Wobbling Winos: Day 70 - Vouvray to St Michel-sur-Loire.

Day 70. Vouvray to St Michel-sur-Loire. 55km, 3h37.

Where is the French summer? A third of the way through July and it's cloudy and cool, with some light rain forecast. The rest of France has had some terrible storms with severe hail in the Burgundy, Alsace and the South West at different times. The apple and wine farms have suffered severe damage.

We set off along the northern bank of the Loire, passing limestone cliffs with troglodyte houses and wine cellars. We soon reached Tours, our route taking us straight down through the centre to the Cher River on the south side of the city. We stayed on the Cher to Savonnieres where we stopped for the caffeine top-up. Further down the road we came to Villandry, one of the garden highlights of France.

Villandry must be one of the "big five" of European gardens. About 115000 flowers and vegetables are planted out each year. The centerpiece is the vegetable garden, or more correctly, the decorative kitchen garden. It is made up of 9 squares, each with a geometric planting of a total of 40 species of vegetables, interspersed with clipped box hedge, standard roses, arbors, pear trees and espaliered apple trees. This garden is the last remaining monastic garden from the Middle Ages in France, although it does have some classical Italian and the French influence.

In addition there are the ornamental gardens made up of 4 sections each depicting a type of love; the sun garden with the cloud room, the sun room and the children's room; the maze; the serene water garden; the herb garden; and the woods on the hillside. The various gardens are at different levels so allowing for both good views and an element of surprise.

From Villandry we continued along the Cher to its confluence with the Loire and then crossed a beautiful bridge to Langeais. There are quite a few Chambres d'Hote along this section, probably to cope with the large number of tourists and cyclists here. Langeais is an attractive small town with winding streets and is dominated by the Chateau. We then had a 5km ride up to St Michel-sur-Loire where we spent the night at Villa Garnier, with its ornately decorated rooms. We tiptoed around not wanting to bump anything - it was quite a mission to do the washing and pack and unpack panniers. They have a large garden, so we enjoyed our al fresco evening meal of supermarket roast chicken followed by excellent Reblochon cheese, accompanied by the superb 2010 Bernhard Fouquet Le Marigny Sec (a unanimous WWS 9) which Bernhard very kindly gave us in Vouvray.