MOVING OUT

May 22, 2005

After so many days of busy sightseeing and card playing and eating and visiting the house seemed vast and empty.  All of our visitors were on the plane and returning to America and Don and I were left with a few days to ourselves.  We spent them riding around the area.

Sunday arrived quickly and Francois arrived with it.  Just at 10am, as arranged, he called from the gate to say he was walking up the drive.  We welcomed him back to his home and had a short visit, chatting about the spacious accommodations, our experiences and enjoyments, and our appreciation for the use of his home.  Right around 11am Don and I mounted our bikes and began the next phase of our trip.

How exciting!  Our first day of point-to-point traveling.   Don had plotted a route that took us through our favorite, beautiful little green valley, out through Boissy aux Cailles (Quail Woods).  We continued south on the little country roads, over rolling hills covered in fields of green barley.  Village after village rolled by. We felt good and continued heading south.  In one village we ran across the Sunday Flea Market, so we walked our bikes through the streets, looking through all of the old junk for a treasure.  We stopped for our picnic lunch in the square of another village.

Around 3pm I suggested to Don that we start looking for a possible lodging for the night.  We had been in farmland all day and had seen very few gites or chambre d’hotes.  I picked a town that I thought might have some possibilities and we headed out in that direction.  Before we got there Don saw an auberge and stopped to ask the staff there if they knew of anything in the area.  We thought the fellow was going to telephone for us and then give us directions, but after waiting for quite awhile it appeared that he was not.  The woman there had given us directions to a gite she knew of, so we rode our bikes a few miles to the sign and then followed the home made signs far out into the forest, finally arriving at a lovely looking gite.  No one home, so we waited for a while.  Eventually we felt that we had to move on.

Now we were in the Forest of Orleans, and we rode along the dirt paths used by royalty centuries ago.  On the other side of the Forest we came to the town of Ingrannes.  By now it was 5pm and we needed to get settled into some lodging.  We stopped at a gite, and even though there was a big log blocking the drive, I walked into the yard to ask the woman there about the possibility of a room for the night.  NO WAY!!!  She was very clear.  She was not open for business, wouldn’t rent for just one night anyway, and neither would anyone else in the town.  Go to a hotel in the big town, she said, just 15 kilometers away, and go away from here!

Now we were tired and getting cranky.  We continued along the route to Fay aux Loges, where Don’s GPS said there was lodging at the Auberge le Poisson l’Argent.  The highway through the town was very busy, with fast cars zooming by, and we were just plain tired now.  We stood on the corner, Don insisting that we were just 20 meters from the Inn.  We say nothing that looked like a restaurant or lodging.  We rode our bikes across the bridge, down the side streets, back into the center of town.  Finally I parked in a little square to look at the town map, while Don, GPS in hand, rode up and down the road honing in on the exact location.  As I was standing there I happened to look across the street, where I saw a big pink sign on the wall, Le Poisson d’Argent.  There it is!!  Goody!!  A shower and bed at last!

Well, no, there is a restaurant there, but it is closed.  There appears to be nothing like a hotel.  We were standing there, in front of the building discussing what to do.  A fellow appeared from somewhere and started talking to another guy on a motorcycle, so I asked them if they knew of a chambre d’hote.  They told us about one out the road we had just come in on, just 3 kilometers.  By now even 2 miles (3 kilometers) seemed overwhelming, but we did the ride and found the place and rang the bell.  No room in the inn, but the very nice lady did telephone another place nearby and made arrangements for us.

Back on our bikes again, we rode 3 kilometers back into town, and began the 3 kilometers out the road on the other side of the river, eyeing the huge black cloud moving our way.  The rain started pelting us, and before long we were drenched.  We stopped and put on our rain gear and finally arrived at La Poterie in Donnery.