So I'm having a day off in Amboise, a small town with a big castle like so many others along the Loire. All of a sudden the streets are full of Americans and the cycle paths and country lanes busy with Dutchmen and Australians, whereas until Tours I hadn't seen a foreigner on the road at all. I have managed to find a way of writing a new post on my iPhone, which has a very small keypad but at least it's an English one (qwerty). Since the last successful one a lot of things have happened, and a lot of miles covered. The weather has changed again now after about a week of abnormally hot days which tested the metabolism - it was only 3 weeks ago that it was snowing on the way to the airport at Manchester and now I've been walking in temperatures of 26 degrees! I have passed through an extraordinary landscape of grottoes and caves hewn out of the soft tufa, many of which have houses attached or are used for storing wine and cheeses or growing mushrooms. Or even in one case snails. I came across a vigorous 77-year-old who offered me a drink in his house, which he had literally carved out of the rock and added windows and a door. Up a steep flight of steps above the house he had put up a little wooden house on a flat space with a patio, and he told me I could sleep there. The view from the front door early the next day was fantastic, looking down onto the river. I spent one whole day walking through the forest of Chinon, during which I met nobody else walking or cycling and only saw 3 people to say hello to but on the whole there have been plenty of locals out and about. I saw a man yesterday collecting nettles which he said were for mulching his tomato plants to heat them up, and a boy fishing for frogs in a small village pond. On Easter Sunday I found myself at a museum of Lenin memorabilia, which was most bizarre and could easily form the basis of a forthcoming book. Meanwhile there have been birds aplenty: this is a twitchers' paradise as there are so many migratory birds. They love the sandbanks and small islands, even inn the middle of big towns like Tours. I hope to continue on towards Orleans in the next week so am going faster than expected.

Bonjour dear readers! I shall write a little something to let you know I am still alive and striding and to see if this works. It should do since I seem to have minutes, bytes and battery to spare, there is reception here and also WiFi access. However I have my doubts - yesterday I thought I had cracked the previously insoluble problem of tracking the journey online then making it available to others by saving the map to this point and sharing it via Facebook but apparently it didn't show up on Facebook and then it inexplicably disappeared. It took an hour to find again but at least I have the map which I am tracking and will continue to track via an app called EveryTrail, which you should be able to access for free by registering then searching on it for nick19. It would be great to hear from someone who had succeeded in doing that. I have been in France for over a week now and have covered about 150 km. from Guerande to Ancenis with a break in the middle for a spot of sight-seeing in Nantes. I have slept in a motorway concrete-box hotel, with two families via Couchsurfing and Airbnb; at a chambre d'hotes i.e. guest-house; in a deserted lakeside hotel; at an apartment at the quayside in Nantes with a sculptor and a set designer/builder; at their workshop in the countryside; and at a rented studio apartment opposite the castle in Ancenis, where I am now composing this in the public library. The first few days across country from Guerande I didn't see the Loire at all but there was plenty of water about in the form of marshes, ponds, fens, bogs and puddles. I imagine the English fenland country in East Anglia was like this in the days of Boudicca or Hereward the Wake when the locals repelled invaders by knowing how to get from A to B on dry land. When I arrived at St Lyphard I was informed that the GR3 was closed until May or June due to flooding so I would have to proceed by walking along the main road for 10 km (not a great idea with only a narrow grass verge alongside it) or taking a bus to Herbignac, from which I could walk on country lanes to my destination near La Chapelle des Marais. So the journey began with a hiccup. The next morning I was up early and out of the house at 7.30 which at the time was about an hour and a bit after dawn, and went exploring to find a way across the marsh to Sainte Reine de Bretagne. People had said that path may still be flooded too but it was passable and I saw some unusual wildlife including what must have been a vole although it was the size of a beaver, and an egret. In contrast to the succession of country lanes, bridlepaths and old drovers' or carters' tracks I found over the first 5 days, the last couple of days I have been following the riverbank on a mixture of well-made straight gravel paths, wide enough for occasional motor traffic - farmers, fishermen, woodcutters and the like - and tiny footpaths, one of which threatened to tip me into the river yesterday as it was so perilously slippery. There has been much birdlife to see here as well, including herons, ducks and divers, and a pair of unknown birds with a pronounced yellow back. In addition there are all the birdcalls from cuckoos, owls, buzzards, robins, blackbirds, finches and woodpeckers. Yesterday I spoke to a fisherman who told me all about the kinds of fish they have in the river and which ones are most prized, notably the sandre, which I think is called zander in English. I am signing off now and taking to the road again - farewell!