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.