Paris to Saint Nazaire

Uneventful trip on the TGV from Paris to Saint Nazaire, apart from the old goat sitting in our little 4 place compartment. He asked the conductor where we were getting off, and later picked up our tickets and had a good look through them while we watched him. His disdain for us was all too apparent!
We got to see a little bit of the country side that we would be riding through the next day, can't wait to get started.

We walked from the station to our hotel (an easy stroll) to find the van from the bike shop waiting for us, with Nicolas in the process of unloading our bikes and getting them ready for us. We were very pleased to meet him and to know that a major part of our adventure had fallen into place and on time. Nicolas fitted our pedals (brought from home) and made sure our bikes were all set up correctly and wished us well on our ride (more about Nicolas later).

A quick lunch, a look around the Port area and we were ready for our first pedal on French soil (wrong side of the road and all that!).We had a very pleasant 50 minute pedal around Saint Nazaire's bike tracks - warm, sunny and beside the sea. The bikes were great and we all felt good.

We had a few beers at a pub and Des got his first lesson in French bar etiquette. As we were about to leave, Des collected our empty glasses and placed them on the bar. As we turned to go, the barman refilled them! Your shout Des. Our tee shirts (printed with a map of Oz and our planned route) were working well, and were a great way to get to talk to folk. The publican was very helpful with advice for our ride.

We had dinner at Cafe Cadaux - good food washed down with some great local wines. Our Tee shirts had us talking to two other tables. All wanted to give us advice on what to eat and drink,  and were quite surprised that we would want to come all the way from Australia to ride bikes up the Loire Valley.

Nice night, but we were all a little nervous about the first section of tomorrow's ride - the huge and heavily trafficked bridge over the Loire, about 4 kilometers in length, with a reasonable climb to the top. Only a 600mm section of the road is allocated as a bike lane, and high winds and heavy traffic are serious problems. Rain was also forecast, so we planned a 7AM start to hopefully beat the traffic and the weather!

Our hotel was quiet and clean, nice people and big on bikes.