Day 1 - Basel -> Vichy	Day 2 - Vichy	Day 3 - Thiézac	Day 4 - Sarlat-la-Canéda	Day 5 - La Grande Côte (Coast)
Day 6 - Rigny-Ussé	Day 7 - Cosne-Cours-s/Loire	Day 8 - Cosne-Cours-s/Loire	Day 9 - Riel-les-Eaux	Day 10 - Montbéliard

May 24 – June 3, 2025
La Grande Côte -> Rigny-Ussé

Thursday
Map Link

It had been a terrible night, but it was also a learning experience: watch the angle of the ground under the tent, bring an eye mask, and find some insect repellent.

The morning got a little better when we walked to the campground store to pick up our pre-ordered breakfast pastries. They were surprisingly good! It was a much better way to start the day. We didn’t rush and casually packed up the camping gear and got ready to hit the road. Dan had found an “amazing campsite” right on the Loire River, near the town of Rigny-Ussé. Reviews raved about how it was practically in the front yard of a fancy chateau, and I was looking forward to sitting my camp chair with my book and watching the Loire waters flow passed.

The trip to Rigny-Ussé was uneventful, with ok roads and ok scenery to go along with it. It was getting hot though, so I was glad when we descended through the forests to the Loire river valley and our campground for the night.

It was a municipal campground, which meant that it had minimal amenities. The facilities were clean and functioning, but I would have liked to have not been surprised that toilet paper was not provided. But the grounds were in good shape and not too busy. The chateau? It was a kilometer down the road. The town of Rigny-Ussé boasted a church, a hotel, and a busy restaurant across the street from the chateau. When we first rode through it was bustling with bicyclists, all enjoying the bicycle routes that follow the Loire. But today was a holiday, which meant that any other shops, even as small and few as they were, were closed for the day.

And the river? It was 1.5 kilometers away, more than half an hour walk along the main road. And once we did reach the river, there was no direct access to it nearby. We walked back to the campsite via a different route (again through farmer tracks in the fields), but it was hot and the sun baked us. It was not a pleasant walk at all. The only bright point was seeing a pheasant poke its head out from the long grass.

That night the campground’s lights ruined the night sky from our tent, but a 5 minute walk to a nearby field showed a sky full of glistening points of light, and even a whisper of the Milky Way. I slept much better that night, despite the ground being hard as a rock. Maybe I was just too tired to care.

Day 7