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Ceri: So far, the days have felt rather similar to our normal days cycling at home in Devon. Nothing as yet has been particularly extraordinary. We’re happy and relaxed, gently cycling around French rural countryside. We love the small cafes, the coffees, the villages, the churches. But today we have felt rather annoyed with ourselves.  We are completely underestimating how far we can cycle each day when booking the next night’s accommodation. Today we could easily have reached the Loire by mid afternoon, but we couldn’t cancel our accommodation which is an hour’s ride short of the Loire. Ah well. We’ll learn. So we stopped for a long leisurely break and picnic  at Blain along the banks of the Brest-Nantes canal. Can’t complain really!

From the start of this trip the weather has been rather chilly. We’ve been dressed in our warm clothes which never even saw the light of day on our long journey last year. But today at the canal side, the sun finally came out, we discarded our extra layers and embraced its warmth. Sunshine makes such a difference to the day. But alas, it was fairly short lived. In the end, we felt very lucky to have arrived at our destination so early. As we settled in, the heavens opened and rumbled with thunder. 

But the trouble with too much spare time is that Nerdy Neil loves to discover and share every single detail from his new Outdoor Active cycling app: elevation climbed and fallen, distance covered, average this that and the other, and a load more. Arrrgggghhh!!!!!

I have to add that we’ve just returned from a hilarious evening. It’s absolutely pouring here, so we both wore flip flops, rolled up trousers, bike jackets and bike helmets to keep our hair dry… under which Neil wore a head scarf and I wore a clear plastic shower cap purloined from a hotel. We must have looked a sight. I’m amazed the rather posh restaurant we’d found even let us in! The food was absolutely delicious. We even had the cheek to ask them to fill our water bottle with milk so we could have tea with our breakfast. All in all it was a thoroughly successful evening!

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