Racing the Dark to Cléry

The clocks had gone back that morning, so when I rolled out of the Hotel d’Orléans car park just after four on Sunday afternoon I knew I’d be racing the light. After a week in the Lot, which ended with a quick spin to Rocamadour, this was a change of scene: follow the Loire west along its flood levées to the basilica at Cléry-Saint-André and loop back to Orléans.

It was riot season in the city and I wasn’t sure I’d even get out of the centre. I went through Place du Martroi, past its carousel, and down the arcades of Rue Royale, and to my relief the police let me across the Pont George V.

From the south bank there’s a lovely view back over the sandbanks to the twin towers of Sainte-Croix cathedral, and then the city fell away quickly. The way west is along the levée, the raised dyke that keeps the river in its bed, with a ribbon of smooth tarmac between the water and the fields.

Heading west meant riding into a fresh westerly and straight into a sun already sitting low, which turned everything gold. I passed a stone cross standing on its own beside the path, and the only bump worth the name all day, the grandly titled Montée Pavés, ten metres of rise in 330 metres.

Beyond Saint-Hilaire-Saint-Mesmin the levée ran on past Mareau-aux-Prés, with pylons striding across the fields and bare trees hung with balls of mistletoe. It was easy, flat, traffic-free riding, and my long shadow led the way.

Near the bridge at Meung-sur-Loire I left the river and turned south to Dry. The sign said Dry, though the fields around it were lush and green. From there it was east on quiet lanes to Cléry-Saint-André, straight across flat farmland with the sun now low behind me.

The Basilica of Our Lady of Cléry is a huge Gothic church for such a small town. English troops wrecked the earlier church in 1428 on their way to besiege Orléans, and it was rebuilt with the backing of Charles VII and Louis XI, who chose to be buried here. It was the turning point of the loop and the reason for the ride, and it looked superb in the last of the sunshine.

The way home was the same levée in reverse, with the westerly now behind me, but the light went fast. Between Mareau and Saint-Hilaire I stopped to watch the sky turn pink over the river, and by the time I reached Saint-Hilaire-Saint-Mesmin the street lights were on. It got cold and dark early, just as the clocks going back had promised.

The last few kilometres brought the lit arch of Santiago Calatrava’s Pont de l’Europe, with the evening traffic queued across it, then the cycle lane along the north-bank quays to the Pont George V and back up Rue Royale under the street lamps, the same street I had left in sunshine barely two and a half hours earlier. I was back at the hotel just before seven. Forty-eight flat kilometres, a basilica and a Loire sunset, and the ride nudged my year past 21,000 km – not a bad way to spend the extra hour.