(photo: introductory image for the site)


A student experience of a lifetime


Western’s President Paul Davenport led a group of twenty Kinesiology students on this bicycle adventure through the Loire Valley in France (May 4 to 14, 2007).  The bike trip was an activity course, one of the outdoor recreation offerings of the Kinesiology activity program.  The course instructor is Professor Al Salmoni, who was also on the bike trip.  The group biked some 310 km during six days.

Davenport acted as trip guide along the rural roads southwest of Tours, France, describing the area and its monuments to the participants, and relating the sights they saw to some of the great historical figures of Touraine, including St. Martin, Francois Rabelais, and Honoré de Balzac.  He also introduced the students to a part of France whose geography, history and culture he has known well for many years.  As part of the course students read selections from Rabelais and Balzac set in areas they biked through.

As an undergraduate at Stanford University, Davenport studied at its campus in Tours in 1967. It was on this sojourn that he met his wife, Josette, then a student at the University of Tours.  They and their children have spent time in the Loire Valley southwest of Tours every summer since 1989. 

Davenport wrote a thirteen-page text describing the area and its history, and the places the group visited on the bike tour:
Click here to download the Word file

The text refers to maps which have also been posted:
Click here to download the maps

The text also refers to 72 photographs he has taken, divided into two groups for ease of downloading, Slides 1-36 and Slides 37-72:
Click here to download Slides 1-36
Click here to download Slides 37-72