The end of our holiday in France is nearing. This evening we are going to pack our bags and tomorrow we'll be riding back home.
It's been a great three weeks with a lot of relaxing, cultural trips to cities and of course.... cycling.

Here is an overview of the rides I have made in the past three weeks:
|#|Region|Length (km)|Elevation (m)|
|-|-|-|-|
|1|Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur|40.07|534|
|2|Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur|74.49|1,122|
|3|Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes|61.75|1,087|
|4|Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes|66.56|1,394|
|5|Centre-Val de Loire |70.27|300|
|6|Centre-Val de Loire|55.85|410|
|7|Centre-Val de Loire|56.53|185|
|Total||425.52|5,032|

Over 425 kilometers with just over 5,000 meters of elevation. That's not bad at all if I say so myself.

Todays ride; Château de Chambord and Blois

While the rest of the family wanted to spend the last day of the holiday on the campsite hanging around in and alongside the swimming pool, I decided to go for a last bicycle ride (I did join them for a while at the pool first, but I'm not that good at doing nothing and in contrast with the rest of the fam, I don't like sunbathing 😉).

Ever since we arrived here I've seen flyers of Château de Chambord, which is just a few kilometers from our campsite.
But despite it being so close, we didn't find the time to visit the château itself. So I decided to plan my route today so I could see the castle. I didn't go in (it was amazingly crowded anyway), but seeing it from the outside was amazing already!

When I entered the gate to the estate I had to cycle for more than 5 kilometers before I even got to see this iconic castle.
The estate is huge! It is about 5,400 hectares, which is almost the size of Paris! It’s the largest enclosed park in Europe, surrounded by a 32 km wall.
The caste itself is also huge. It has 426 rooms, 77 staircases, and a famous double spiral staircase, possibly inspired by Leonardo da Vinci.

It was built in the early 1500s for King Francis the 1st as a hunting lodge. Funny enough it was never meant to be a permanent residence despite the huge size. Over the centuries, it changed hands many times, from French royalty to revolutionaries, and even Napoleon.

I shortly stopped to take some pictures of this amazing castle!

After I had taken some pictures I continued my ride. It was above 30 degrees Celsius and ridingnin the sun is much cooler than standing still 🤣
The route continued to the city Blois, which is a beautiful city on the Loire river.
We've already visited this lovely city by car twice this week, but now I went there by bike too. Just look at the panoramic view of the city!

As I already was over half of the route, I decided to grab an ice cold cola at a terrace near the river with the view on the city.

On the way back I came across some small towns and some vineyards that you see here (and actually everywhere in France) a lot.

If you want to get an impression of the ride, here is a video I made of it:
https://youtu.be/qi1qj0LM3sY

Statistics

Here are the stats of the ride; two hours, 56 kilometers and an average of 28.4 kilometers an hour.

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