D25 Loyettes to Brangues

My first full via Rhona day....running from Geneva to the Med as Eurovelo 12 it's one of an ever growing network.

The dads (my parea as the Greeks say of a same gender group  of contemporaries with whom one hangs out and drinks with weekly) have done a chunk of 1 around the UK southwest and I'm still hopeful of persuading a group outing heading South via Brittany. On this trip I touched upon the 3, Sus and I did a chunk of the 6 (see pre posts), now I'm on the 12 with the 7 to come in part in Italy. Bloody fantastic example of European cooperation - as I shared with a French engineer later that day....what are the English thinking of....I suggest the right hark back to a mythical time of Grande Bretagne....But as this trip is demonstrating her real the world and certainly France has moved on and we're in danger of getting left behind. Stop that train I want to get (back) on as the reggae anthem goes.

The morning ride took me round a loop of the Rhone which here flows past a rather dramatic plateau of limestone on a stretch of the Rhone which has attracted romantic artists over the years. I dropped into one museum dedicated to the leader of the Lyons school.In the 18th century whose work was rather dated but there discovered this woman, Yvonne Cheffer-de-Louis daughter of Mr Renault's first engineer ! Great colours and her poem written towards the end I thought had true pathos. Anyway moving on from art criticism I rolled into a little place around 7pm which has a camping sign, a chatea u and a bar /restaurant so I was happy that all needs could be met!

At the bar I am told that this is the village of Stendle I express appropriate respect and appreciation before getting the Wi-Fi address and scurrying to Wikipedia to find out who he was!

Turns out Stendle was born in modest beginnings in this little village on the Rhone but rose through selection by the local priest for education in Lyon and thence with service under Napolean to be a man of letters and French ambassador. His literary reputation is for applying an acute understanding of human nature to his romantic novels (he was an inveterate womanizer and serially in love often unrequited) which earned him attention amongst the literary giants of the day who ranked him high(ish) as bringing realism to the romantic. So having been educated and drunk and ate my full I set out for the camping which turned out to be a side business for a vegetable farm operation where you could camp for €6 and use a rather well designed basement area of the farm for showering, toileting and prepping food. What an excellent system. The lady was a bit surprised when I set the dog barking rolling in at 10pm with my bike lights on!