Angers; Sunday, 27 September, 2026

I had a late breakfast, which is what it appeared the rest of the hotel was also doing as it was very busy, but I managed to swoop in on a table just as it was being cleaned so I didn’t have to perch anywhere to consume my food.

After packing my bag and checking out I headed out of the hotel and wandered back into town, with the aim of visiting several of the city’s museums.

First up was the Musée des Beaux-Arts, the city’s fine arts museum which houses, along with lots of paintings and sculptures, some of the historic artefacts of the city, including details on some of the Roman remains that have been discovered in the city.

Just behind the Musée des Beaux-Arts is the Gallery David d’Angers. The gallery houses casts made of the sculpture works of 19th century French sculptor Pierre-Jean David, also known as David d’Angers, who is responsible for many of the sculptures including the pediment of the Panthéon in Paris. Whilst the works are interesting the building they are housed in is almost more interesting, being the former Abbey Church of the All Saints Monastery. When it was converted the lead roof was replaced with glass, but laid out like it was sheets of lead, giving the overall impression of a see-through church roof.

From the Gallery David d’Angers I walked the 15 minutes or so across town to the Musée Pincé which houses the city’s collection of historic artefacts from other cultures, but it turned out that the museum was closed, despite the website saying it should be open (a check a couple of days later showed that it was exceptionally closed from the day I tried to visit until the end of October, so clearly something wasn’t right with either the building or the collection and I just timed it very poorly)

Having walked all the way over to the closed Musée Pincé I then headed back across town with the intention of visiting the gardens in the moat of the castle, only to find that these were also closed – though by the look of it they may not be open to the public very often, but at least I could appreciate them from the path above looking down into them.

I stopped at a café for a very late lunch and to work out which train to go for, which turned out to be a good idea as both ends of my journey home were looking like they were to be affected by trackside fires. One by the station in Tours was delaying the trains coming from Tours to Angers and onto Nantes, and another fire by Clapham Junction had totally shut down the line into London Victoria and with it decimated the service through Gatwick.

Not wanting to take a risk I finished up my lunch and booked a ticket on the next available train back to Nantes and then headed down to the station.

In the end the train was only a couple of minutes late, so by the time I got into Nantes I had quite a bit of time before I needed to be at the airport, so rather than taking the €10 airport shuttle I instead walked the 2Km out to the end of the line for the number 38 which also serves the airport and at the weekend is free. Despite doing this I was still at the airport 2¾ hours before my flight was due to leave.

That turned out to be quite a bit less time as the inbound flight was early and the airport team were very keen to get us all on the plane and departed early, with the plane taking off a good five minutes before we were scheduled to push back and eventually landing into Gatwick a full 45 minutes ahead of schedule. Of which all that gained time was lost in trying to get home as unlike SNCF, Southern had decided to just give up and cancel most trains, so in the end it was a Thameslink and then a late-night walk through Croydon to catch the bus back home.