The Velodyssee route would have you do over 60 miles between these two places by directing you northwards along the Atlantic coast right up to St Nazaire and then eastwards along the south bank of the Loire to Nantes. However in order to save time, and unnecessary saddle fatigue, we navigated our own route on Departmental roads across country and saved ourselves over 30 miles of effort! Bingo – more time available for beer drinking and to undertake a visit to the weird and wonderful Ile des Machines in Nantes.
It is difficult to describe this particular attraction. It is located on a large island in the Loire river in the heart of the city and forms part of a massive urban planning restructuring programme for this part of town. It is housed in a couple of giant former shipbuilding warehouses that were scheduled to be knocked down until discovered by two crazy guys called Francois Delarozière and Pierre Orefice who had a dream of building a fantasy world of weird and wonderful giant mechanical creatures living amongst the branches of a massive artificial tree, called the Heron Tree, which is floating about in space and in which visitors can walk around and see the giant herons, spiders, ants, caterpillars, humming birds etc.
In parallel with the floaty heron tree idea these guys have also created Marineword which is based on the concept of a three-tiered carousel, the lower two tiers are metaphorically below the surface of the water and one remains above it. There is no actual water involved in Waterworld- except when we visited ‘cos it was raining. The carousel contains more weird and wonderful mechanical sea creatures including giant squid and mantarays and visitors can pay to experience the ride or view the passing creatures through the sides of the carousel (except when we were there it wasn’t operating ‘cos the squid had gone on strike!!!)
Forming a link between the waterworld and the floaty heron tree world is (… wait for it…) a massive plodding wooden elephant whose impressive stats are:
12m high, 8m wide and 21m long
Weighs 41.4 tons made up of steel and wood
Contains 2500 litres of lubricating oil
It has an indoor lounge with balconies and can carry up to 50 people.
It travels at the sprightly rate of 2kph.
But it’s best trick is that it can squirt unsuspecting visitors with cold water from its very animated trunk. Oh what havoc this causes ! Robert McKay came here last year and got squirted !
This is all a typically French creation where art meets mechanical engineering. It’s a long term plan needing lots of money. The floaty Heron Tree isn’t due to be completed until 2022 although they have built a working prototype of one branch that you can get into. Whoohoo! Can’t wait to come back in 2022!!!
Velodyssee 
Brilliant but did Carol survive being trampled on and then hosed away! It is certainly spectacular. Looks like your weather is the reverse of what we had; 31C in Nantes and 15 and rain at Carnac.
Nantes reminded us of Glasgow but possibly doing a better job; history of ship building and heavy industry and predominantly tenement housing in the centre. Wondered if this was an EU effect.
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Carol survived to cycle another day! Yeah lots of similarities between Nantes and Glasgow – shipbuilding, large regeneration projects etc. It’s just that the food is better here!!
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An amazing place.
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