| Page Views: 157 Last Visit to Amboise: June, 2003 | Amboise / Loire Valley by edwis - last update: Apr 9, 2008 |
Amboise
We arrive driving along the Loire River into the town of Amboise, where we had booked a room at the Le Manor Les Minimes. What a great place this turned out to be! We had our room up on the third floor – again no elevator of course. The view from the room overlooked the Loire River to the right and the 11th Century Chateau Amboise on the left. We never wanted to leave. After we got settled in, we explore our lodging building, le Manor, which has several main floor common rooms, all elegantly dressed for a proper and luxurious manor house. One of the sitting rooms had a computer setup which I always appreciated for checking emails etc. In the evening, we would sit in one of the fancy manor rooms sipping our cocktail hour wine before walking the 3 blocks into town. The inclusive breakfast was typical French, croissants, jams, coffee and here they included a bowl of fresh apricots. How nice. We liked the Manor and Chateau life of Amboise. The Chateau is the imposing building in town and is the main (only?) tourist attraction. The Chateau dominates all the views from around the town and is a massive stone fortress, complete with the large old residence of the royal family (Charles VII). We did a self guided walking tour and we got to see everything. We found the tomb of Leonardo da Vinci and a pretty chapel of St. Hubert on the grounds. what we couldn't figure out, we made up historical stories about. The panoramic gardens provide a beautiful view of the town of Amboise below and of the Loire Valley. A visitor today sees only about one fifth of what royal Amboise used to be.
As we later explored around the city we again found walking street singers dressed in old time apparel carrying woven baskets. We came across a bike shop that looked like it rented bikes, so we stopped in and made impromptu plans to rent bikes the next morning for something new to do.
‘Route des Vignobles’ Bike Trail
We get to the bike shop and discover that we don’t speak enough French to communicate to the shop owner who doesn’t speak any English. Somehow through the miracle of hand signals and nods, we get 2 bikes rented complete with locks, get a hand drawn map of where the best biking is, and we are on our merry way to somewhere. |
|  | The Bike Ride Following the little map he gave us, we crossed the bridge over the Loire River, and about 1 mile from Amboise we arrive in another little village. Boy, at that point did the scenery ever change. All of a sudden there was an arrowed sign marking the “Route des Vignobles, Val de Loire” – the trail of the noble grape. All you do is follow these signs along the most wonderful trail. This was unbelievable, for every 2-3 miles you come across another little village of quaintness, chateaus, vineyards, and wine storage caves built into the stone hillside. The road (bike-way) is as wide as an ordinary alleyway for much of the trail, and almost always smooth and flat. There were very few cars that we encountered. We did come across several high speed Olympic type bikers who passed us by along the way. We were just plugging along with giant smiles on our faces and our jaws hanging open in awe. We stopped coming through some little village to admire some lady’s rose gardens. She was tending to them and had all smiles for us. Everyone we came across was so friendly and most waved as we rode by. Many of the real family vineyards presented signs offering free tasting of their product. We found pallets of empty bottles stacked behind barns getting ready for the harvest and bottling procedure. The flower garden, family chateaus with their manicured grounds, the storage caves built into the hillside were all spectacular. Along the way we needed a rest stop and we came upon a little village called Nolzay, where we shopped for cold drinks in the town’s little Super Marche’.
A very heartwarming scene we captured at this store was that there was a mother pushing a shopping cart as you usually see, but walking in front of her was a little girl in a pretty dress, about 4-5 years of age, pushing a kid-sized shopping cart that was bursting over full of groceries that the little girl had loaded of the shelves. Maybe it was a home-schooling exercise or something.
This bike journey was so wonderful we didn’t realize that we covered 23 miles and spent somewhere between 4-5 hours of biking. I did have a little breakdown on the return leg; by this time it was getting very hot, my legs were regularly cramping up, my butt was pretty sore, and boy did I ever need a restroom for a sensitive stomach. Something I must have eaten the previous night at a sidewalk café in Amboise. I remember that I kept thinking that maybe a Dairy Queen truck will suddenly and magically appear just around the next bend of the road. This thought which of course had no basis in reality, seemed to keep going bit by bit. So without having any other options, we finally had to pull off the roadway. Here I climbed over a hillside divider and went down a steep hillside towards the Loire River. Here is where I took care of my personal toilet business in the wilds. There were not suitable leaves handy, so my socks were taken off and came into duty.
As a result I am biking the rest of the way without any socks on either, which added to my woes. As we finally approached and crossed the bridge bringing us back into the civilization of Amboise, we dropped out bikes on the ground and ran down to the river and jumped in for a much needed refreshing recuperation. What a day it was for it was truly one of the most memorable things we have ever done. And it was totally unplanned. |
| | The Loire Valley is such a very peaceful, natural and tranquil environment. There was not any commercialization of any kind along the banks of the river, just mostly wild growth and natural sandy areas. What a kick it was to just live the good life of the manor and explore this simple, yet appealing area. |
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