Day 9 – Bourbon-Lancy to Digoin - Bridges Bicycle Touring

Breakfast!

More Breakfast!

We’ve ridden 218.41 miles since we arrived in Paris, climbing for a total of 3613 feet of elevation, but only actually ending 553 feet higher than where we started. Whew! Time for a well-deserved break. We had an absolutely perfect day today. We started with a lovely breakfast at a lovely little family-owned hotel in a very old hot-springs town. People are still sent there by doctors for cures. I knew it was a big thing in Victorian times, but I didn’t realize it was still so popular now. The hotel proprietor explained that the village burgeons from 5000 in the current off-season (the springs are too hot right now) to 15,000 or 20,000 in the winter months with patients who are prescribed 3 weeks of treatment and their families that come visit on the weekends. How do I get prescribed 3 weeks at a spa? They look absolutely beautiful!

We found the trail easily – almost all downhill towards the canal. Fortunately, this part of the trail returns to running alongside the canal off of the Loire. It is pretty, with a lot of leisure boats along the canal and using the still-active locks. We found out, also from the proprietor who was showing us a different map, that the section that we did yesterday is labeled as more difficult than the bulk of the rest of the Eurovelo 6, and we managed to make it harder by going off course (insert facepalm).

The town and hotel for tonight is right on the canal, so super easy to find and get to. We only rode 19.82 miles, got here an hour early for check-in, went around the corner and enjoyed a cold beer each….and then another. It’s a pretty basic, but perfectly passable hotel with a lovely proprietress.

We’ve both noticeably lost weight on this trip, all while eating pastries, steak, frites, crêpes, and drinking beer and wine. Goes to prove being active is very important, regardless of what you eat. Of course, we usually don’t have 5 hours a day to ride our bikes, so then it’s back to lower calories with moderate activity.

We’ve decided to stop the actual bike portion of the tour here and take a train to Lyon tomorrow. All the TER trains are bike-friendly and we found a non-stop train so we don’t have to manage any transfers. Lyon is a big city that’s supposed to be nice to visit, but the main reason we are going there is to get a train to Bern, Switzerland. We wanted to get a day or two in Switzerland on this trip, mostly because we’ve never been and we were going towards it anyway. We’re hoping to enjoy some Swiss chocolate and take in some scenery and history before we have to catch a train back to Paris.