Heading out of Angers.....

Angers is a beautiful old city, well worth a visit, boasting the most amazing, totally uncompromising Medieval castle or Keep or something, it's absolutely vast, built between the 9th & 12th century. I'm sure I've got a photo of it somewhere but I'm racing against my battery like usual here ! Masses of Barges and livaboard boats too, all gaggled and rafted together along the Loire river. A wonderful sight to any boat nut, such as myself, imagining how cosy and boaty they'd be below, with gently swinging brass oil lamps, creaking hulls and crackling woodburners....

Angers is totally geared up for cycling around, special cycle routes everywhere, until that is you want to cycle north west of the city, then you just find yourself as I did, dumped onto a very busy and fast moving motorway ! Three lanes of cars, belting along and parping their horns at mad cyclist wobbling along the hard shoulder. It's actually not too bad once you're on that hard shoulder but the trouble is, there are loads of roads joining and leaving the motorway, at these junctures, the hard shoulder dissolves and you're just left peddling along with very fast vehicles on both sides of you, willing none of them to strike or clip you on passing ! After about ten really freaky miles I managed to find an a exit to a country road that went off in the right direction. With it came hills but I was beyond caring and just happy to have the road to myself again !

Still not in Brittany but there's now a distinct Breton feel all around me, and judging by the slogans on the road signs there must be an underlying feeling that this part of the Loire Atlantic should be, as it once was, part of Bittany.

After a few hills I'm dying for a beer, daydreaming ... Villages come and go with the usual closed down Bars (see photo). There's nothing worse than wanting a cold glass of 1664 lager and being taunted by signs promoting it dangling from walls of long since dried up establishments !

Hungry and thirsty now, I had to resort to my emergency tin of Tuna in some kind of sauce with other bits n' bobs in it that I'd had in my bar bag for weeks ! Sat by the road, I tucked into it with my trusty Leatherman. Smelling rain in the air and thinking about how much peoples' dogs seem to have shrunk since I'd left the south I set off again ...

A few miles later, like a mirage before me, dying for anything to snack on and a soft drink too, I found a shop, a shop called Sap ! It naturally looked shut, but it had the tell tell advertising boards outside, which to the trained eye, suggested it was open ! It was the usual shabby looking place, with all the trinkets in the window faded to blue and gathering dust, but beyond that were goodies galore waiting to be bought !

It was like a scene from 28 days later or the "The Survivors", nobody in there, but my eyes darted from shelf to shelf deciding what to grab first ! I settled on a can of Coke, carton of Apple juice, bottle of water and a packet of chocolate chip cookies ! Waiting at the counter for what seemed like an age, I called out, but there was no reply ! Now sat on the counter I'm wondering whether to just leave with the stuff .... Glugging the Coke and tucking into a biscuit I'm beginning find myself in yet another weird situation, one of a catalogue of such situations I've found myself in over the last few weeks !

Battery is running out now, so I have to saddle up and get pedalling ...