La France à vélo!

So much happened on my first day it’s hard to know what to leave out! First, I took the overnight ferry from Portsmouth to St Malo. The ferry was French. I could tell immediately, and not just because all the staff were speaking it. I have to apologise to my dear, patient husband and to all you lovely Anglo-Saxon men out there who might read this, but there is something about French men in the service industry that makes me go weak at the knees. First, they look you right in the eye, then they smile, widely, and then they help, in fact, go out of their way to help as much as it is possible to do. Well, not all of them, but quite a lot. And there I am, won over again by a race that so many love to hate. (PS The women on the boat were all charming and beautiful too!)

Arrival in St Malo. Where was the sun of my imagination of this moment? Instead, steady English drizzle and the grey, grey cloud that northern Europe does so well. St Malo is a lovely old town that was almost completely destroyed in WWII and was rebuilt in the18^th century. It juts out into the sea and buildings peep above the original ancient ramparts that almost completely surround the town.

But I wasn’t lingering to sightsee. Once docked and through customs, first I had to unfold my bike in the rain. Even though this takes about 15 seconds when you can remember how to do it, when you can’t, it pays to have written down a summary, which I had and tried to look at without anyone seeing that I was. That was easy because everyone else was taking taxis or driving off in their nice dry cars or campervans.

It didn’t take much more than that though to have it all ready to go with bags on. Now I had to ride it. I had had one practice in Dulwich Park just around the corner from Jonathan’s house. It wasn’t enough. I had put the back bag on to try, but it’s the front bag that is so disconcerting. It attaches to the stem, not the handlebars, so when you move the handlebars, it doesn’t follow but keeps going in the direction of the main frame. It’s as if it has a mind of its own. I was waiting all day for someone to tell me my bag was in the process of detaching itself.

So off I went with my swinging bag, in the rain, on the wrong side of the road, navigating roundabouts as well as other, vaguer intersections where everyone else seems to know whose right of way it is but it’s a mystery to me, trying to remember the instructions I’d read in a guidebook (and photographed, now there’s efficiency) to find the shuttle ferry to Dinard which is where the bike route starts from. This involved negotiating rail tracks in the wet (never easy on a bike) and waiting in the rain for a split bridge to be put back down before I could pass across.

The shuttle terminal was scenic and the shuttle ferry men wouldn’t let me anywhere near my bike which was nice because it’s quite a heavy beast fully loaded and the gang-plank was narrow. They swept it off me, wheeled it up the ramp and propped it in place with a ‘Voilà, Madame’, ‘Ça va, Madame?’ And all I had to do was say ‘Merci’. Step one achieved.

Step Two was a bit trickier. How to find the start of the bike route? Dinard, across the water from St Malo, is a pretty town nicely positioned with harbour on one side and lovely sandy beaches on the other. Gracious, several-storey houses line the promenades where people were trying to walk their dogs but the waves were pounding up and over the walkways (Is that why I didn’t sleep a wink on the ferry last night? In between coughing fits in my tiny windowless cabin, I couldn’t help thinking all night about the Titanic, as well as the Life of Pi which I had seen on the plane on the way over, as the ship lurched, juddered and rolled its way across the English Channel).

Dinard is a better start to the route south than St Malo as a ‘voie verte’ begins there and runs for 20 kms allowing an easy ride out of quite a busy area. The trouble is, no one seems to be quite sure where it begins and it’s notoriously badly signed.

Again following photographed (!) instructions from a guidebook, I navigated my way up some fairly steep and rough cobbled streets. I hadn’t eaten breakfast on the boat, and was hoping for a café/crêperie or something to be open to give me some energy for the day but there was nothing. After all, it was only 9 am. So on I went. Finally, I managed to find the exact spot where the voie verte was supposed to start and it was taken up by a giant construction site. Not a sign anywhere. Hardly anyone anywhere. I asked one Madame, and then another, but no, neither was from Dinard and they certainly didn’t know anything about a bike route.

But there was a corner boulangerie that was, yes, ouverte! Overjoyed, I got to breathe in deeply the nothing-like-it-in-the-world delicious smell of a French baker’s shop. Crisp baguettes, flaky croissants, little strawberry custard tarts, meringues, macaroons, where to start? I chose a huge pain aux raisins, sticky with syrup, bursting with fruit and hot out of the oven. Madame was friendly and helpful even though she had probably been asked the same question by dozens of other lost cyclists, and off I set along the Voie Verte hoping to find somewhere nice to stop and eat it. Which never really happened. What few seats there were were sopping wet and I kept trying to beat the weather.

However, that was the least of my problems. Here was a beautiful purpose-built cycle/walkway through forests and the backs of village, with a surface that in summer wouldn’t be a problem but which after the daily rain they’ve been having here, had turned glutinous, sticky, sinky and especially so for a bike with small wheels and lots of weight (me!). I churned into it and struggled to get up to 8kmh. It was going to be a long day!

And so it proved. Even once the voie verte finished, a short stint on quiet, paved (yay!) back roads led to the river and canal towpath (chemin de halage) that I followed for most of the rest of the day but which had exactly the same problem.

On top of that, I sort of like people, some of them, and company is nice when you’re on holiday. I was missing my long-term cycling buddy. We’ve almost grown up together, done so much together and always gone on holiday together. We first ventured together with bikes to France 1982, and here I am doing it again 30 years later, when really it should be both of us. There is a part of me missing which I haven’t felt for the past four weeks while I’ve been doing stuff he wouldn’t have been so keen on or will do later during our shared trip. But this is special, it’s a kind of reunion, and we should be doing it together.

I never thought I’d say it but canal paths can be quite boring after a while; nothing much changes for quite some time. The shutters on the lock-keeper’s house might be painted a different colour and some of them have pretty gardens but the path is straight (ish), trees overhang it, a few buttercups and cow parsley line the water which is dark and calm, and so it goes on km after km (there’s a story there which I’ll tell tomorrow). Also, it’s lonely; there is simply no one around. Enjoy a tranquil experience, say the brochures. Hmm a bit too tranquil for me! No one to talk to while I shelter (which happens often) from the thunder, lightning, hail and rain (yes, I know you’ve got snow in NZ but it’s supposed to be nearly summer here).

Finally, I gave up and took to the road. What a relief, the bike ran smoothly for the first time. Neither is traffic a problem here as the drivers are super-courteous to cyclists. I was quickly reminded, however, that roads are not canals and actually undulate, even in flattish Brittany. Two kilometres from my bed and breakfast, I completely ran out of steam. Oh the shame of pushing up a hill, and not even a hill by NZ standards. But on no sleep, four days of flu, little to eat, no fitness (sorry Barb, lost it all in the first 4 weeks!), bad weather, and mud, maybe just getting there was something to be celebrated!