AubrysInFrance: Bike Trip - Day 6 to La Rochelle

The first part of the next day was along the coast, but after a while we followed the route inland along trails and roads through reclaimed areas separated from the sea by dikes. Very flat but some trees, dikes, canals, etc.

I got separated from Tom and Roger when I went ahead to look for trail signs and they stopped to take some photos on a dike gate. I eventually rode back to where I had last seen them and they were no where to be found. I turned around again, the electric bike making it easier to make up distance on the flat ground. Came to one area where the trail sign seemed to point away from the fenced and gated dike. I went on down a gravel road, but after a kilometer or so it dead-ended in a field that showed only traces of a few bike tracks. I turned around and came upon a French couple on bikes and told them the trail dead-ended. They checked on their phone and announced that indeed going across the field seemed to be correct, so I followed along. After a half-kilometer or so, we came to a dike where there was a woman on a bike seemingly trying to go in the other direction. The three of us pushed our bikes to the top of the dike and discovered that apparently the trail ran on top of the dike, but was gated at both ends, We could have saved a lot of work by just opening the gate at the other end!

Canal Gate Where Tom and Roger were Last Seen

Roger, Tom, Gérard, and I had agreed to meet about lunch time in a nearby small village, so I headed for that. When I arrived, I found the church where we had agreed to meet but no one was around. Not too surprising as it was after lunch time and there appeared to be no stores or restaurants in the town. I decided to head for our stop for the night in La Rochelle. The quickest way was on the highway but I am not a fan of sharing the road with lots of fast-moving cars, so I found some back roads and after a while arrived in the outskirts of La Rochelle.

La Rochelle is a good-sized town, and larger French towns have lots of signage pointing to such things as the city center, the railroad station, etc. I headed for the city center and after a while I began to see signs for the tourist office. Experience has taught me that the folks there are extremely helpful with town maps and directions. I was not disappointed, as the young lady at the harbor-side tourist office quickly provided me with a map of the center of town with the tourist office location marked and then drew a line to our hotel for the night. It was maybe a kilometer away, so I quickly arrived and discovered that Roger and Tom had arrived only 20 minutes or so earlier. It turned out they had left the trail to ride on roadways when it seemed to them the trail was not going in the right direction.

La Rochelle Tourist Office - photo from the web

After cleaning up a bit, the four of us all walked back to the harbor area where there were lots of things to see and lots of sidewalk cafés. We found a café and elected to sit outside in a covered and sheltered eating area as it was breezy and cool. Our dinner was decent but nothing special. Because we have been on the coast most of the time, we have been eating a lot of seafood, a practice some us continued at each meal.

David at La Rochelle Harbor with One of the Two Towers

La Rochelle has a tumultuous history - it was recovered from the English about 1370 and the harbor was guarded by two large towers connected by a large chain across the harbor mouth that was closed off in the evening.

The wars of Religion in the 16th century saw much fighting and destruction in and around La Rochelle as the town was a Protestant stronghold.