Day 8 - Evreux to Chartres - 90 kms

After a good night of sleep in the top bunk of our room in the Formula 1 hotel we were ready to leave at about 7.00 am.

The day started with a bit of fog and it was quite chilly but after the fog lifted it was perfect riding weather at about 27 degrees with sun!

Chris awoke earlier than me, I suspect it was due to my snoring (but he is too kind to tell me) and he had found a belongarie with coffee on the web so we headed there to get or breakfast. It was quite delicious with croissants etc and a coffee for me to get started. As there was no seating in the bread shop we availed ourselves of seats in the school yard in the school opposite the shop. We both think this caused some amusement to the school staff some of whom were looking on at us.

After breakfast it was on to Dreux for lunch. We passed through fairly intense farming land with a sprinkle of villages along the way. As Chris pointed out it seems the farmers live in town rather than in houses located on the farms. Interesting comparison to Australia where the farmers  live in homes on their farms. 

The crops we saw included wheat, corn, peas and some crop which had a purple flower 

Stopping in Dreux for lunch was good and we both had a baguette sandwich on the steps of the local church. I picked up a map and we both enjoyed an ice cream as the weather was getting quite hot. We also organised our accomodation in Chartres which I will come back to later.... The interesting point here is that we struggled to get accomodation through Warm Showers and had to resort to using a hotel booking website 

Leaving Dreux we had about 45 kms to Chartres. We traveled for the first half of the afternoon ride in pretty village roads then for the second half it was largely on the major road to Chartres. Again the country was intense farm country 

Chris swapped his trusty Garmin to me to do the navigation so he could look at the scenery. I was rather nervous st this stage as I did not want us to be lost. To my surprise it worked well.

Arriving at Chartres at about 4.30 pm we headed for our hotel. Well despite the fact that our Garmin delivered is to the address we could not find it....we spent about an hour looking for it. Finally Chris went to the front door of a house which had a ramshackle front yard and a very inconspicuous front door .”

Chris spoke to the owner and sure enough it was our place for the night!

Getting inside the house it was apparent that the owners had spent funds on the interior which was quite lovely. It operates on a guesthouse model with 2 bedrooms for rent and the owner is the host.

It was good to have a shower and begin the daily routine of updating my blog 

Tonight we go out for dinner in town!!

Home for the night....Mmmmmmm???

......but inside WOW!!!