I left Orleans in a bit of a sulk. Didn’t take to the place. A week to develop film. Blow me.

The previous cycle of one-horse towns changed after Orleans. Along the river Loire the towns were more populated and had more shops, more things to do. Our trip until Tours would be moving with the Loire southwest and stopping every 20km or so for the night. The first day we walked 26km and stopped at Beaugency. Everyone was in fine form. There was, according to Google maps, a photo place in town, we were finally using our 4kg tent at the local campsite, and the weather was perfect for walking.

We got to the campsite, set up our tent, dumped the rest of the things and went to explore Beaugency. First stop was the pizza place by the river. It was nice until we got up to leave, and then it was though we’d aged 200 years. Crab-walking up the street like John Wayne with incurable haemorrhoids.

Oh and that goddamn photo place had moved 7km up the road. Pack of wankers, update your Google maps. 7km doesn’t sound like much unless you’re a lazy, backsliding pedestrian who has to walk there.

But it doesn’t matter so much as I was able to break the seal with the very first op shop of the trip. Bless you, croix rouge. L waited outside and ultimately fell asleep, while I looked for something suitably heinous. But they were all out of stock so I had to buy this flirty blue number instead. For a euro. Makes up for the lack a little thus far I suppose.

That night I had the worst night of sleep on the trip. Only one that came close was Orleans after a night of cheap beer. A tent is no true way to travel. It gets dark very late and there are people around who won’t shut up. The tent is tiny as well. It’s like trying to sleep in an envelope. So I dozed fitfully and tried not to think about tomorrow.

I woke up feeling very unimpressed with the whole venture. But L had the passports and I was unable to overpower her and make for somewhere with public transport. So I gamely held out until Mer, 15km away, where I, in Australian parlance, dropped my showbags. I was not walking any further that day, not with the painful row of blisters on one heel, and my aching body, and my sad feelings.

L was lovely about it, happy not to be the one tapping out early. It was meant to be a big hike, some 36km that day, and I didn’t want to walk another goddamn step of it. So we caught a taxi the rest of the way to Blois.

Having the knee brace is an excellent out. I wear it for a patella that doesn’t move where it should, and of course for the way the brace looks, but if I wear the brace I don’t get any knee problems. But hopping in a taxi or limping about people see the brace and ask you how bad it is. I usually say it’s an injury of the sport because I can’t remember what the French doctor had called it. Expensive was probably one of them.

Blois was pretty as well. All these towns have cool bridges over the Loire, and Blois was no exception. They need to update the design so I can tell which bridge goes where in my photos. Our stay in Blois seemed to include lots of cyclists. The whole way down the river is a cyclist’s paradise. Whole families go for the trip. Bikes everywhere, cycling down the lovely Loire, and here we are, a pair of jackasses, humping it everywhere on foot.

Since Orleans the towns have really improved. Beautiful towns straddling the river, thronged with people, lovely streets to walk down. The only complaint I had (asides from the lack of photo and op shops, the constant walking, in fact pretty much everything else) is that the weather, although good for walking, was continually cloudy and not fantastic for photography. I could stand a hot day if it meant taking some decent shots of the scenery. Hell, the next day, when we got into Orzain, there was some decent breezes on the bridge which nearly knocked over my tripod. It at least knocked over a few bikes, loaded down was they were with all their travelling shite.

The other big news in Orzain (Orzain on one side of the river, Chaumont-sur-Loire – the prettier, fancier town with the chateau on the over) is that there was a fripperie open on a Monday. Too much of a good thing however, had to browse through tens of metres of racks of sports coats from France and Italy and couldn’t find a thing in my size. The jumpers were top shelf but I couldn’t spare the room. But things are picking up, that’s two shops in three days.

In Amboise there was another victim of the digital revolution:

But the town made it back up by having an op shop. I bought a fantastic set of pyjamas as seen here.

Finally we stopped in Tours for two days to get our lust for life back. Happily they had a photo lab and an emmaus so that was two boxes checked for me. There was nothing in the emmaus though. Somebody who knows what they’re doing already came through and swiped all the good stuff. You could tell by the way the only cameras that were left were crappy 35mm things nobody wanted.They did have a couple of Kodak Instamatics for sale for five bucks, and we tossed up whether to get them or not. But we weren’t sure what film it took so we left them there. A quick search shows they take a 126 cartridge but honestly if even 35mm is a hassle I don’t want to looking for trouble.

We got our film back in the afternoon and wasn’t that a bittersweet experience. It turns out L had gone a fortnight saving only the best shots for the Olympus Trip 35 and finally got to the end of the roll yesterday. She opened the camera to change the roll, and boom – turns out she hadn’t actually loaded film into it. And one of the three films I’d loaded, the first roll, it turned out I hadn’t switched the film release switch back after winding my film, so the film hadn’t advanced. We’re sitting on a 2/4 success rate for film so far. It’s enough to make you switch to digital.

All my tripod-mounted shots from the tower in Méréville, all the beautiful tiny bridge pictures in Saclas, the wonderful shots just as the dawn light hits the fields of wheat, all gone. Damn. I keep remembering where and when I took photos and it hurts, it really does.

Still, there were some nice shots:

Most of the days were overcast and windy, so most of the shots of trees and stuff look blurry. The tripod was a necessity as I could go from a shot that comes out well like this one:

I mean I didn’t actually use the tripod for that one – as the OM10 automatically selects shutter speed depending on the light available, I could go from a shot like this which turned out great to a shot like this that didn’t:

The second shot was taken only two streets away not five minutes later, so the light was fairly similar but the camera selected a slower shutter speed. In lower light it’s too chancy knowing if the shot will work or if it’ll blur. I mean, bumping up the aperture notches up the shutter speed but as it shortens my depth of field it won’t work well for the scenery and landscape shots I’m taking.

One of the other things that didn’t work out as well as I’d hoped were some of the nature shots on bright days:

I know for next time the scene was too bright to pick out any of the detail in the shadows. Rookie mistake, but the more balanced shots turned out better a few metres away:

Photos along the Loire were fun. On the last one here I had to run out over to a little island at Amboise and through some water plants that turned out not to have as much buoyancy as I thought, so I got a little wet:

Also a quick selection of the beers I’ve had along the way – for some reason Loire towns are pretty keen on their blondes and wheat beers, weirdos.

Next big stop is Poitiers in a handful of days. I think I’ve got this business figured out now. Regular coffee breaks, podcasts and the occasional air-drumming to pass the time while walking, and while not walking, take some photos of bridges and eat way too much at every meal (“carb loading for tomorrow”).