Biking to Villandres

This Saturday I biked to and from a chateau with four of my friends. Remind me to add that to my bucket list just so I can cross it off and feel accomplished.

Personally, biking isn't my favorite method of transportation, so I wasn't too enthusiastic in waking up on Saturday morning. I ran to the bike store to meet my friends (seeing as I had overslept and missed all 6 of my alarms) and we rented bikes, which cost 15 euro for the day.

The first few moments on the bike were quite wobbly for Kat and I. Granted, I don't think I've ridden a bike for over 5 years, so I was bound to be a little unstable in the beginning, but I caught on pretty quick--a necessity, since our first ten minutes of riding took us down Tours city streets. The cars zooming past me on the roads (way too close for comfort) did not grant me confidence in my shaky riding abilities.

Setting off!

Once we got out of the city, though, it was perfect: we were riding on a paved bike path that wound its way through forests, past fields of dead sunflowers, and along the banks of the Loire. The gray skies and cool August temperature was actually quite ideal for the long bike ride as well.

Right outside of the chateau, we stopped at a patisserie for lunch--I bought a just-out-of-the-oven quiche Lorraine and a chausson aux pommes (a flakey pastry filled with cinnamon-apples)--then we all ate inside the castle walls on a bench overlooking the gardens.

Villandres is a chateau known for its gardens. The group of us--Bridget, Kat, Christian, Julianne, and I--took a quick tour of the chateau, then spent a while wandering around the gardens, just talking and taking pictures. Surprisingly, many of the gardens were filled with fruits and vegetables: we saw pear trees with fruits ripe for picking; there were archways overgrown with crawling grape vines (we tried a few grapes, but they were pretty sour); and there were blossoming bushes of basil and eggplant and arugula.

Overlook of the chateau and just a few of the many gardens

After exploring the gardens, we headed back home on our bikes. Ten minutes into the ride, though, the clouds opened up and it started pouring for a good quarter of an hour. The five of us took shelter under some overhanging trees and waited for the downpour to pass. Once again, set off, only to have another little raincloud burst a few minutes later (this time, however, we biked anyway while the rain lasted, which I really enjoyed). We biked the rest of the way home in sunshine, happily.

I found out afterwards that the ride to the chateau alone was 20 kilometers--that makes the roundtrip a 40 km (or 24-mile) bike ride! I'm actually really proud of myself that I managed to bike that much. Not to say that I'm not in shape--I go running three mornings a week here (at the beautiful hour of 6:20 a.m.) and I've been walking miles to and from school and around the city and the chateau each day--but 24 miles is still a decent bike ride! It was a very successful Saturday!