Fings wot go wrong

We took a short cycling break near Carquefou, not far from Nantes and near to the Loire.  The idea was to bike along the Loire towpath, but the Nantes-Brest canal is also not far away so we did a bit along that as well.

The first thing that went wrong happened on pumping up the tyres on Anita's bike.  The stem of the valve broke off.  That's the bit that sticks up out of the tyre so you can inflate it, and it just broke off bringing the valve mechanism with it, so I couldn't pump it up.  I have been maintaining bikes since I was 12, and that has never happened before.  We found a friendly local bike shop and got it fixed.

For the Loire valley part of the ride, we went to the South bank of the river, just opposite Thouré-sur-Loire.  The cycle path is very well-maintained which made for an easy ride.  The weather wasn't warm, but not too cold, and not much wind - good biking weather.

The first time we looked for the Nantes-Brest canal we stopped by the little village of Le Pas-Chevalier, since the road crossed what looked like a canal there.  A short investigation proved that it is in fact a small river that joins the big canal a little way away so we started our ride a bit farther along the road where it does actually cross the canal.  We rode as far as to where it joins the river Erdre.

On the way back in the car we heard a sound like a rifle shot as if something hard had fallen off a tree and hit the car.  Shortly after that I realised that the driver side front window wasn't closing.  I could lower it but it wouldn't go up.  Stopping it halfway down, I tugged on the glass to lift, it, let it slip from my hand and it promptly fell back into the door and wouldn't come out.  The local garage couldn't fix it at such short notice, but they did give me a length of translucent sticky-backed plastic to stick over the hole.

The car was scheduled for a service a couple of days after we got back, so we took it to the garage straight away, where it is currently resting pending repair.  On the way to the garage we discovered that the driver side rear window isn't working either.  *sigh*

However, the cycling was good and we decided to take a further look at the Nantes-Brest canal when time permits.  Happy biking.

Here's some garden pics.  The plants seem to be working properly, but you can never tell....