3Iune 



XXXVIII 



IT would be very difficult to improve on foreign guide- 

 books ; Murray, Baedeker, and Joanne there 



Tlirougli J 



Touraine is very little to choose between them, and 

 the amount of historical and topographical 

 information stowed into a pocketful is nothing short 

 of encyclopaedic. Nevertheless, there are some things 

 which, though it would be unreasonable to expect 

 them in a guide-book, become of moment directly the 

 railway is exchanged for the highway and the bicycle. 

 In such a hackneyed district as the valley of the lower 

 Loire say between Orleans and Saumur it matters 

 not whether the railway traveller begins to explore it 

 from the east or the west. But to the cyclist it makes 

 all the difference in the world. He must begin in the 

 west and work up-stream ; thereby securing the favour 

 of that steady, gentle wind which, in May and June, 

 almost incessantly blows in from the Atlantic. With 

 this precaution, perhaps, there is no land which so 

 completely fulfils the cyclist's ideal three R's roads, 

 ruins, and restaurants as Touraine, where the high 

 roads have a surface as of brown holland or fawn satin, 



150 



