Provence 1

This is the first time I have been in Provence in early summer. This is what I have missed until now: olive trees in full yellow bloom; warm, lazy lunches by the ex-pat pool; plump, deep red cherry-picking, and eating; opening the shutters every morning to clear blue skies with temperatures climbing each day to 28 or 29; early walks through the sweetly-scented pine forest; the intense, bright, hot heat of the middle of the day; multiple swims in the pool; balmy evening meals outside as the sun sets fat and golden behind the Dentelles, hazily pink in the evening sky.

My sister’s beautiful house lies amongst pine trees and bright purple lavender in the Vaucluse area of Provence, north-east of Avignon and east of the Rhône Valley. The views to the west are wide: across a small to the tiny village of Suzette, its houses clinging tightly to the hillside and, beyond, the Dentelles range. ‘Dentelle’ is French for ‘lace’ and the name reflects the scalloped edge which ha been carved out after years of weather have eroded away the rocky crest of these limestone hills.

I arrived to be whisked straight away to dinner with friends of my sister at a village restaurant with outdoor tables and delicious food. As usual the dishes were a creative and artistic delight. There was an evening market on with stalls of products by local artisans and three friendly little grey donkeys to pull a cart and delight the visitors.

The following day was no less of a gourmand’s delight as we were invited to a lunch by the pool of other friends. Although the sun shone fiercely, we stayed cool in the gentle shade of pines, sipped iced rosé and ate a feast of salmon, salads and strawberries, with, of course, the inevitable platter of fromages from around the region.

A few days later, I caught the train via Marseille to St Cyr-sur-Mer, a small seaside town on the Mediterranean with an old centre and market square, where my French friends, Dominique and Gilbert Fredon have their home. They are dear people, both teachers, although Dominique is now retired, who love to hear about New Zealand and show me around their area.

Outside the high season of July and August, there are few tourists around France, and this area is no exception. The campgrounds and beaches, which must be avoided at all costs in those months, are still almost empty in June, yet the weather is a dream. We buy fresh almonds from the local organic market, visit ridiculously picturesque villages perched high on hillsides and walk along the cliff tops on the stony trails of a coastal walkway which runs for twelve kilometres between Bandol and St Cyr. Dominique is older than me but, despite my recent biking, could easily leave me for dead if she wasn’t far too polite to do so. She is sporty and fit, full of energy and life, warm and caring, and an inspiration to me to not let life pass me by. I enjoy her company and learn lots of new French words, as always.

Day 16 Bayonne to Hendaye (46 kms)

This was the plan: unload my bags, stay the night here in Bayonne, cycle today to Hendaye to finish the route, catch the train back to Bayonne, stay another night, catch the train out the next day, Thursday, to my sister, Frances, near Avignon. All fine except for a national rail strike the one day I want to travel. Oh well, I’ll just have to spend an extra day here in Bayonne. That’s not too much of a hardship.

It’s an interesting and historic city of about 200,000 inhabitants strategically sitting at the confluence of two rivers within French Basque Country. While nearby Biarritz is a flashier, more upmarket tourist centre, Bayonne has its own attractions with many tall half-timbered houses lining the river, their shutters painted in the Basque national colours of red and green, outdoor cafes along the embankments and a network of narrow pedestrianized streets around the imposing Gothic cathedral built in the 12^th and 13^th centuries. There are some nice shops, one of which was relieved of some merchandise today, and friendly people although it’s become harder and harder to understand them the further south I’ve travelled!

I was worried about the ride today. I still had fifty kilometres to go. The forecast was for sunny and 31 degrees. I knew the traffic would be grim. I knew there would be a lack of bike paths. I wanted to start early and get it done before all this became too much of a problem, but it gets light a bit later down here than further north and I didn’t get away until just before seven.

Ironically, the first sixteen kilometres to Biarritz, when traffic was at its lightest, were all on bike paths, well marked and signed. No problems. Near to Biarritz things got a bit trickier. There are high cliffs and most of the big hotels are built on top of them. My maps have no contours. I knew I followed the coast but wasn’t sure if I should be high or low. The signs ran out, as signs do, and I ended up down at sea level on a cul-de-sac (ha, French word!). I would either have to go back the long way I’d come or go up the cliffs. The cliffs were enormous. There were steps up them. But being considerate as they usually are to cyclists, there was also a path, steep though it was. Up we went, Le Petit Bleu and me, thanking whoever that I had left my bags and done this bit without.

Somehow, at the top I was back on the road again, next minute heading down a very steep part and through a tunnel. I don’t do tunnels on a bike very well. Memories of Norway and long tunnels without lights on our bikes aren’t good. After a while you lose all sense of direction and hit the sides. But this one was short and the view out the other side, magnificent. I was looking towards the rest of the French coast: St Jean-de-Luz, Hendaye (my destination for the day), and there were the Pyrenees and Spain. I drew a deep breath and admired for quite a long time.

At home I get up every day and look at the mountains. They are a part of me as much as the sea is. I hadn’t seen mountains for over six weeks, since I left Nelson. They stood out clear, grey and uneven on the horizon against sky as blue as it gets at home. I was reminded of the biking Tony and I did amongst them thirty years ago when we traversed the Pyrenees on the Spanish side from San Sebastian right across almost to the Mediterranean. That was pretty hard too. But we were young and I think you recover faster when you’re young. We’d also been biking for a couple of months by that stage, through Wales and Ireland and right down through France. I came back to the present. My legs were tired. I still had 35 hilly kms to go.

The next fifteen were probably the hardest: up and down steep little roads the route took me, across railway lines and the across them again, through little settlements, past idyllic campgrounds, and sandy beaches, past cafes with people sitting having a leisurely breakfast. The housing became Spanish mountain style with sloping asymmetrical orange-tiled rooves, balconies out the front with flower boxes and names above the doors. They reminded me of Swiss chalets. I almost expected to hear cow bells. Bidart just south of Biarritz was a delight. There it was, a quiet little village, impossibly steep streets, views to the sunny hillsides and mountains beyond, yet from the map you would think, suburbia. There is a network of huge roads and motorways all around this region. I was continually surprised at how rural it was, but then that often happens when you’re on a bicycle.

And so it went on like that, people out from the campgrounds, walking, running, flexing, enjoying the sunshine, all the up-and-down way to St Jean-de-Luz. Here were more beautiful beaches, pretty holiday homes, relaxed holiday-makers and some nice-looking shops. Suddenly a proper bike path again, for a while. It wound around the sea-wall to the village of Socoa, snuggled picturesquely beside a calm sandy beach, an ancient fort still guarding the entrance to the bay.

The next part scared me the most. I knew I would be on the road, the only sightseeing route between St Jean-de-Luz and Hendaye. I knew it was hilly with panoramic views. I knew that by now (about ten o’clock) traffic had started to increase. I didn’t know that there would be absolutely no bike lane, nor edge to the road. There was a sign: 12 kms to go. I wished them over, gritted my teeth and headed up the hill.

I guess the views were great; I didn’t really look. I concentrated on the road, on the cars coming from behind, the idiots overtaking from the opposite direction, the edge of the road, the decayed edge of the road, changing gears at the right time so I didn’t have to get off and push because there was no room, and cranked over the kilometres one after the other, hoping that each hill would be the last. Here I was, for the second time in two days doing something I knew I wouldn’t want any of my family to be doing. Well, better they knew about it after than before. I just hoped the drivers would be careful.

At last I was in suburbs. They were wonderful. I love suburbs. Cars slow down a bit. Then we were alongside the beach. A huge, huge beach with acres of flat sand and beautiful clear water. Then we were on a bike path and it was signed Vélodyssée. I cheered silently. I wasn’t there yet. The bike path kept going along the foreshore; the signs continued. I wanted to get to the end, to the sign, there must be one, that says this is it, the end of the route, you’ve made it. But I couldn’t see it. I stopped a lycra cyclist. Bad choice. He’d had a tracheotomy, poor man, and couldn’t talk, well not in a way I could understand. It was horrible. Afterwards the penny dropped. I was at Hendaye Plage not Hendaye Centre although it all looked the same on the map. I hadn’t got there yet.

 I picked up the signs again. They led around the edge of the marina with promenades for walkers, runners and cyclists. It was very pretty. I had no idea it would be this nice. I loved the views across the water to Spanish villages in the hills. It was like something on the lid of one of my favourite jigsaws. I’d had enough of biking though. I just wanted it to end. In Hendaye Centre the streets were narrow and steep, congested with cars. I followed the signs down a mainish road and there was the station and a train waiting to take me back to Bayonne. I looked around. The sign must be here somewhere. But it wasn’t. I stayed a while but never did find it. I took a photo instead of Le Petit Bleu, which had been through so much, outside the train station, bought a ticket and hopped on the train. I patted his saddle. We had made it together, finally. Nearly a thousand kilometres. Just me and my Brompton, toute seule.

Day 15 Mimizan-Plage to Bayonne (86kms)

This part of France is HUGE! Have a look at a map and see how FAR it is from the Gironde to the Spanish border. It really is half of the west coast of France, around five hundred kilometres. It felt at times, I was never going to be able to make it in time. But today things got better and better, mostly.

I knew I had to get through about thirty kilometres of forest to start with and that would be the last of the long forest tracks. I was psychologically prepared, fired up, my bike was spinning beautifully after Monsieur’s treatment, and all was fine. There were even signs, lots of them, in the forest beside the tracks where the route was as straight as a fresh baguette and there was no chance of going astray, there were signs.

Then I came to an intersection in a town and the signs stopped. Well, at least they were there for those heading north but not for those heading south. But I’ve learnt. The further south I’ve gone, the more lycra-clad men on bicyles there have been out for training rides. One of them had whizzed by earlier calling out Allez, allez!! It reminded me of times gone by. These cyclists are to be distinguished from the many middle-aged couples out on comfy bikes for pleasure rides. A lot of those around here aren’t French which is possibly why they are reluctant to say Bonjour, even though they are in France after all. But the lycra-clad men are French and are also local. This means they know the way, well, mostly, if you can stop them as they spin by.

I met up again with the French tandem couple. They were very happy to see me. This was the third time and this time I got a hand-shake. They too had had a very difficult day yesterday; all the same problems as me apart from the mechanical issues. I think they were amazed that I’d got through it. It was good to know I wasn’t alone. I was going to take a short-cut soon down a road that someone had said was fine, while they were going the way of the route, longer, but they wanted to do a little boat trip they had heard about on a lake. We parted company, once more. I wish I’d given them my contact details in case they come to NZ on their tandem because I never saw them again.

I whizzed around the short-cut and back onto the route, spying a boulangerie in time for an early lunch. A boulangerie with picnic tables outside, even better. There may be nothing more dead than a French village at lunchtime, but there is nowhere more alive than a boulangerie at 12 noon. Everyone is there to buy the bread for lunch, and presumably many of the other delicious-looking treats for sale: huge strawberry tarts, sticky croissants aux amandes, crunchy palmiers, mille-feuilles (icing-coated layers of pastry and custard). I’m not sure who buys all this stuff because mostly I see people leaving with just bread. I sat outside, downed my can of apple juice, savoured my leek quiche, saved my bread for later, and finished with two little beignets (donuts). They were light, not too sweet, almost creamy and absolutely delicious.

Well-fortified, I was off again. It all got nicer and nicer. The sun was out. It brought everyone out: families on bikes, couples on bikes, roller-bladers, and a kind of cross-country skier affair on long wheeled blades with long poles to push off, all using the bike paths. There were picnic and rest stops with toilets, seats, picnic tables, trees, and bike parking racks. Biking is so much more a way of life here. In most areas, it is part of the infrastructure of the place; it is expected and respected.

I came into Hossegor, a big surf beach resort, but with much prettier development than I had imagined. Low level houses amongst trees, dark red thick-tiled rooves the only sign of their presence. No tall blocks or apartments. Wide roads and wide bike paths, camp-grounds in abundance in nicely treed and shaded areas. The houses became posher and more elaborate coming into Capbreton. I crossed the river. There was a man swimming upstream in the middle of it. The bike path was great and beautifully signed. It swept round past the boat harbour, a bit of dosh moored there. Still no apartment blocks or huge hotels. Just a nice, sunny, laid-back sort of feel, people strolling the streets or sitting in the outdoor cafes. The main shopping street reminded me of Noosa, or Mount Maunganui.

I had planned to stop here for the night but it was only two o’clock, the day was going well and it would be easier to do what I had to do tomorrow if I got as far as Bayonne. My short-cut earlier on had made that possible. So I decided to press on which would mean that I would spend two nights there, then do the last part of the route on Wednesday without bags. With hindsight, that was the best decision of the trip!

At this point the signs stopped and I asked a cyclist the way. He explained how to get back on the bike path and told me it went right through to Bayonne. He complained about the terrible weather they’d had, rain and more rain since January but that today everyone was out because it was a sunny day. He wished me a Bonne Route and it was only later when I was thinking about it, a lot, that I realised he had said something about floods but I hadn’t really taken a lot of notice at the time, concentrating more on his instructions about how to find the bike path again.

The evidence of the rain has been everywhere. The rivers in Capbreton were running high and muddy. I’d seen flooded ditches, racing streams, a submerged tennis court, flooded lanes, as well as the bike paths. The whole region was a mess. I felt like I’d had a lucky escape.

I followed a group of school kids for a while out with their teachers. I’ve seen quite a number of those on this trip. There are so many great opportunities for safe biking though I expect our Outdoor Ed teachers would think it all a bit tame. The man was right, everyone was out. It was nice to have people around again for a while. I only had twenty more kilometres to go. Should be there in an hour and a half, I thought. Then it got quieter, I went through a village, around a corner and, red and white tape, Piste Cyclable Fermée, the sign said. I looked to see why. It didn’t say but it looked like it was flooded.

I’d been through floods before and survived, there was no one around, and I didn’t know what other way to take. So I went around the barrier and carried on. Bad decision. I waded through the first flooded part. Not too bad, so I continued. The next bad bit was deeper and longer. I got off and pushed along the sides. It went on for a while. A bit of dry path and then more floods. The sides were impassable. I had to go through. I waded in. It got deeper and deeper. It was up to my knees. It was almost up to the bottom of the bike bags. There was muck and debris along the bottom. The water was so dark and brackish that I couldn’t see a thing. A thick stick got jammed in the front wheel. Things weren’t going well. There was no one even within loud yelling distance. It was silent all around, eerie in fact.

I tried to lift the bike but it was too heavy for me with bags on. Hmm.. I’m over adventures, I thought. But there wasn’t much I could do. When you’re on your own, there’s no one to blame, swear at or cry to, so you just have to carry on and do your best. Somehow my shoe lace got twisted tightly around the pedal. I had to take my shoe off to untwist it then nearly lost my shoe in the depths. How I haven’t fallen right off several times and damaged myself badly this whole trip, I don’t know. If it had been a bigger bike, I might well have. Somehow Le Petit Bleu feels more manageable being closer to the ground. It didn’t feel very manageable at this point. I shoved it and lugged it, cursed myself and everything else and got it through some brambles and up onto dry ground. There were a couple more flooded parts after that but nothing as deep as those first two. We had survived, sodden but intact.

All had been going so well, that would have to be the only adventure of the day. I was on dry ground again, back on the road, Bayonne only a few kilometres away. But no. Around the corner, the signs led down a mud track. I was suspicious. I hadn’t been on one like this since Brittany. I stopped yet another lycra-clad man. Non, he said, impassable, that way’s all flooded. You’ll have to take the main road all the way in to town. It’s about seven kilometres. The traffic’s not too bad. Trucks thundered past belching fumes. Compared with what, I thought, the Arc de Triomphe roundabout on a busy day? Then he saw my flag and fell into the depths of despair. The All Blacks had defeated the French at Eden Park last week. Bayonne is a rugby town he told me. Jo Rokocoko plays here. The French were playing Auckland today. He was worried about it. Still clicking his tongue, he wished me Bon Courage and was off in a blur of red and white.  Hmm.. I was going to need it I thought as a car whistled past, caravan swaying behind.

Little need be said about the next hour other than I wouldn’t have wanted any of my family to be doing it. As my fellow cyclists back home will know, when there’s trouble I go fast. I don’t think I’ve ever covered seven kilometres so quickly. Somehow I survived, thanks to the mostly patient drivers, and not to the complete lack of any recognition of cyclists by the town planners. How there can be such a contrast to earlier in the day, I don’t understand. Anyway, I got here, took another forty-five minutes to find the hotel which had been right next to me when I pedalled in, ignored the snobby Madame on reception (the first ever and this, my first chain hotel – Ibis, handy to the route and the station). When she looked me up and down disdainfully and said, non, they had nowhere for bikes (or me neither I felt she wanted to say), I folded it up in front of her, put it in the elevator, and carried it up to my room.

Et voilà, I’d nearly made it.

Day 14 Gujan-Mestras to Mimizan-Plage (86kms)

There are some days in cycle touring that are best forgotten. Today was one of them. Things went wrong from the beginning. I set out in the rain, then there was a head-wind, then hills, then my gears started playing up. The bike path followed a main road. It went up and down. Cars raced by, water spraying from the wheels.

I bypassed Arcachon (a major tourist attraction) and stopped at the Dune du Pilat. This was worth looking at. At three kilometres long and over a hundred metres high, it’s the tallest sand dune in Europe. It’s gradually moving landwards, pushing the forest back and covering houses and roads. The views from the top are vast, on the one side the Atlantic Ocean, on the other, well, pine forest.

The French tandem couple I had met a couple of days earlier were coming up the steps as I was going down. I had been feeling despondent and contemplating calling it a day and hopping on a train at Arcachon, my last chance to do so until Bayonne. But there they were, doing the same as me, heading for Spain, finding the wind and hills difficult, and it helped to know I had company. Our paths crossed again a couple of times later on and, as we found out later, we had shared many similar challenges that day.

I had discussed with them going off route briefly to avoid a very hilly bit of bike path. A short-cut on the road seemed a sensible alternative, shortened the route a little and shouldn’t be too busy. They had already reached the same conclusion. Well, that was according to the Michelin maps we both carried. The map was wrong. I ended up in the town I’d been trying to avoid in the first place. I realised later, several kilometres up and down hill, and one helpful local’s instructions later, that there was a new roundabout not yet shown on the map. Eventually I found the right road. It had no bike path or even a bike lane. The traffic was fast. The road went straight up hill. I had to push. Then it went down, then up again. And finally, a long spin down.

I came down to a lake shore. The bike path reappeared, then disappeared again just as quickly, underwater. There was water everywhere here. It was flat, and flooded. There was no way of avoiding it in parts. I was too scared to leave the path again in case I got lost, so through it I went, Le Petit Bleu up to the top of his wheels, me in over my shoes. This went on for a while, in and out of the boggy water. The tandem spun past on the road, bell ringing. Good idea, I thought and joined them. The bike path crossed under the road somewhere and I missed it and got lost again.

I arrived in Biscarosse in time for lunch, which was good as the boulangerie had mini-quiches and hot bread. But I had such difficulty finding the way out of there amongst the travaux and again in the next town where there were also travaux and the signs were non-existent. Twice, I ended up on busy roads with no bike lanes, huge vans and cars towing caravans sweeping past.

I was late because of all the earlier messing around. I had started at 8.30 and was still going at 5pm! The last 8kms should have been fine through the forest but even they were hilly and I was down to two gears. Then, just when you think you must be there, the signs into the town are wrong, and you follow the signs to the hotel and they’re designed for the one-way system that bikes don’t need to follow. I limped up to the hotel just as the chain came off for about the tenth time today.

The good things about today: I got here in the end; the amazing Dune du Pilat; the many pretty lakes I passed;  the tartelette aux abricots that I bought to lift my spirits; the road worker holding the stop/go sign who got into a conversation with me about where I’d come from and wished me well; the people who own this hotel, the Hotel de France, a bit the worse for wear, on the foreshore with what must have once been a magnificent view of the ocean, now built out by a large house.

Once again, they are the loveliest of people. I staggered through the door, exhausted, with dirty, wet shoes and grease-covered hands. Madame was not at all fazed; in fact, she sympathised.  I told her I needed a bike repair shop before I needed a room. She rang the réparateur straight away. Non, they couldn’t look at it now, they were closing, non, they wouldn’t be open till ten in the morning. She rang her husband. He used to ride bikes and might know what to do. There was no reply. He might be around the back, she said, let’s go and see. We went. Aha, she said, he’s in the garage. There were whirring and buzzing sounds coming from within. It looked hopeful.

He was as lovely as she was and only too happy to look at the bike, although it was clear that he hadn’t seen a gear system quite like mine before (three gears inside the back thingie; I have had to quickly learn the French words for technical bike stuff, hard when you don’t know the English ones!). But he fiddled and tweaked, oiled and spun and finally, voilà, he declared it fixed.

Meanwhile, Madame had carried my bags up the steep stairs and deposited them in my room. In so doing, she had spied my New Zealand flag. Are you really from New Zealand? she asked. Our son was there last year and loved it so much that he deliberately didn’t work as he wants to go back (you can’t go back ever if you’ve used up your one and only work visa). Please, Madame, put a dot on our map of the world that shows where our customers come from. There were red dots on Aberdeen, Rome, Quebec, Cairns and somewhere in Lithuania, but none on New Zealand. I put a large red dot on Nelson. I like being a pioneer. It’s the spirit in a lot of us Kiwis.

In fact, I reflected after a long, hot shower and a lie down, in the end, a lot went right today after all.

Day 13 Montelizan-Plage to Gujan-Mestras

France has 16,900,000 hectares of forest. I travelled through 16,800,000 of them today!

Think of cycle ways through forests with nothing and no one to distract you from the soreness of your bottom. Not even any bird song. In the distance you see something; you get excited; it might be a cyclist; but no, it turns out, when you reach it, fifteen minutes later, it’s a fence post.

You make yourself keep going until you reach the sign you can see in the distance and then you allow yourself a breather.

I tried a road instead. The road was pretty much the same, the only difference being that on the road there was the occasional car going past to think about.

Think of roads so straight that a car passes you at about 100kmh and you can still see it in the distance five minutes later.

There were some lakes hiding amongst the trees. In fact France’s biggest lake, Lac d’Hourtin, was right on route. But the weather wasn’t good and the lake looked grey. I wasn’t keen to linger.

Kms built on kms because there was nowhere to stop or stay. I had done one hundred. It had to end. I left the bike path to try to find a hotel and ended up on a busy road. There was no other choice. At last, there was a hotel right there on the street. It looked posh. It was. But it was 4.30 and I’d had enough. Lots of men in pink shirts and suits and women in nice dresses and hairdos were chatting in the foyer. There was a restaurant. I leant my dirty bike against the front wall and walked in in my bike shorts and helmet hair trying not to care.

Not one, but two, very dapper middle-aged Messieurs in blue and white striped shirts were on reception. They were completely charming. One of them had been to New Zealand (for two days!) and couldn’t have been more helpful. He carried my bags, made space in the garden shed for my bike, and worried about where I would eat. He should well have.

Well, there’s the restaurant, I ventured. But perhaps there was something special on with all these people here? Oh no, he said, it’s closing for the day now, they’re been here for lunch. It’s a very good restaurant, he confided in a hushed tone, it has one Michelin star. Eh bien! I said, suitably impressed, and thought, oh well, I wouldn’t have been able to afford it anyway.  

It was Sunday night and still low season here. Nothing was open that didn’t involve biking to, only huitres (oysters) available for tasting at the port. It was pretty there with the rows of oyster-processing huts but there was a cool, blustery wind and I don’t like oysters at the best of times, let alone cold and slippery after a day’s riding. I found a boulangerie across the road from the hotel that was thankfully still open. Dinner was a loaf of crunchy bread with goat’s cheese and tinned tuna in my fancy room. I fell asleep in my expensive bed while it was still light outside.

Day 12 Marennes to Montalivet-les-Bains (73 kms)

A lovely send-off from a charming place. It seems to be the Monsieur who usually does the breakfast in the B&Bs and hotels I’ve stayed in, and so it was this morning. He’d been out to the boulangerie early and had it all waiting for me: a huge croissant, a brioche, as well as a  baguette, home-made jams, freshly squeezed orange juice, a pat of fresh goat’s cheese turned out and decorated with basil leaves. All very delicious and quite impossible for me to do justice to at eight in the morning. After two hours of biking I’m a much better breakfast eater.

While I was eating, Monsieur disappeared into his study and came back with a hand-drawn map of how to get back onto the bike track from their place. He’d already explained it to me earlier but wanted to be certain that I could follow it. He wished me a Bonne journée, Bonne route, Bon courage (there are so many wonderful farewelling pleasanteries in the French language) and assured me there would be plenty of pine trees to see.

His map would have worked perfectly except for the travaux (roadworks). There seem to have been a lot of travaux on and around this route. They cause problems as signs get displaced, paths get changed. This was no exception: Route Fermée said the sign firmly and there was red and white tape everywhere. So I looked for an alternative and while I was looking at the map this happened: there I was on the side of the road, at 8.30 in the morning, map in hand, NZ silver fern flag flying at the front, big bags on my bike and a woman drove her car across the roundabout towards me, stopped in the middle of the road facing the wrong direction and wound down her window. What was coming, I wondered. She's going to ask me for directions. I don't believe it. Preparing myself to say I'm not a local, she said, Excuse me, Madame, in French. Could you tell me of any antique dealers around here? All ready to say, Sorry, no, I had to change tack. Aha, brocante, I knew that word, I’d just left one! Well, I said, feeling quite smug, yes, I do actually, and gave her directions to the B&B I’d just left. But, I said, it won’t be open yet, knowing Monsieur had done breakfast just for me and Madame wasn’t even up yet. Nevertheless, off she went quite happily following my instructions. What was she doing looking for an antiques place at that time in the morning anyway? I guess I reinforced her poor sense of judgment.

I found my way back to the bike path and my legs had to get going quickly with an early morning climb up yet another big bridge and then into the forest, lots of it. I had to stop and look at a lighthouse just to relieve the boredom. Then there were some nice beaches,  lovely, empty, wild stretches with no one on them, and one with some sort of surf-lifesavers’ competition. The weather was a bit patchy and then I was into Royan and its suburbs. St-Palais-sur-Mer is a posh-looking seaside resort with grand old houses and wide promenades. The path went up and down and around the cliff-tops (corniches) north of Royan; the way to the ferry was well-signed. I came around a corner and there it was, making its way rapidly towards the terminal. I sprinted, and got there just in time to board.

Some other bikers were on board: an Englishman heading for the same destination as mine but going by a different route. He looked at my bike. I salute you, he said, doing all those kms on that! I’ve got one, he said, and I wouldn’t want to tour on it! Might see you further down the coast, he said, but I never did. And a German couple doing a tour of southern France. We rode off the ferry together and then they were all gone and I was left alone in the forest again.

The ferry takes around twenty minutes and runs all day, crossing the huge estuary of the Gironde River and connecting Royan and the region of Charente-Maritime to its north with the region of Aquitaine to the south. The area along the southern shores of the Gironde heading east towards Bordeaux is known as the Médoc and is a famous wine-growing area. I’d like to have explored it, but my route took me directly south and it was starting to rain.

There seemed to be a change that was evident as soon as I rode off the ferry. There was graffiti and a general scruffiness about the area that hadn’t been present north of the river. It seemed poorer. The weather didn’t help. Lunch was grey by the beach and eaten in a hurry. Then the rain became serious and I had to look for accommodation in Montalivet-les-Bains. The woman at the tourist office was, at best, disinterested. Il pleut, she announced, rather unhelpfully, and went back to her Iphone. There was a choice of three hotels. They all looked like brothels. (By the way, I have a quite justified fear of choosing a brothel in error. Tony and I did just that one night in Algerciras in Spain. I woke at five in the morning to find him lying paralytic next to me. We have to leave, now, he said, so we did.) I picked the least dingy-looking one, but the Madame looked suspiciously like a Madame.

I was wrong. The rooms were small but clean (she showed my three of them; I don’t think there was anyone else staying there), she carried my bags (dripping wet) up the stairs, and even offered a place on the upstairs verandah for my bike so it could be under cover.  When the rain eased a bit and I finally ventured out, the mini-supermarket was the best stocked I’d come across, and my dinner at a nearby restaurant (pasta and smoked salmon with about a gallon of cream: a bit of carb-loading for the long day in the forest tomorrow) was delicious.

Two couples came in while I was there, on holiday with their dogs. The dogs came in too. One of them was a giant. Its owners sat at the table next to me. The waitress brought it a bowl of water. The man told it to sit (Assieds-toi!!). It sat. But its head still towered above the table. It had a chewy bone thing to entertain itself with while its parents ate. But it had finished that before they’d even started their apéro. It drank from its bowl and slobbered everywhere. Monsieur threw it snacks from the table and no one seemed to mind. The waitress just stepped over it when she brought the wine. I was the only one kept entertained.

Day 11 La Rochelle to Marennes (64kms)

I think I got lost today more often than any day in the five hundred kilometres I’ve covered so far. I have a good bike route guidebook, a Michelin map or two and Google maps on my phone, nevertheless, it can still happen. I have learnt to stop, sit down, have a drink and take a break, then get out the resources and study them slowly. If all else fails, bien sûr, ask a local, which I did today, twice, and both times the directions were perfect.

That’s big towns for you and maybe why I don’t much like them. But first, with Eric, I walked Max to his local school this morning. Eric and his wife, Odile, are both full-time English teachers. Max is Eric’s three year old son. He is a real chatterbox and very endearing. It is an international-looking school with kids from all sorts of ethnic backgrounds. His classroom had all the usual things you might expect in any junior school but also a big indoor smooth-floored play area equipped with all sorts of ride-on toys. Every afternoon it is converted into a nursery where each child has a nap in their own little bed. School is fully government-funded here from the age of three, goes from 8.30 to 4.30 (plus an after-school programme if you want it) each day and includes a cooked lunch. Max deposited a large sloppy kiss on my cheek, gave his dad a big hug and was off with his mates.

Eric walked me to a bike path and gave me clear instructions on how to get through the outskirts of the city and pick up the coastal véloroute. Through the first roundabout and then the second etc etc. He made me repeat them twice and we said goodbye (sad, I really like him and his little family; they are good people. I know how much he would love to come to NZ but doubt he’ll ever be able to finance such a trip. They can’t believe what I’m doing. I feel so horribly rich in comparison.)

Within two minutes I was lost! Straight through the roundabout? That might be easy in a car, but when you’re on a bike there is no straight through. You have to go around on the bike lanes across the path of oncoming vehicles and when it’s a huge roundabout you lose track of where you started and where straight ahead is! The second roundabout didn’t eventuate and I got tangled up with the railway lines and overpasses. I reckon I have a pretty good sense of direction and you kind of need one when you’re doing something like this. So many times have I sort of just followed my nose and it’s ended up being right. In the end, I managed to pick up a bike track that took me some of the way, but then left me as they often do in the middle of another roundabout. Eventually I made it to the coastal path by spying one of the old towers on the harbour in the distance and heading for that.

That was good for a while and then it dumped me again where industrial mess and boat building got in the way. I found it again, and so it went on and I followed it for a few kilometres, came to a T junction and a sign which pointed in both directions, left and right! I chose left; it was wrong. Thinking I was somewhere on my map that I wasn’t I followed it in and out of suburban parks and back-lanes until ending up in a town and having no idea where I was.

Google maps is wonderful to an extent: you can see where you are…on the map but you can’t necessarily relate it to where that actually is. Sometimes you can put in where you want to go and it shows you, but often that’s on the motorway or similar. It has a walking option but doesn’t show bike routes, and the hardest thing to work out is in which direction you're facing. You have to move to make the blue spot move so you can tell and there have been times when I’ve biked along holding my phone and checking it as I go.

It wasn’t helping this time so I asked the first person to come around the corner. It was a postie on a bike. Good choice! He pointed out the way; I said no, I’d just come from there. He said, believe me I’m a postie on a bike; I said ok. He was right and I was way off route.

This route, the Vélodyssée, is mostly well-signed but there are certainly gaps. It depends to some extent on which département you are in. (There are 96 départements in mainland France each with their own administrative responsibilities (in brief!)). Sometimes it seems to have been done with the opposite direction in mind and I’ve found myself spying a sign pointing out the way to what I’ve come and then figuring out which road you would be coming up to it on in order to see it. Not easy. Sometimes the route takes you where you don’t want to go, either to show off some sight, or to avoid heavy traffic. But it might be quite circuitous or hilly. It was today quite a lot.

Coming in to Rochefort, a medium-sized town, was fine to begin with. I followed the signs and all went well, then the off-road path gave way to painted-on-the-road bike lanes. Often these just mark local routes and aren’t part of the Vélodyssée but sometimes they are. So there I was, barrelling down a busy road into Rochefort, kind of aiming for the centre, signed Centre Ville, cars parked on my right (check no one is going to open their door on me), roundabouts every so often (remember to look to the left, but at the same time look for the signs telling me where to go, oops forgot to look left, nearly got bowled there, again!), police car behind wanting to pass (make sure you do nothing wrong, don’t want to end up in a gendarmerie), and suddenly, there I was somewhere in the middle of Rochefort with no signs and no idea where I was. It felt like I’d gone around in a big circle. This is where the take-a-break comes in, which helped for a few minutes. Oh well, at least I found a boulangerie down a back street and was able to stock up on apple juice and crusty bread because I think it was the only one I saw all day!

Rochefort is a lovely old town with beautiful historic buildings and sights. But they will have to wait for another time. I was on a mission, and not in the mood for sightseeing on my own. The Vélodyssée route does a whole semi-circle from here out to the east that is really only to use the most reliable way of crossing the Charente river. It takes an extra 20 kms or so, and I wasn’t keen. I’m a purist, but not that much of one. I had spied a possible alternative. The guide book mentioned a bridge, a Pont Transbordeur. Well, at least, I know pont is bridge but the map didn’t show if there was an actual bridge across the river and Google maps didn’t show it at all which was a bad sign. I didn’t know what a Pont Transbordeur was. Now I do.

I was down by the river a long way away from where the map showed it might have been. I didn’t want to go all the way in the wrong direction to find it was not going to get me across the river. So I asked a local. There weren’t many around but an ancient fisherman with a sun-lined face and missing teeth was right there. He had a broad local accent and was difficult to follow, but we got there. Yes, there is a pont, yes the  pont goes for the vélos, and yes, you keep on following  the little truc (thing) like this path and you’ll get to it. I thanked him and wished him a good day as they always do here. He was happy to have helped.

He was spot on and, finally, I got to the pont, after a number of kms of wondering. A red and white gate was firmly across it but a sign said 'Ouvert 14.00h'. This was hopeful. It was 1pm. There was a restaurant by the pont, just there, by the pont for no particular reason. There was nothing else around, but the place was buzzing with people eating their long lunch at outside tables. I sat in the shade of a tree across the path and ate my picnic. The restaurant had a toilet. I’ve always found French public toilets a bit dodgy but I thought I’d got used to them. So I didn’t really take too much notice of the sign on the door which said something like, wait for two minutes after every second person because the toilet will be washed. Well, I hadn’t seen anyone use it in the time I’d been sitting nearby but there was a woman in there now. She came out. I went in. I hadn’t got very far, thank goodness, when the automatic cleaning started. Hoses sprayed water from each and every direction. My feet, which had stayed dry all day, were soaked in seconds while I shifted and stamped and tried to get out of the way. But mostly I was left wondering, how do you know that two people have used it before you?

I’ve never seen anything like the pont, which is not surprising because it’s the only one left in France. It used to be the usual route across the river before the big auto-route bridge was built in the 90s. It has room for about ten cars and quite a number of passengers, but no longer takes vehicles except bikes. It works by suspension. You stand on the platform with your bike and the whole thing is lifted across the river. At two o'clock on the dot, they lifted the bar. I paid one euro for a ticket and wheeled my bike on. I thought all the people from the restaurant might clamber on, but there were only about six of us on it for the ride. One of them got talking to me. He was French and in his sixties. He was interested in where I was from and knew about the Vélodyssée, which was a bit of a novelty for me. We chatted and I asked him if he was on holiday too. Retired, he said, a holiday that never ends.

The rest of the day would have been sweet were it not for canals. I’m really beginning to dislike these things. The first 15 kms were fine, if boring. The surface was smooth and fast. The next ten were a nightmare: no real track at all, just the remnants of where a tractor had once been: grass, dried mud ruts, uneven, bumpy, rough, mostly unrideable. How they could class it as a bike route I fail to understand. When I did try to ride, I got a foot caught and nearly fell off several times, so mostly I got off and pushed. Le pauvre Petit Bleu (my Brompton)! I don’t know how it puts up with the treatment I’ve given it. It’s the front bag I mostly worry about: it’s heavy enough and with the constant bumping I worry its fitting will break.

And then there’s my constant fear, not of traffic, nor dogs, nor even rapists or axe-murderers (though I have wondered about one or two); none of these has been a problem so far. No my biggest fear (apart from losing my phone which I can’t bear to even think about!) is of punctures, because if I can’t fix it, I’m stuck.  I have two spare tyres and some tyre levers but I don’t think I’ve fixed a puncture since I was about ten. Well, Tony used to always do the bike stuff when we were touring, and I did mean to practise before I left but, just, well, ran out of time. Now there is just me. So much of this route is so lonely. There is absolutely no one around for kilometre after kilometre, and so certainly no hope of any help for most of the time. I touch wood again and again it won’t happen, and it didn’t today, once more.

And, finally, into Marennes, a quite delightful little town sitting amongst sunny pastures and canals, 

 

 

 

 

 although attained by a once more circuitous Vélodyssée route that had me cursing to the cows in the field alongside me. I found by chance a completely charming chambre d’hôte (bed and breakfast)/brocante (antiques business from a front room) right on the little town square, ice-pink roses climbing the old stone walls, pigeons cooing outside my open window, a view of the church across the square; yes, this is the France that I know and love. A shower and an iced tea or two in the little garden later and my sanity is restored. I can start planning the route for tomorrow!