I have seen the Loire Valley on a bicycle, and it works. My only problem, in the wake of that whirlwind autumn tour, is a case of lingering chateau block. Was it at Chambord or Cheverny that I lost the group in the echoing chambers and corridors? And why didn`t we visit Blois? Or did we?
My memory of the five-day ramble is a crowded montage of moated chateaux, burnished elms, fields of blackened sunflowers, smooth forest roads and more chateaux.
What a lovely blur is a short, guided cycling trip. Though advertised as five days, this one was closer to 3 1/2: brief warmup ride on Sunday afternoon, full day on the road Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, a rousing farewell banquet Wednesday night, back on the train Thursday morning to Paris.
Understand, I`m not complaining. I like the theory of the short and sweet vacation. Not everyone has time to get away for the more standard 8- to 14-day cycling trip, and unless you have Greg LeMond aspirations, anything over five days is a lot of time to spend following the same derrieres up and down the hills.
Butterfield & Robinson, a leader in the field of stylish cycling and walking tours, has in recent years scheduled shorties to such places as the Loire, Bordeaux, Medoc and Burgundy. All are relatively easy marks, graded I on a scale of I to III.
Seekers of pain
Not that easy is everyone`s taste. I am something of a closet masochist, a ”no-pain/no-gain” disciple, and I wondered whether the gentle Loire would be a comedown from tours I`d made of the hillier Umbria region in Italy and northern Portugal. On the other hand, the flattish terrain meant that my wife, Pamela (a ”pain-is-insane” type) would be able to join me on her first two- wheel tour.
It was clear by the end of a Sunday warmup ride into the yellow-ing countryside that we weren`t the only compromising couple. Most of the 24 cyclists who gathered in the gardens of the Relais des Landes at Ouchamps had come in pairs-friends, brothers, married couples-and only one or two seemed a perfect cycling match. Gary Grellman and Jennifer Wilkinson, fit and tanned San Franciscans, wore matching gym suits and flew together like the wind. Dr. and Mrs. James Rappaport, of Palo Alto, Calif., rode a tandem bike provided by Butterfield & Robinson.
”It`s the only way we can do a biking trip together,” Mrs. Rappaport said. ”Jim`s a serious jock who bikes all over California. He`d never wait for me if I weren`t attached.”
Something else I observed from this meet-your-bike gathering, conducted by our two young Canadian women guides: After almost a decade of fine-tuning, the exotic cycling tour has its logistics and planning honed to military precision.
In preliminary paperwork each cyclist had chosen between 18-speed racing and touring bikes with either drop or upright handlebars. Butterfield supplied handlebar bags with plastic windows to hold the all-important daily directions. This enables even the maladroit biker to read and ride at the same time. The directions are so clearly wrought they dare you to get lost.
”Leaving the chateau, turn LEFT and go 450 meters back to the T-intersection beside the church. Turn RIGHT. Go 300 meters to the stop sign.”
For the compass-impaired
Even if you lose your way-and it can be done, as most of us proved-one of the two guides, sweeping on a bike or driving the company van, will sooner or later come to the rescue. You can`t avoid chain marks on your legs or the odd flat tire or yapping French dogs, but every other detail, such as the arranging of stylish hotels and restaurants, is looked after.
There was only time enough on Sunday to pedal to our first chateau, Fougeres, surrounded by the pretty village of the same name. The chateau was closed, but the short jaunt proved the perfect antidote to creeping jet lag. Whoever heard of anyone dozing off on a bicycle seat?
We started the chateau chase in earnest Monday morning, one in a succession of green-gold October days. By that evening I was already so dazzled and dizzied by the lineup of turreted mansions on the itinerary I was remembering them not by name but by some identifying detail.
Chateau Beauregard, 10 easy kilometers from the hotel, owned by a Paris banker who lives with his family in the converted stables, I would remember for the massive cedars flanking one wall. So to me it was Chateau des Arbres. The white-walled Cheverny, which we reached in late morning, became Chateau du Chiens, for the pack of 70 baying hounds we spotted through the gates. From November to April, Cheverny, as white and symmetrical as a wedding cake, holds a stag hunt once or twice a week in the surrounding Sologne forests. Or so we learned from the coiffed, personable young guide who led us, in shorts and T-shirts, about the gilded salons.
Lunch plans
For lunch that day, most of the group fell into a restaurant, Le Pichet, across the road from Cheverny. Breakfasts and most dinners are included in the overall rate, leaving you to make your own lunch plans. Given the modest French breakfast, cyclists tend to load up at midday, either putting together picnics or, on a splurge, smoothing down their hair, slipping into long pants and sitting down to Michelin-starred meals.
Biking and eating: Can there be a more perfect union? Burning off all those calories can justify any feast. My only problem was that after just 20 kilometers I wasn`t ready for the full prix fixe lunches some of my mates and all of the locals were tying into. Our table of six asked Madame if we could eat from the rolling hors d`oeuvres wagon. She winced and nodded.
If I have left the impression that the biking was a snap, our chateau-heavy Monday was anything but. After lunch, the jocks in the group pleaded for more mileage, and the guides agreed to tack on the distant, massive Chateau Chambord, not on the itinerary. Much of the trip was a long, lovely straightaway through sprawling Chambord forest.
As for the chateau, my notes say only, ”Chambord-Francois I.” The reference is to the well-heeled 16th Century king we met everywhere in the Loire. Francois bilked the churches and melted his subjects` silver to build his Disneyish castle.
Its scale is not easy to embrace. In the courtyard I slipped away from the tour and wandered through room after mostly vacant room, ascending to the parapets for a breath of air and a view of the ripening countryside.
Those who biked all the way back to the hotel that afternoon got in a lusty 60 kilometers (38 miles) for the day, and those who didn`t were just as happy catching a lift part of the way in the van. At 6 p.m., in the fading October light, a head count at the hotel revealed that Dr. and Mrs. John Smith, of Vancouver, B.C., were missing in action. The erudite, English-born Smith was our authority on all things trivial. Except map reading.
One of the leaders, Nicola von Schroeter, 23, an athletic Torontonian, jogged off into the gloaming. She found the Smiths a mile away, pumping toward the hotel, victims, they said, of a wrong turn.
Tuesday morning we packed up and left for our second base of operations, with the van toting our luggage. This was a one-chateau day, the curious and curiously named Gue-Pean. It has a wide moat long gone to weed, and it maintains a small hotel with a dining room. To me it will always be the German Chateau, for the spiky gray tower that resembles the Kaiser`s helmet.
On any Butterfield & Robinson tour, the next wine tasting is never far away. Before lunch we spent a tipsy hour at a family winery in Monthou sur Cher sipping the owner`s Tourraines-hearty, inexpensive (about 45 francs)
wines that are catching up in popularity with Beaujolais in Paris bistros.
It wasn`t until Wednesday morning, as we tooled along a forest road to the chateau at Amboise, that it finally hit me: Unhilly biking is beautiful. When you`re not straining and sweating to conquer a hill, you`re free to take in the scenery-the reddened vineyards, the artful hedges, the empty stone villages and the looming chateaux.
If I seem to make light of these noble Loire structures, I felt considerable awe for the two we toured the last day, Amboise and Chenonceau.
A side treat with Amboise was Le Clos-Luce, the sunny villa just up the road where Leonardo da Vinci (”Leonard,” the French call him) spent his last days. We bought a T-shirt from the villa shop bearing Leonardo`s likeness and his slogan, ”Je suis en genie” (I am a genius), and picnicked in the gardens on microwave-heated tortes and chocolate-filled crepes.
Chenonceau, which stands so nobly above the river Cher, wouldn`t let me go. Part of my reluctance to leave, I suppose, had to do with the lovely gardens and golden weather, along with the dawning knowledge that the bike tour was all but over. In the morning we would be on a train to Paris. I had enjoyed the short, sweet cycling format, but now my legs, my lungs, my taste buds cried out for more. And I wasn`t alone.
Pamela had grown attached to the group, but of more significance was that my wife, the anti-jock, had formed a meaningful relationship with a new sport. As we dressed for a farewell dinner in the chateau-hotel that evening, she said, ”I had a sad parting with my bike today.”
Mount a bike and be off
Butterfield & Robinson will do a dozen five-day tours of the Upper Loire this summer, from late May to mid-October. Cost is $1,895 a person, double occupancy, all dinners and breakfasts included (airfare extra). B&R bikers have ranged in age from 18 to 82. Each tour includes a specially arranged tour or visit to a family basketry workshop or a walnut oil mill. Cyclists are provided with bikes, handlebar bags, water bottles, maps. Bring a helmet, riding gear, a poncho in case of rain. Rides average 25-30 miles a day. For apres-bike wear, casual clothing is usually acceptable.
For more information contact Butterfield & Robinson, 70 Bond St., Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5B 1X3; 800-678-1147.
Among other bike-touring companies that deal in the stylish/strenuous market, a leader is Travent International. It does five-day trips to the Loire, Burgundy, Provence and the Swiss lakes, and longer tours to other points in Europe. Contact Travent International, Box 305, Waterbury Center, Vt. 05677; 800-325-3009.
Backroads Bicycle Touring has trips to France, Italy, England and Ireland, but its strength is in North America, particularly the western United States. Contact Backroads Bicycle Touring, 1516 Fifth St., Berkeley, Calif. 94710; 800-245-3874.
International Bicycle Tours specializes in Holland but also goes to the Loire, East Anglia, the Confederation of Independent States (the former Soviet Union) and Cape Cod. Write 7 Champlin Square, Box 754, Essex, Conn. 06426;
203-767-7005.
