Saving Money In The Loire Valley

Well today we set off into the French Countryside via bike. Its picturesque, quaint and full of wine, chateau's and caves along the Loire River.

We went over our budget in London and so decided to camp--we had talked about camping earlier in the planning process but decided to not carry the gear and just stay in real cheap hotels and hostels and get most of our food at the market. Well we changed our mind.

We pedaled all afternoon and as evening came and we were near the chateau that we wanted to tour the next day we looked for a place to camp. We had passed beautiful beaches all day so had not expected trouble in finding an ideal spot. We thought that we spied something along the river down the levee and through the woods. We took the bikes and headed down through the weeds. It was difficult to control the loaded bikes down the embankment and through the brush.

When we reached the bottom...Paul asked do your legs itch. They did like crazy, so we dug out the wipes and worked to dab our legs clean of the itch weed that we had just traipsed through.

Then the ideal campsite turned out to be a pile of mud...not wanting to crawl back up the embankment we each took off different ways to see what we could find. I found an old cement slab next to the river...this turned out to be the best spot. Then we chopped down reeds [a leave no trace no no] to lay on the cement slab through our silk sheet down and wa la a bed. I slept for around 20 minutes but can say that watching the moon rise, the stars, the moon set and the sun rise over the Loire River is a beautiful thing! I will post a picture later.