Bike ride

One of the things we intend to do with the new bikes is grab short holidays where we can ride them.  The gîte seems to limit the opportunity to take long breaks, so we figure that short breaks of a couple of nights, combined a not-too-difficult bike trek along, say, the Loire will give us the chance to visit some châteaux, as well as keeing us fit.

As a feasibility study, on this glorious Sunday (cloudless skies, 25 degrees C) we took the bikes to Entrammes and rode down the Mayenne towpath to a créperie for lunch, and then back again.   The views along the river were fabulous.

The crêperie doesn't serve crêpes on Sundays; I think there's too good a business opportunity to dissipate it on low-cost lunches.  The place was busy, and the quantity of bikes in their thoughtfully-provided bike racks told us that we were not the only ones with an idea for a Sunday bike ride.

On the way back I noticed an unusual construction that I had not seen before.  I think it is a windmill, possibly for pumping water from the river.   It appears to be made of iron, now rusty, with a spiral stairway up to the top, and a little platform to stand on.

I used this opportunity to check out a bit of Android software that records your tracks using GPS.  I used to use Quechua Tracking, an excellent app provided free (with in-app purchses) by Decathlon, a sporting goods company, but they have withdrawn it.  Grrr it was an excellent app.  I have since installed iPhiGéNie that does the same thing but is harder to use.   Here is what it produces in terms of a mapped track output.

I only recorded the trip back up the river; it told us we did 17.8 Km in almost exactly an hour.