On The Road With Crab and Bikey By David Taylor
Part Two: Rennes to Mouilleron-en-Pareds. La Meilleraye-de-Bretagne, Pays de la Loire Saturday, 15th September Two donkeys and a horse are play-fighting in the field next to me as a passer-by clicks his tongue in an effort to engage them. . In the adventure playground over the campsite hedge, children are babbling incomprehensible commands at the smallest one, between screaming, with the eldest attempting to instil some kind of order. I’ve got a big boule of bread and will go give the animals what I can’t finish in a bit. Wherever I am, and the confident certainty in the entry heading is misleading, life seems to be going on just fine…
I thought I’d sleep well last night as I was shattered after the ride, but no. This, despite making a breakthrough through in realising I need to blow into the ‘self-inflating’ Multimat to make it firm, thus achieving a level of comfort absent til now. I woke at nine with the dew drips again and was packed and gone by ten. I made a pigs ear of leaving Rennes, making the same ‘I-know!-I’ll-follow-the-green-signs-to-Nantes!’ mistake. Green signs mean Big Road for Cars. No more of this, Dave! ‘Tis unnecessarily hair-raising to start the day on a dualcarriageway… I found my way onto a pristine two-lane blacktop to Chateaubriant, a town 60km away and almost certainly in the right direction on the way to Nantes. Disaster struck 20km down the road when it came to an abrupt and surreal end, in a field, with no diversion signs.
When fields haven’t got sunflowers in them, they often contain horses. The French word for horse is ‘cheval’ and instead of saying ‘neigh’ they say ‘hiiiiii’. In cartoons anyway...
I swallowed the petulant lump in my throat and turned Bikey around, heading back to the last left turn I’d passed some miles back. I stopped at a bus stop somewhere near Brie and got talking to man waiting there. After we’d discussed my proposed route through France, he pointed out that the Auvergne region was where the Massif Central was, and that it was very ‘illy. He urged me to consider the BordeauxToulouse-Carcassone route instead, as it was pretty and much flatter. I think he might be on to something and have decided to abandon my straight-line-across-France approach to navigation. The only drawback is this is also the route that L and I took, hitch-hiking from Leamington Spa to Morocco a few years back, and I’m trying to get past all that. Even so, I figure a road with a few ghosts along it is a safer bet than the demonic uphills promised by the Massif Central.
Chateaubriant looked too pretty to freewheel through, so I locked and left Bikey and did some bow-legged ambling. I popped into the library and used their excellent services to print some maps off Google of the new route I’m planning, in the hope they will diminish my constant feeling of being a bit lost. They’ve worked a treat so far and this represents another breakthrough, of sorts. Cyclists. Need. Good. Maps. I left the town after the surreal experience of walking through the streets whilst John Lennon’s Working Class Hero was piped out from an unseen tannoy system throughout the town, presumably for the benefit of the shoppers. Strange choice, non? I followed the D178 to a little village called Roussel, north of Meilleraye where I stopped for ham, cheese and Shopping in Chateaubriant: ‘They keep you doped bread. Apparently, at 5pm, I was a little too late to be out with religion and sex and TV / But you're still fucking looking for cheese and now the deli was shut. peasants as far as I can see’ I was marvelling at the French work ethic when a lady approached me and explained gravely that I’d have to get some food from the supermarket. Désolé, she said, putting her hand on my wrist, as if my mum had died, and walked off. I always buy my cheese from a supermarket, and I love cheese. The French appear to view this as a last resort, strictly for lost, desperate cyclists. The French clearly take cheese seriously and I’m going to have to raise my game if I’m going to fit in here. And get less revealing cycling shorts.
Me and Bikey, having a romantic lunch in Moisdon-laRivière. I understand that eventually I will have to stop walking around in my ActionBoyz©, as I am aware they are socially unacceptable and cause upset. Just not yet.
French Plane trees or platanus orientalis. Not to be confused with the London plane (platanus acerifolia). It’s taller, more sensual in form and, according to some people, a cold-blooded killer. Responsible for 1 in 10 road deaths, these trees are viewed by French motorists as extremely dangerous and not to be approached at speed. I have yet to experience any problem with them and find them very pleasant company. Though it’s a little disconcerting the way they evoke the nude female form so strongly. Cruel, cruel trees!
I was leaving town and was seeking a suitable field corner to camp in but was lucky to come across this empty, unmanned campsite. It has sinks and showers, so I’m staying. Soon after arriving two post-pubescent kids moped over. The girl began throwing apples at the campsite outbuildings while her lanky male companion stood silent by her, mournfully checking the contents of his pockets. They didn’t speak. As they left together he sadly draped his arm around her waist, looking to the floor while she gazed away from him, at the lake past the fence. Young love! You can’t beat it…
Sainte-Cecile, Saône-et-Loire, Burgundy Sunday, 16th September I am smoking a reward joint, writing by candlelight, in a campsite a couple of kilometers outside the village of Sainte-Cecile after a long days ride. Some hazy arithmetic and map gazing has revealed I’ve covered about 300km so far, 120 of which I did today. Next to me runs a small French river where chain smoking dog-walkers bumble by, eyeing my drying clothes on the fence suspiciously. I limboed under the barrier at the campsite entrance and dragged Bikey with me. So far noone has come by to ask us for monies… Last night I was woken at 4am by an unstable man in a caravan, blaring out nihilistic europop on a skipping CD and apparently having some kind of alcohol-fuelled nervous breakdown. Luckily a fellow camper saved me from a confrontation that required diplomacy, advanced counselling skills and an intimate knowledge of French slang. He’d also been woken by the orgy of disco madness and, emboldened by each other, we knocked on his door and had un mot with the man. Eventually, he agreed to go to sleep and so my French colleague and I both shook hands and returned to our respective tents. In the morning I set The cloud of dust up ahead is a harvester, off for Nantes, 50km away, confident my dreams had been less weird mowing down sunflowers in their hunthan the nocturnal goings on in the real world. dreds. They begged me to save them, but what could I do? The horror... Maybe there was something special in my pain au chocolat that morning, but something took hold of me and I found myself in a kind of hypnotic sports trance. I believe it’s known as The Zone. As I freewheeled through Sainte-Luce-sur-Loire the bells tolled eleven. By the time I heard them strike noon, I had crossed the swollen Loire river and was south of Nantes, having lunch on a patch of hyper real grass on a roundabout outside a retail park. The momentum I’d gathered grew and I found myself on the D59 to Clisson, a picturesque ribbon of road through the Loire Valley to ChâteauThébaud. I was in the spiritual home of Muscadet and a wine festival was on in the town. I limited myself to one glass and set off for Saint-Fulgent. The wine, the A small physical meltdown ensued, involving a left leg September sun and the glory of nature brought me to vibrospaz, but I got a kick-start from one of the wondernew heights of delirium, and I forgot to eat. food sachets I’d been given in case of emergencies. It was an eerie, nauseating citrus gel packed with carbohydrates and it immediately took hold of me, sending a new found vigour through my body. I was going to call it a day in Saint-Fulgent but by this point I could not stop. I was cycling topless in the unseasonable heat, sweating and sunburned, mindlessly pedalling until finally sense and the setting sun forced me to turn off the road. I followed signs to Sainte Cecile and was greeted with chiming bells, a pretty square and Giovanni’s Pizza Van: perhaps the only business in France to stay open late on a sunday. The pizza was a revelation and Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. I am momentarily convinced I have found heaven. Except Don Giovanni’s Grande Margarite, that is.
The cows over the river have just started braying, reminding me of all the animals I saw today; a deer, a couple of goats, lots of ponies and dogs and cats. I also saw lots of road-kill today and have decided to keep a role-call of the dead. This entry is dedicated to a badger, a red squirrel, the many hedgehogs and rabbits on the D137, and an unidentifiable four-legged mammal that could’ve been a dog but was more likely a goat. I even saw a dead owl! Cars are such dread things, surrounded by so much death! The saddest sight was a perfectly intact, yet very dead, tabby cat with a red collar on. A farmer nearby hosed his tractor down, oblivious. Was it his cat? Had he seen it? Will he find it? Did he kill it? Maybe I should’ve stopped and taken it somewhere but I left it behind.
‘With all their speed forward, they may be a step backward in civilization... But automobiles have come. And I think men's minds are going to be changed in subtle ways because of automobiles. Mouilleron-en-Pareds, Vendée It may be that in ten or twenty years from now, if Monday, 17th September we can see the inward change in men by that time, I shouldn't be able to defend the gasoline I’ve made it to my first arbitrary destination, Mouilleron! I have engine, but would have to agree that automobiles successfully met up with Jack and Maggie, all without the use of had no business to be invented’ phones or email, just a note and some serendipity. I’m now at Eugene Morgan, The Magnificent Ambersons, rest in a beautiful yellow bedroom, with blankets and pillows, 1942. tall windows with wooden shutters and all good things: c’est la vie belle. This morning did not bode well though. A light drizzle turned to light rain, then to proper rain and then a downpour. I left the campsite without paying as no-one seemed to be around. I called out quietly a couple of times before dragging Bikey under the barrier, losing a little dignity in the clumsy hurried process. The rain was relentless through Chantonnay and Saint-Mars -des-Prés . Solid grey skies lay all around and I was soaked to the bone. The clothes I’d washed the night before were draped over my panniers to dry out, but instead collected the muddy spray from the road as I went along, making everything feel heavier and darker work. My legs were a bit tight today after yesterdays run, but I managed the 40km by noon, arriving in time to see the sun burn through the clouds in celestial recogni- Mouilleron is instantly likable. The church and its bells dominate the small, friendly village and tion of my achievement. I sat in the central square, happily waiting for Jack to find me, drying my clothes on the bench. A couple who ran the nearby library offered me hot stew at their house after watching me devour the remains of a brie baguette. Then, when I was sitting in the museum gardens next door, a guy called Nico brought out a bowl of hot water, two tea bags and a cup. Tea, for ze Englishman! he said, before returning to his post. Mouilleron had provided France with two of its greatest war heroes: Jean de Lattre de Tassigny (aka Maréchal) and Georges Clemenceau aka Le Tigre) and Nico and Anne, a history student at Poitiers university, were proud to give me a little tour of their Georges Clemenceau and Jean de Lattre de Tassigny: both sons homes. Clemenceau’s birthplace was closed for of Mouilleron-en-Pareds, and both signed on behalf of France renovation and not open to the public yet, but to end World War I and II. And yes, there is something in the Anne had the keys. Inside, it smelt like an auwater. A sign by the local spring says: ‘non potable pour la pubtumnal forest floor, heavy and damp. She was in lique’. Side effects may include voluminous moustache growth charge of opening the windows during the day, and a compulsion to mobilise resistance against Nazi rule. to draw the damp out. Such is life in Mouilleron.
I left the museum with a view to head out of the town to a campsite I’d seen signposted earlier but got distracted on the way by an ancient spring on Rue de la Fontaine, before following a sign which had picture of a donkey being led by a man on it and was too curious to ignore. I later learned these signposts denote pilgrimage routes and this one led me up a rocky hill where I found not only the decrepit eponymous windmills of Mouilleron, but also particularly visceral crucifixion statue. I left an apple core and a ladybird badge I’d found on the floor earlier as a kind of offering at the foot of the cross. Jesus is everywhere round these parts and at times of exhaustion and susceptibility His story sparks something like inspiration in me, irreligious as I am. I pottered round the statue for a while and startled a bunny from under a gorse bush, gathered some conkers from the ground and headed back into town. I found Jack as he was taping a letter for me to the town’s message board in the square. The rest of the evening was spent drinking beer, playing cribbage and swapping songs on the guitar, concluded with a tuna bake. Stoned as I am, my mind is buzzing with the heady mix of good company, my first hit of drunkenness of the trip and some genuinely inspiring conversation about Pierre Bordieux, a philosopher Jack is studying. He talks of the possibility of a society based on capitalism, but not solely governed by capital in the traditional sense. In his world, monetary value is replaced by a more accepting and accommodating economy, recognising the worth in the role people play in society. Jack’s passion for his work rubbed off on me and the endless possibilities of human existence and potential for change is reignited in me. I’ve got a new haircut too. I am so happy to have made it here. Jack and Maggie’s encouragement for my endeavour has lifted my spirits, as well as my confidence in The Journey. I told them the destination has changed from Iran to India. Basically I think I am realising, or at least coming to terms with the fact, that the destination may simply be L.
Jack and Maggie: a powerful combination who fed, inspired, groomed and encouraged me back into the saddle.
Trit eT of th hough t e Da y!
Well, cycling is like life in lots of ways, especially the ups and downs bit. Only with cycling, because the inevitable approaching uphill is usually in sight, you compromise your free-wheeling moment of joy preparing for the strain and misery of the climb ahead. In life it’s often hard not to give yourself over to joy, hoping the low will never come. Is preparing for the blues whilst happy against human nature? Is that the behaviour of depressives who find themselves shunned from society? Is it a Zen approach, shutting yourself off from the extremes of human existence or ‘When you see a hill in the distance, is their morbid realism and self-preserving instinct to be abhorred? prepare to pedal through it, as if the It feels to me that you’re stifling an important part of being human, waiting hill isn't even there and you're just for the next depression instead of enjoying the ephemeral good times while tunnelling through to the other side. Concentrate solely on pedalling.’ they last. Next downhill I come to, I’ll banish all thoughts of the upcoming schlep and enjoy it for all its fleeting beauty. I shall stand on the pedals, feel - received cycling wisdom. the blood flow back into my ass, and sense the passing distance…