Free The Best Women's Travel Writing by Lavinia Spalding

live in an area where the topography resembles a huge sheet of bubble wrap; you can barely go a quarter mile in any direction without having to claw your way up an incline or fall off of one. So while ten miles wasn’t enough to train me for France, it was a hard ten miles, right? And I would be fine. Right?
    What’s more, before moving to bumpy upstate New York, I had lived in Manhattan and often rode to work—three miles through Midtown that included life-flashing-before-my-eyes encounters with truck drivers and cabbies intent on viewing cyclists as targets in a roadway shooting gallery. Surely this had toughened me for the Loire Valley, the cradle of kings.
    I tried talking myself into a mood of cavalier and confident anticipation, but still, for weeks before we left, I would lie in bed late at night, picturing myself twenty or thirty miles along with my thighs rubbed raw. I could hear the voices of concerned friends muttering an incantation that sounded an awful lot like “chafe, chafe, chafe.” I bought tubs of Bag Balm, on the advice of people on Twitter, from whom I had solicited suggestions. (Yes, I started a hashtag called #chafingadvice. I’m not sure I’m proud of that, but I got dozens of replies.) I ordered Pearl Izumi shorts, and for good measure, a pair of Canari shorts, too—and then, as just one more good measure, I bought a pair of tiny blue Aero Tech Design shorts for Austin, in case he’d inherited my fear of chafing. I kept planning to ride a few extra miles every day to train, but somehow it never happened; I guess I was too busy ordering bike shorts.
    There were other issues. My husband and I wanted to ride on our own, not as part of a group, and while there are a number of companies in France that will set up that kind of trip, we kept running into an odd sort of Continental laissez-faire: yes, we can make the trip for you, Madame, but, oh no, not that week. And not quite there. And,
oui
, we will call you back, Madame—or perhaps not, because what you wish for is simply not possible. At home, I had more troubles: Austin decided that he would come only if he could ride his own bike, because, he said, “trail-a-bikes are for babies.” Since he’d just graduated from training wheels, the prospect of double-digit miles with him wobbling along was enough to take my breath away. And here I had thought chafing was the big problem.
    But at last the clouds parted. Austin—bribed with the promise he could play on my iPhone during the entire flight to Paris—agreed to use the trail-a-bike, and the maddeningly pleasant but previously disobliging French travel agents suddenly, miraculously, presented us with a complete four-day itinerary.
    I packed my oversupply of balms and bike shorts, and we flew to Paris then traveled by train to Blois, where we would start our trip. There we met our travel companions: Gitane Mississippis, sturdy workhorse bikes outfitted with roomy panniers and map holders attached to the handlebars.
    We had only a little more than twenty-seven miles to ride, to the town of Amboise, and we were in France, after all, so we started slowly, which in France includes lingering over good food—in this case, perfect French espresso and a basket of croissants oozing almond paste, then stocking up on a dozen madeleines and a bottle of Sancerre for emergency road snacks.
    Fed and provisioned, we gathered around our bikes. We were suited up, helmeted, gloved, spandexed; I felt slightly bowlegged from my bike shorts. A woman walked down the sidewalk toward us. She was one of those beautiful, sleek French women who look like they play a lot of tennis but actually just eat a lot of chocolate. She smiled when she saw our pile of gear and our outfits, and suddenly I felt ridiculously over-prepared, like a tenderfoot at a dude ranch.
    As she stepped around us, she asked, in English, “Are you bicycling?”
    I said we were.
    â€œWell,