Durtal Camp in the Loire Valley...

On Wednesday, the morning of May 26^th, we packed our bikes with tent, sleeping bag, air mattress, cloths, food, GPS and other various bits and pieces and headed south.  We had a trip of about 180 miles to travel on our first leg.  Roy made the trip plan and since we were both heading off on a long trip, something I had not done since 1968 and Roy had never done, we decided to break each day’s travel into chunks of no more than around 200 to 250 miles long.  The shorter run of 180 miles the first day got us a taste of what was to come. 

Our first camping stop was in the small village of Durtal located on the banks of the Loire river.  Our tents were literally 10 feet from the bank of the river.  A beautiful camp site with virtually no one there this time of the year.  The camp site was cheep at about 6 Euro each for the night.  We had our selection of sites and picked one that suited our needs and close to the showers and bathrooms.  We both unpacked and pitched our tents.  Parking the bikes was in the grass next to the tents so we had brought jam lids to put under our kick stands so they did not sink into the ground.  We did not want to wake up to bikes falling on our tents.  I had not set this tent up since I used it in 2004 when I lived in Paris and had taken a small camping trip to Normandy on my Honda Shadow.  It went up without a hitch.  The air mattress I had was perfect for the tent and provided a very comfortable nights sleep.  I still had my sleeping bag also from 2004 and it was perfect for the weather.  A blow up pillow which Fran had made a nice soft cover for worked great as my pillow.  We were both tired and a light rain came and went so we settled in for a while.  Later, as it does not get dark until around 10-pm, I went out to take a few pictures in the village which was picturesquely situated on the river.  For dinner, we did not go out so we had ham and cheese sandwiches which materials we had brought along with us.  Light meals were the norm this week as I am still working on reducing my weight plus we worked at controlling our budget for expenses.  (I weighed myself when I got back from the trip and find I have lost 14 pounds since I arrived on April 10^th.  So, a good start.)