Cars and Cathedrals Tour - Rouen to Loire Valley


We took an unplanned diversion towards Chartres and are rather pleased we did.  Not being May Day, Chartres was not closed, the Cathedral was magnificent and the place was buzzing.  This was, no doubt, helped by it being a lovely day so we did our bit for the local economy and had a 3 boule coupe ice cream with chantilly cream and a macaroon apiece at a pavement cafe.





The telepeage Bip and Go, bipped and went so we are putting yesterday down to a blip.  Something we do not have to sort when we get back.  


Not a Cathedral but we stopped off at Blois to see the Chateau.  It was actually a hunting lodge which makes it look rather more impressive should you be expecting an actual Chateau.






Then on along the banks of the Loire to the hotel for the night, Le Relais de la Loire.  This is a small family run hotel in a small, nicely kept, village.  There are 8 rooms so vastly different from the hotels of the last two nights which were huge.  The impression is that they get a lot of cyclists in season and can sort out rental bikes for those that might not be quite in the serious cyclist bracket.  


Our room overlooked the church and had a beamed ceiling and the en suite whilst small was clean and entirely adequate.  No fridge or coffee/tea making facilities in the room but a bottle of water was supplied.  





Breakfast was traditional French continental style (coffee/tea/hot chocolate, fruit juice, pastry, bread and jam).  The big plus, however, was dinner.  It was incredible, if .  If a little tricky to understand from the menu (that would be the English menu though I don’t think the French one would have been straightforward either).   Vegetable fritters were followed by mushroom consommé with ravioli for me, S had a vol au vent which included snails.  We both had slow cooked lamb in some reduction with a lot of mustard seeds and  carrots on carrot purree.  Pudding for both of us was a sort of deconstructed calvados glazed apple biscuit based flan with cream.  It was all excellently executed and tasted a lot better than my description suggests (esp the lamb and carrots).   The restaurant wasn’t huge but it was full and they had set tables in the bar also so it is clearly well thought of and it’s not difficult to see why.



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