Day 6 – An Unexpected Rest Day in Nevers

Nevers is a lovely town.  It’s a good thing, too, because we got to spend an extra night here.  The plan was to get up and head only about 19 miles to a little resort town, leaving ourselves time to do laundry and such.  We had a lovely dinner last night, but about halfway through, I started feeling mildly not well.  Nothing specific, but I couldn’t finish my light dinner of a chicken with thyme and lemon kabab and frites.  They got high reviews for their mousse au chocolat, so I had to try it, but I ended p letting Brian have more than his half because of how I felt.  That’s very unusual for me, since I’ll usually fight for that last little bit of mousse!
When we got back to the room, I was sure I wasn’t well.  I laid down and just kept feeling worse.  We had stopped in the grocery on the way back to the room so I could get something to calm my stomach.  My preferred drink is ginger ale, but all we could find even remotely helpful was 7-Up.  I sipped on that in the room, but it wasn’t helping.  Ugh.  Around 3 am, it hit.  We have never had either of us get sick on a trip – seems we’re having a lot of “firsts” on this trip: bike mechanical issue (when my couplers came apart), first flat during a tour, first 47% ascent on a road (I found how to see the % in Strava), and now the first stomach bug.  Not fair, Brian is the one that drank the questionable water at the RV park and I’m the one that got dysentery (ok, probably not dysentery, maybe ebola 😉). 
By morning, I knew I needed fluids, but my body wasn’t so sure.  I got up and got dressed after a bit, trying to put on a brave face.  But it was going to be another hot day and I was going to start from being dehydrated.  I finally admitted to Brian that I wasn’t sure I could do this today, even a short day.  He checked online and they did indeed have rooms left here for tonight.  I wrote a note in French for him to take down to the front desk explaining that I was sick and asking if we can stay here another night.  They were very nice and even asked if I needed a doctor.  Brian was able to cancel our other reservation.  Then Brian acquiesced and went to the store for me – it’s pretty straight-forward and doesn’t require much talking, so off he went.  He had noticed some PowerAde when we were looking for something last night, so he got me that and some orange flavored biscuits when he couldn’t find any ginger flavored cookies. 
By lunchtime I was a bit better, though still weak.  I knew he’d want to eat, so we went to the crêperie
Yay! Clean clothes!

we saw last night.  I got 2 crêpes with just sugar – sort of the same as sugar on toast at home.  We also got cidre doux (non-alcoholic bubbly cider).  It was helping some.   We came back and I napped some more.  Then we sought out a laundromat, determined to not let the whole day be a waste.  So we have clean clothes and I’m feeling up to a light dinner tonight.  We looked to see if there was a town a bit further away than our originally planned one, but we’d have to go almost 50 miles instead of 20 to do that.  So we will still have a short day tomorrow.  That’s probably best – a recovering ebola patient has to take it slow coming back to health after all!

Tomorrow we will get back on the trail.  Be sure to check back with our YouTube channel.  Brian is finishing up the video from our ordeal getting to Sancerre!  It should upload overnight tonight.