Last May we rolled off of the ferry into ‘ferméFrance’ and the quintessential French holiday season. This year we rode out of Caen to discover yet another holiday event.
There’d been the premonitions; the city for the last few days had had its fair share of elderly grandparents in loco parentis, being chaperoned as they do their grand-kid duty. It’s school half-term, a two week event, that in nor’east Scotland is still referred to as the ‘tattie-holiday’ and here as ‘toussaint’. I’ve yet to see any evidence of child labour in the apple orchards. The plots are vacant, the tractor-trailer waiting expectantly for a harvest, the windfalls being munched by cattle. I’m at a loss as to where all the cider and calvados actually comes from.
We’d booked a room in a village that appeared to be well serviced with eating options, both restaurants and a source of road food for the following day. Only it’s a Monday so the restaurants won’t open, neither will the baker who’s off for ‘vacances de la Toussaint’, five others that we could have frequented were similarly indisposed. T’would appear that we’re getting well practiced in the habits of ‘day-one’ cycling mishaps, despite our best endeavours. Eventually the evening meal is sourced by backtracking to the previous village and dining on two filled baguettes and a bottle of red.
In Angers we were recommended to visit a museum of modern tapestry. It’s open year-round, with an exception for five days; with unerring expertise we catch one of those five. Another day, another town; when we arrive to find ‘la place’ dug up. It will always elicit a smile simply because we’ve found so many plazas, squares, places under remodelling programmes, in so many places. Now I look to see as to why the ‘Heras’ fence, the heaped excavations, the tree truck garlands. Inevitably it will be a date related commemoration: Donegal550, Caen1000, Glasgow850, Junín a donation or inducement from an extractive industry.
The Armistice remembrance is forthcoming, so we make a note of possible closures. Forewarned is forearmed. In Tours everything is shuttered for the morning, so we assume that will be the norm and make appropriate arrangements. In Nevers they do it differently, it’s afternoon closures only. It takes training, skill and courage to be this proficient.
Mildly confused, they are mere inconveniences in comparison to the ‘le grand ferméFrance’. That has to be the vehicular closed road.
Two weeks on EuroVelo 6, 900kms with less than five score vehicles encountered, most of whom pass whilst we ride the long bridges over La Loire. Canal towpaths, levée maintenance roads, deserted village streets, most traffic-free, others disconcertingly silent. It’s exactly as we anticipated, we have been here before, yet still it’s a surprise. Riding around the English southern coast, as we did for a fortnight before sailing the channel, where a rolled double six and a half hour negotiation is the standard requirement just to escape a small conurbation. Here this desertification verges on the surreal.
Maybe I’ve been imbibing too much fantasy fiction of late, too many parallel worlds with fantasticals passing between, that I’m starting to become discombobulated. There’s a thin veil that separates the frenetic auto-centric from the silence of the trail. Our day starts by navigating a series of the town’s cluttered street junctions, then towing a phalange of impatient commuter traffic across a long narrow bridge, only to slide down a cobbled access, thro’ the veil and into the quietude of that vast river’s bank. It finishes by crossing that same river on a still canal’s aqueduct, through a boatyard and popping back out and into the intimidation that is tonight’s Main Street. Two universes, but only one world.
PostScript. Not that we haven’t had an occasional auto interaction. This one was definitely unusual: courtesy to cycles is good, maybe sometimes too good. The divided cycle path and a main road are running parallel, when the former is routed across the road. We are some way off when the approaching car stops to let us cross. Monsieur WhiteVan who is tailgating, brakes hard and protests with the horn. Words are being exchanged as we cross, what comes next I get to observe in my rear view mirror as we quickly exit scene. Now they’re both out of their vehicles; you’ll observe that I haven’t mentioned genders. Nose to nose as the volume ascends; fists can’t be far away. By which time the cowards are slinking around and behind a farm wall.
