Balbigny to Digoin
Thanks to warmer temperatures last night, I was finally comfortable enough to sleep relatively well. By the time I woke up, all the cyclists who’d camped next to me were gone. I didn’t leave too late either, given the long ride ahead.
Until Roanne I was following a road along the Loire gorges, which surprised me — I thought they were behind me already and there were only plains ahead. There wasn’t much remarkable along the way, just one castle on a small island. Roanne itself didn’t seem very interesting, so I carried on without much in the way of tourist duties.
After Roanne the road flattened out, and the only highlight was the Voie Verte between Iguerande and Saint-Yan, roughly 30 kilometers of cycling path along an old railway line. Paved, shaded, deserted, with benches along the whole route. Made my life easier, since I was getting more and more tired. I arrived in Digoin before 3pm, settled into the campground, and did a little tour of the town. Digoin is an important town on the French canal network, sitting at the junction of three canals: Roanne à Digoin, Latéral à la Loire, and the Canal du Centre. But it has little to offer in terms of sightseeing.
Today in numbers:
98 km — distance cycled
3 — rivers that converge in Roanne: Loire, Renaison, and Rhins
243 m — the length of Digoin’s famous canal bridge, one of the first of its kind in France