Chartres, Tours and Orléans with Anna

Orléans has a magnificent city center. We were on the square with a nice statue of Joan of Arc. Joan even has her own 'house' in Orléans, where they show a movie about her life. We had a lovely sushi lunch near the cathedral. And I bought some new binders for keeping my luggage in place. Then we took off in the direction of Chartres, the place where this whole adventure started. It would take us over 80 km. to get there, with regularly climbing again, and we still had two days left. So we aimed for about 40 km. a day.

We had to find our own way back now, because our guide did not provide for a route from Orléans to Chartres. That was no problem. We followed a departemental road and along our route of course we visited a local bakery for flan and water. The only thing was that there was no camp site or B&B available in the whole area. At least, we could not find one on the internet. So we knew that we had to camp in the wild.

We ended up in Orgères-en-Beauce. We asked the owner of a local grocery store if he knew a place where we could camp. He sent us to a farm nearby. The lady there was not amused; she hadn't had campers for about five years. She advised us to visit the mairie (city hall) and ask further there. So we did. The mairie was already closed but luckily there was a lady present. She consulted the mayor and he gave permission for camping in the local stadium of their football club Entente Sportive Beauceronne. He arranged that a maintenance man opened the gate, a toilet and a locker-room, and put on the hot water. He made our day. We were there in time before the thunderstorm so we could take shelter there.

In the meantime, we found out that there would be a football training that evening. About 20 guys arrived one after the other, shook hands with us and wanted to use the locker-room where we had put all our stuff. Luckily there also was a small referee room which had a shower, a sink AND a plug. So I could even charge my trike's battery. So we confiscated this room and let the men do their thing. We had some instant meals that only required some hot water to go with it, so we used Anna's gas heater and had ourselves a good curry and of course wine to go with it. While the guys were still having their training, we quickly put up our tent with the stadium lights still on. The training turned out to be their first of the season so the guys also had an after-party, in which we joined. After some pastis, beer and music we decided to go to bed, praying that they would leave the referee room unlocked. Luckily they did.

We slept ok and had the whole stadium to ourselves the next morning. There was enough time to dry our tent and we enjoyed a warm shower and a lovely breakfast in the sunshine. We left Orgères-en-Beauce at about noon.