanted to have a bust made and a memorial placed in his honor there. But his wife held it up saying she would do it, and then did nothing. She stalled everything so much, you can only imagine he did not treat her very well and perhaps by then it was mutual.

We then take a pretty steep hill. One of the pieces of info Back Roads gives us is an elevation map. It isn’t precise, but it tells us more or less where the hills are and when we can expect them (this is also on our personal navigation directions of course). This helps us decide if we want to take the van, or keep going, or maybe split the difference. It looks like this:

We make it up the hill and when things level out, ride to a goat cheese farm. Oh, the goats! Oh the cheese! Oh my damn phone!! For some reason when I return to our hotel, I find all the photos I took in that place have vanished. I am heartbroken, but what can I do? At least I got to taste the cheese (wine always accompanies) just 3 weeks old - heavenly! The best I think, is the one prepared with shallots. The goats are SO SWEET. All nannies and one ram (who must be very busy). Where the babies are I don't know (is it a bad idea to ask?), but the females are all heavy with milk.

From there to the Chateau Villandry where we walk around the gardens which are just not to be believed. 

It's not just me. You can't take a bad photo of the place.

And now I understand why my cab driver was so snobbish about the gardens of Chenonceau. After you’ve seen these gardens, you have a whole other idea about what is possible.

They give you all kinds of facts, like how many gardeners it takes to maintain the place etc (10 working 365 days a year if I remember right), but more interesting to me is the notion that the French were the first to beautify a vegetable garden with flowers. And this garden has horizontal apple trees hugging a foot-high rail which rings the flower gardens in many places. If I hadn't seen the fruit they were bearing, I wouldn't have believed it! Can you see them on the railings?

And of course the gardens themselves: vegetable and flower and fruit gardens, mazes, waterfalls, a moat. The chateau itself is beautiful but I don’t spend much time there, the gardens are so spectacular. After Villandry, we have some fairly sharp hills then ride back to our hotel at the Chateau D'Artigny, accessible by a fairly long hill too - but forested and beautiful.

Dinner, delicious. What a treat. I notice I photograph the desserts most(!).

By now it has begun to dawn on me how very special this trip is, and so many images blend into one. The sunflowers. The chateaux. The riding. The open fields, the hills, the little towns. The wine - omg the wine. Navigating, getting lost, fearing getting lost. And sometimes not even caring if I get lost. And last but not least, the weather which has been PERFECT. I think back on the first day when we were advised to meet at St. Pierre de Corps with rain gear, and almost can’t believe our luck. 

I also notice that the speed demons among us have begun to slow down and take in just how beautiful these rides are: they are a beauty overload. These capable riders can easily dust the rest of us on hills, and frequently do on straight-aways; but I often see them going at a more humane pace now. It is a country side that appeals to all the senses, and the nature of it is to just make you slow down and notice.