Day Four – Gav-o’s Revenge – May 23, 2011

Today was officially a travel day. We had to make it from the champagne-soaked hills of, well, Champagne, to the wine and château soaked hills (and more accurately extremely flat fields of wheat) of the Loire Valley. Drive time was scheduled to be about 5 hours via the autoroute, but we’re big and tough and decided to ask Gezza to take us by the non-toll routes. This, he did with typical Aussie glee (I think he might have been drunk). The drive turned out to be a beautiful meander through six and half hours worth of backroads, tiny villages which may have never seen tourists.

We were up again far too early, after what turned out to be for me not a particularly restful night for some reason. Breakfast was the same as previous days, although this morning I didn’t try to shove everything into a giant slice of baguette and thus wasn’t uncomfortably full when we left (it’s amazing how much ham, cheese, and boiled egg you can get into a four-inch portion of bread).

We loaded up Nancy the Clio and hit the dusty trail. On our quest to avoid paying for driving, we chose the slower but more scenic N and D route approach from Champagne to the Loire. Other than some very busy roads around Paris, for much of the drive we were among the only cars on the road. While it may not have been as fast as the Autoroute, it was so much less stressful and there was more to see.

Not much more to say about the drive to be honest. Six hours of beautiful back roads, quaint villages, and beautiful scenery. Lunch, on the hand, was incredibly interesting. We’ve read that the best places to eat lunch when on long road trips in France is at the places where the truckers eat – generally good food apparently, very cheap, and very friendly. At about noon, on an otherwise unremarkable D road somewhere in deepest France, we came upon just one of these Routiers (trucks stops for truckers run by truckers, according to the literature on our placemats).

It was like something out of an old western. We parked up amongst all the giant lorries and walked through the front door. All conversation stopped. All eyes turned to look at us. We sat down, and conversation slowly started up again. We were given menus with no prices, it seemed to be a basic two course affair. We both had oeufs mayonnaise to start, then grilled steak with fries and pepper sauce for me, and chicken cordon bleu with fries for Jamie. Surprisingly good, considering the atmosphere, and a steal at €11.50 each.

Back on the road after lunch, feeling a bit full and bemused, we made fairly good time the rest of the way to Loche in the Loire, with only a few small errors of direction around Bloise to keep Gazza on his toes. We pulled into Loche at about 3:30 and got settled in our new room. The two owners of the B&B were extremely friendly and once they found out we spoke a bit of French, insisted that all conversations be conducted in that language (in a very humorous manner, with many little side translations for bits we couldn’t keep up with).

The room itself is beautiful, with a huge terrace overlooking a little canal, part of the Indre river I think. It has a door on the bathroom and everything, more than we could ask for!

The owners agreed to arrange a reservation on the patio at Le Gerbe d’Or (the Golden Wheat Sheaf – the French translation of 13,000 pubs in Britain).

After a walk around the unbelievably twee (but in a good way) village, we found a little brassiere for a few glasses of Ricard for me and white wine for Jamie. There are few ways to spend an sunny and hot Monday afternoon than sitting at a café drinking tasty beverages – even if it did hit 30 degrees Celsius (our Canadian and British blood isn’t used to this sort of torture – it’s so thick from the constant cold that when we cut ourselves we have to run around the block to start bleeding).

We eventually made our way over to the restaurant for our reservations and proceeded to absolutely gorge ourselves on foie gras, chicken in rich sauce, veal, and chocolate cake with peppermint sorbet to finish. Life is, if nothing else, extremely rough. As usual, we ate far too much and ended our evening feeling uncomfortably full.

We waddled back to the B&B, clutching our bottle of wine closely, and have spent a delightful hour sitting on the little terrace listening to the deafening sound of frogs getting their freak on. Seriously horny little buggers, if the sound of it is anything to go by. On the other hand, I’ve never been one to interrupt someone about to get their leg over.