Autumn has come to the Loire.
It may not be obvious yet. The days are still filled with sunshine, sometimes hot, and tourists still throng the shopping streets of Tours and Saumur. But the hints are there. For a start, the sale rails are full of summer clothes, bargains to be put away and forgotten about until next year, and the new collections are long-sleeved and thicker. Between shops, we still enjoy coffee and drinks in the sunshine but shade is no longer the favoured option, and in the evenings we ask for seats in l’interior. The evenings are suddenly shorter. In Bléré, we are sitting in the bright twilight waiting for the dessert menu when a sudden light shower passes us over, and everyone scrambles for the conservatory tables, abandoning empty plates and wine bottles. We all sit with one eye on the dessert menus and the other on the streams of raindrops beading together above us, gloomily imagining the walk home. That was the first time that autumn revealed its presence.
The trees have known it for a while. Cooked by the extreme heat of June and July, they are ready to drop their leaves and are already dressed in their autumn colours. One day, I take a ride out from the Cher to the Loire and back, first batting into a westerly headwind sweeping over the flat land, then turning north in the most autumnal of woodlands. The road is straight and on either side the trees lean in, showering the edges with yellow, oranges and reds. Occasionally, the wind gives the tops an extra shake to push them along a bit. There is a battle between the late summer light and the still-strong vegetation, so the scene is both gloomy and full of life at the same time. I turn the pedals incessantly, trying to find my own rhythm, echoing that of the season.
Summer is hanging on as best it can, but the intensity of two weeks ago has gone. We walk to the beach at Bléré and swim in the Cher, though the water seems cooler and there is no frantic search for sunhats in the morning. We kayak at Montrichard, though that westerly breeze wants to push us upstream throughout. There are conversations about clothing, extra evening layers, and sleeping bags are being zipped closed at night. And there are suddenly less children on the campsites.
As the Loire moves into autumn, we move north too, making the step a little more pronounced. Our long holiday is coming to an end, and work and ferries are calling. It isn’t our favourite journey of the year. In Normandy it will be a couple of degrees cooler and the chance of rain a percentage higher. The clouds will turn fluffy, flat-bottomed with grey. We’ll look forward to cider instead of beer, barbecue instead of salad, even sitting in the sun rather than the shade. It’ll take us a day or two to get used to it, to overcome the pang of biting nostalgia as we realise that both summer and our family time together are coming to an end.
We cross the bridge at Saumur and head north, leaving the Loire and the best days of the year behind.
