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!
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