Day 38 : Loire valley? Tick.

Awake to a comfy bed. The Brompton got a good night’s rest too.

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Hotel more than happy to have bikes in the rooms.

Breakfast at the hotel, then a quick ride around Nantes. Nice town! It looks like cyclists are well catered for too with segregated lanes in the city centre.

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Nantes cathedral

I found a few Eurovelo signs and did my best to follow them out of town.

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Like a mini HMS Belfast

I had to catch this ferry over the river at one point. It was free, which was nice.

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This ferry also takes horses across

I found a supermarket to buy some lunch from.

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Brompton touring bag has a handy baguette retention strap

And here was my lunch spot:

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French weather vanes (like the one on top of this old lighthouse) denote N E S O

The route went past a lot of canal (which is popular with people fishing), before taking in some countryside.

I eventually reached the Atlantic, completing my East to West crossing of France.

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Next stop New York

With that out of the way I decided to head North and follow the coast round for a bit, but first I crossed this bridge on my bike:

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A bridge too far?

It’s a busy bridge with lots of heavy traffic heading over, and the cycle lane is just 1.25 m wide and separated from the traffic just with a painted line. I took it easy, concentrated on the little patch of ground ahead of me and made it over in one piece. Not for the faint-hearted.

Saint-Nazaire isn’t that nice to cycle through as it has a lot of heavy traffic from the docks. Things got nicer as I went round the coast. I even found this short section of road where they drive on the correct side 😉

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Left of the middle

I had a couple of camp sites on my route, but they’d both closed for the season, so I found a hotel room, had dinner in the hotel and got some reading done.

Nantes to Pornichet, 96 km. Total so far = 3,537 km.

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