A Sunday cycle from Anse to Trevoux + travel blog linkup

I hosted a little linkup for travel bloggers this time last month and

Book sculpture at Camping Les Portes du Beaujolais 

enjoyed reading two posts which were added by A Wandering Woman's Travels: Postcards From Thailand and A Train Trip To Wellington (New Zealand). Both are countries that I have not yet visited although know people who have and were very enthusiastic about them. There's another linkup for travel blogs at the end of this post. Let's see where you have loved (or hated!) visiting.

The unusual metal book sculpture pictured above is near the entrance to our current campsite, Camping Les Portes du Beaujolais. It is a Camping Municipal and a particularly nice one with some posh log cabins and chalets and even a wellness centre. It closes at the end of October for everyone except, apparently, self-sufficient camping cars and motor homes. They can use limited facilities all year round. We got chatting to the guy on Reception who has moved here from Alsace and is wonderfully enthusiastic about the region. Thanks to his advice we found our pretty cycle ride today and will also be staying on longer than planned in order to take advantage of the walkable distance to Anse station where we can catch a train into Lyon. He explained why many of the French municipal campsites are becoming very run down: the Mairie issue three year licences and any investment on the part of the licencee remains at the campsite after that period. However, the manager here had her licence renewed for a further six years and again now for another nine years so it is worth her while to make improvements. It's working too! Visits are up from 6,000 campers staying an average of two nights in 2003 to 22,000 staying an average of four nights this year. Our ACSI card gets us a price of €16.80 per night including electric. Wifi is extra at €8 for three days. A bit pricey, but we got two codes for than so can be online simultaneously!

Just outside the campsite entrance, a downhill slope leads to an earth

Bridge at Trevoux 

path which is an offroad walking and cyling route. We followed this until it met up with a bridge over the beautiful Le Saone river. Once over the bridge, a quick detour through narrow village streets got us down to the river and to a great cycle route sur les bords de Saone that we followed all the way to the picturesque town of Trevoux. It's only about five kilometres and I loved cycling through woodland with all the orange and yellow leaves. France in the autumn has spectacular colours! The route was quite busy with other cyclists and pedestrians, it being a Sunday afternoon, but no one was rushing and we exchanged a lot of Bonjours. We definitely must have looked like tourists though. For us, it is lovely and warm here so we were wearing t-shirts. All the locals have already dusted off their winter coats.

Two huge cruise ships passed us including this pictured one, the Scenic

Emerald, which had glass sided cabins for ultimate views. We mooted the idea of a river cruise for ourselves as we would both enjoy sightseeing at that pace and I shouldn't get the same travel sickness as I do out at sea. We would just need to find one that doesn't insist on dressing up too smartly for dinner every evening. Perhaps we'll look into what is on offer for the Danube - or the Nile!

Once in Trevoux, we sat awhile in the sun watching the passersby, then rode over that elegant bridge shown above which is only crossable by pedestrians and cyclists. There are tracks back along the other side of Le Saone, unsurfaced but perfectly rideable even for a nervous ninny like me! A 'Route Barre' sign turned out to be a fib, for cyclists at least, and we got out into agricultural land for a while before returning to the motorway over which there is a bridge. We did have a slight problem with a bramble-covered path which put paid to our Short Cut! If you also ride this circuit, ignore the potential track shown on google maps. The industrial estate after the motorway bridge IS a dead end. However there's cycle route markings on the edge of most of the road into Anse and all the car drivers gave us a generously wide berth. We easily followed the Gare signs back to our camping after a good two hours out. I was considerably less saddle sore than the last time too.

Seize the night!