Day 92. Bordeaux

We woke early, the cold making it hard to sleep. We paid the fee for another night and the owner of the campground asked if we were not afraid of the cold. I answered that we were but what other choice did we have?

The cold was too intense, too all encompassing in its icy embrace, so we had decided to leave. But to were? We had resolved to catch a train to a warmer climate. But how far could we go and could we keep our bikes with us? Despite the pain, emotional and physical, that they had caused us, we have become emotionally, almost spiritually, attached to them and leaving them behind would radically alter the tenor of our trip.

Our first stop today was the train station, rising from the city like a fabulous 18th century hall, classical statues and carvings coating its facade. We walked through in the wrong direction and found ourselves on the platforms leading to trains, illegally without tickets. We hurried back into the terminal and found the office and waited for our number to be called. We found out the price of a ticket to Rome but we couldn’t take our bikes. The nearest we could take out bikes was Nice, so we found out the price for that as well. Then we found a nearby bank, changed some money into francs and went for a walk to contemplate what to do with our immediate future.

We walked at random and hence managed, without plan, to see some of the more important sights in Bordeaux. We walked along the quay that looked over the Garonne River. We passed the School of Fine Arts, ironically in one of the ugliest buildings we had seen anywhere. We came to the Pont De Pierre, the elegant bridge that leads into town. It terminated at a roundabout in front of the colossal Port des Salinieres, a massive arch that was lost amid the bustle of traffic and the buildings that rose above its height to either side.

We passed the Chamber of Commerce and the Customs House, two awesomely beautiful buildings with intricately carved stonework and gold gilding on all the ironwork. It wasn't hard to see where there was wealth. The customs museum, displaying seized goods of many crimes was tempting but somehow it seemed wrong to pay to see illegal hides or tusks from endangered animals. No one should profit from their suffering.

We ended our tour of the riverfront at the Esplanade des Quinconces, laid out in 1820. We looked forward to it eagerly. The towers at the at the gates were the most elegant things yet seen in Bordeaux, the lamp posts that crowned the surrounding wall were cast iron in a nautical theme with black iron bows of ancient triremes projecting from them.

But the square had hosted a fair the day before and piles of garbage rose higher than our waists. More worrying still was the line of grim looking riot police, plastic shields and batons in hand blocking a corner of the square while old women shouted at them. We left, if not hurrying then at least walking briskly.

Still we stopped at the monument to the Girondins at the head of the Esplanade. A beautiful, allegorical fountain of the Republic and Concordia being pulled through the ocean by straining sea horses sprayed the air with a fine mist while a column topped by an unidentified statue rose halfway to the sky.

From here we walked to the Cathedral, but it was closed for lunch so we circled around behind city hall and ate our lunch in the Jardin de la Mairie. The garden was beautiful, the iron fence gilded in gold with the coat of arms of the city prominently displayed, a fountain circled by flowers that seemed to thrive despite the cold, the whole thing flanked by the Museum of Fine Arts on either side, children playing enthusiastically at one end.

We returned to the Cathedral. It was an indescribable edifice, vastly gothic with twin towers over the main entrance looking demonic with their angled sharpness and smooth seductive curves. Inside, the high ceiling curved above us in cavernous silence while the vast rose windows glowed.

The bell tower wasn’t connected to the church itself and its great shape, a spike slammed deep into the ground could sometimes be seen peering through the windows. I left Heather inside sketching while I phoned home.

When she was done we walked again and found the Museum of Aquitaine. We had planned to go tomorrow but thought we could run through it in the two hours it was still open. The museum was, so far at least, by far the best thing of Bordeaux.

It began with an exhibit of the areas prehistory, the many axes, knives, spearheads, arrowheads, left by prehistoric man. Here were some of the early "Venus" representations, these ones carrying a crescent in their hands and were carved into rock. A representation of the cave paintings at Lascaux adorned the walls and simulacra of ancient painted deer raced across simulacra of ancients cave wall.

There was a small exhibit of Greek and Roman pottery then a vast gallery to the Roman occupation. Elegant classical statues stood vigils over cracked mosaic floors.


There had been a major temple to Mithras here and many, many gifts to the god had been among the finds. The coins of the Bordeaux horde were spilled out in a casual pile, making it easy to see the amazing thickness and weight of the things, while the more spectacular items were showcased in a well lit tray.


Then came the section of the middle ages, with the capstones of columns and many medieval sarcophagi. Then stunningly, amazingly, the entire remains of a vast rose window mounted against a wall, a great wheel of intricate stone whose weight oppressed the room.


But more still, the era of revolution and the many republics with elegant clothes, beautiful jewelry and legacy of headless French. Then the modern era, then post modern, a display of life in the countryside and the collections from Oceania and the far north of Canada and finally a CBC sponsored exhibit about Quebec. Too much to see and displayed in the best fashion we had seen.

We left at closing, found an internet cafe, emailed, went home and got drunk on bordelais wine.

Day 91. Gradignon

The cold has hit us like a physical blow, sapping energy and shattering morale like brittle ice. We knew that winter was coming but we'd expected a gradual easing into frigid weather, so that we could prepare and plan to deal with it. Today that illusion was destroyed.

Yesterday had been warm enough for us to cycle in shirt and shorts. Today I wear a shirt, a sweater and a jacket and I am still cold. My hands are like blocks of ice and I can fell my joints ache like ancient pulleys. Every thought, every motion, is dictated by the cold.

We were extremely reluctant to pull our heads from beneath our covers today. Like turtles assaulted from all sides we pulled our heads beneath the lip of the sleeping bags and basked in the warmth generated by exhaled breath and body heat. The inside of a sleeping bag, with the covers pulled over your head, can be one of the most comfortable places in the world. When Melville wrote of the comfort of a warm bed while the world outside is freezing he could have been describing the sensation beneath the covers of our sleeping bags. I am only glad I have Heather instead of Queequeg as a bed companion.

Eventually the need for food drove us from the warmth. By the time we were dressed we were well and truly frozen so we climbed onto our bikes to see how much more punishment we could take. I'd asked the owner of the campground where the nearest supermarket was and promptly failed to understand the least of her directions. I was made to understand that there was a small supermarket in the centre of the suburb but we never found it. instead we cycled for what seemed like an eternity until we found a massive sign pointing to a supermarket off in the distance. As always we forgot that road signs cater to cars and what is nearby to a car is very distant to those on bikes.

We left Gradignan for the next suburb of Pessac before we found the place. it was a mall, a mall in the Canadian and American sense of the word, a large building dedicated entirely to shops. the warmth within thawed us too quicly and our skin tingled with a thousand pinpricks as blood flowed once more to flesh our bodies had written off as dead.

We were determined to get wine for our dinner toninght. It felt wrong being in the land of wines where one in three people was employed by the wine trade and only drink pop. But finding a wine was a challenge of its own. There were plenty of bottles but how do you find a wine not too cheap but certainly not too expensive that will taste good? After a long search we finally found what we were looking for.

We bought our gorceries and then hung around the purchasing counters, unsure what to do. We didn't want to return to the frozen outdoors, but neither were we really keen on pretending to be mallrats. Mallrats won out and we stayed inside the mall for the great majority of the day.

I can only hope that the weather will pick up or we will be forced to get on a train and find a warmer climate. Whether it is so cold because we are close to the ocean or simply because it is winter and it will be cold no matter where we travel in this hemisphere of the planet I don't know. The state of things tomorrow will greatly influence the rest of this trip.

Day 90. Bordeaux

Three months of our grand European adventure.

We woke this morning to a volley of gunshots. Even as the sound echoed around the campsite the ducks from the night before came hurrying across the lawn and into an open tent across the road from us. We became, I must admit, more than a little hysterical, and our tent rocked with the force of our laughter. Giggling screams of "DUCK" came from us at sporadic moments throught the rest of the day. Possibly the funniest morning I have every woken to.

We were more than a little hesitant to poke our head from the fabric of our tent, lest we be blasted to pieces. Eventually the need to move on and an urgent desire to spend the night somewhere other than here finally drove us from our tents. The sounds of shooting followed us almost the length of our trip into Bordeaux.

It was cold this morning and I wore my sweatpants and sweatshirt for the first time while we biked but they soon became too hot and I shed them gratefully for my normal garb.

The countryside was beautiful, greens mixing with occasional reds and yellows to create a panoply of diversity. The church of St. Vivian was a beautiful spire against the sky as we passed. The peaks and rooves of its necropolis shrouded in an early morning mist.

Eventually we left the highway and began the long final ride into Bordeaux. The road became deserted as cars and trucks left us for the autoroute and local traffic trickled into homes and backyards for lunch. Without warning the road curved sharply upwards and we reached a crest high above the neighbouring landscape, the peaks of trees beneath us.

We had reached the old bridge over the Dordogne river. Beneath us the Dordogne roiled. It was a murky mess of brown water, churned into a froth by it's passage between the pylons of the old bridge. It had the look and texture of newly made chocolate pudding, churning beneath the rapidly swwirling spoon of a hungry child.

The bridge ahead of us was a series of intermittent metal girders that brought to mind the Eiffel tower, strectched out to span the waters. We crossed the narrow span warily, there was little space between the road and the rails and we were grateful to reach the othere side, but here things become confused. Bordeaux was no longer meant to be reached in this fashion and the roads had disapeared or been suborned into Autoroutes.

Our path took a wrong turn and went too far north, allowing us to see much of the vaunted Pont of Aquitaine, a bridge designed along the lines of San Francisco's Golden Gate but rising over the waters of the Gironde river like a curse in steel and concrete to all that modernity had wrought. Beneath it crumbles an unknown town, traces of former glory blotted by the bridges monstrous shadow. Who can live beneath ugliness and not be reduced by it? Old chateaux lay in burned out ruins, while caves fronted by gothic churces collapsed in heaps of stone. We pedalled quicker here, the defeated faces of locals looking at our bikes, our clothes, our bodies, appraisingly.

The lower twenty feet of every building in Bordeaux was a sooty black from the pollution of multitudes, a nightmare in stone and dirt. The pavement was covered in dog shit so thick it seemed to have been spread with a trowel.

The guide said there was a campground ten kilometres out of the city centre so we began moving in that direction. Our trip seemed to go on forever, past a reptitious serious of shops, apartments and shops again. We left Bordeaux proper and entered the suburbs, cleaner and more comfortable than the central city. They still had no sign of our campground and we began to worry.

We stopped at the university and examined the map in despair, No symbol for camping! Then, almost at our wits end we saw a tiny camping sign in the bottom corner, almost off the map. We biked on. We passed into the suburb of Gradignan and through. Just outside of town, was a sign declaring Camping Beausoleil. A beautiful little spot so far outside Bordeaux it almost couldn't qualify as camping in Bordeaux at all. The ground was hard and rocky but we set up our tent gratefully. We have learned that beautiful or ugly, nothing really matters until you have a place to stay.

Day 89. St. Christoly de Blaye

Dinner last night had been an interesting experience. We both ordered the 90 franc meal, mostly because it was the cheapest thing on the menu, but we were both a little hesitant about it. The fact that the salad was hot goat cheese put me off immediately, I have never eaten goat cheese before. It turned out to be really good. The cheese was served in hot domes, browned on the top, that rested on wafers of biscotti and by the time I finished I wanted more.

The main course was a little strange. I had strips of beef in gravy, with french fries. The beef was good and the fries were excellent. But with the candle light, crystalware and silk napkins, the fries seemed out of place.

The hostess was a very angry woman, the antithesis of our server in Talmont St. Hilarie. She seemed angry that patrons had bothered to come to her restaurant. She seated us brusquely and then went off to shout at a family who had just come in.

Her husband, or at least her partner, was diametrically opposite. He was short with an enormous shock of black hair and a black beard that ringed his face. He seemed to find everything about life delightful and he was always laughing and smiling. I found his jokes, fast and furious and in a foreign language, almost incomprehensible, a fact he found hilarious and he spent the evening chortling to himself.

The couple behind us began trying to get the proprietresses attention, obviously finished their meal and looking for the bill, but she studiously ignored them and continued to bustle on indescribable errands from empty table to empty table.

Finally the server plopped the bill onto their table as if it was something disgusting that would stain her hands. They got up and hurriedly left. We looked forward to our own bill with something approaching dread. But when we began looking around for our waitress she appeared suddenly and assured us that as patrons of the hotel, we did not have to pay until we left.

We returned to our room and watched French TV for most of the night. Not as much of a cultural experience as one would like to assume. We watched the best of American pop culture in French dubbing. Will and Grace, Friends, Simpsons, all rerun episodes that sounded insanely bizarre with French coming from familiar actors lips.

This morning as we packed we watched the "Ewoks Adventure" in French.

Leaving Mirambeau was hard, not because we were attached to the place but because there was an enormous hill on the south side of town. We had noticed yesterday that we are definitely in wine country and today only served to confirm it. Everywhere were lush green vineyards, stretching to the horizon. It seems as if no other crop is grown in this region. Long lines of vines sweep by as we pedal, like a million lines of writing that compose a vast alcoholic poem.

Every fifty yards is a sign inviting us into chateaux for tours, wine tasting and purchasing. Even the houses seem richer. Instead of small holdings of run down farms there are large, well kept, estate houses surrounded by acres of vines. No grapes though, looks as thought the harvest season has passed. Not a good sign.

Finding our campsite for the night turned out to be a far greater challenge than we had expected. We were both totally exhausted by the time we turned off the main highway and we still had thirteen kilometres to go. Eventually, after much moaning on both our parts we did get to it and it was open so we are grateful for small miracles.

The campground, however, left a few things to be desired. There are many permanent residents and the poverty level was high. We were more than a little uncomfortable. Many sat on their tent porches, drank wine and glared angrily at this pair of interlopers who had broached their privacy. Goats and ducks and dogs had free reign of the place and made their presence felt with trails of feces and the faint smell of urine that occasionally wafted by.

The goats were, however, very amusing and we watched with childish fascination as they chased each other in a never ending ring around a tree. We found a swan and goose floating in small pond behind a fence and Heather proved that she had learned nothing from our trip to England, so many years back, by sticking her fingers through the fence and having it nipped at by the goose.

We went for a walk to the camps office to see if there were pamphlets of information about the area, but the owner raced in front of us, slammed the door and locked it, only to run out again, through the back door. We were astonished by her behaviour.

At that instant her son came running out of the woods carrying her granddaughter while a woman followed behind carrying horseback riding helmet. The owner pulled up in a car, they all piled in and they disappeared in a cloud of dust. I'm guessing that whatever happened it was a little more urgent than us looking at pamphlets.

Day 88. Mirambeau

Heather's Birthday. 24 years old.

We cycled what felt like a vast distance today and stayed at a hotel this evening. We even went so far as to eat in a restaurant. Our meal was hot goat cheese salad; strips of beef for me and chicken for Heather, but, oddly for such a posh establishment, with sides of French fries.

But I spent most of the day, as we cycled through thickening vineyards, reflecting on Heather. Perhaps it was the tired ache of muscles pushing against pedals that brought my mind back to our first meeting.

In the summer of '93 I had gone biking with James and Ted to meet a pair of girls I supposedly already knew. We were all young and fit. The guys were neat and tidy, I was shaggy with torn clothes. We traveled to Wendy's house, on other side of the Queensland hill and we strained to get there, a distance that seems almost laughable given out present travels.

The girls had waited for us in the backyard, young and flirtatious as only adolescents can be. But they had a third girl with them, just as young, just as giggly, but far more intriguing, at least to me.

From the first it seemed that we must have been destined for each other. We matched each other in our rebellious undress uniforms. My hair grew in rough waves as it grew back from it's mohawk cut, Heather's hair was still short where she had shaved off her undercut. My ripped clothes matched her shaggy cast offs so in vogue with the grunge trend of the times. She seemed so alive, so energetic, and her verve challenged me. I remember holding her in my arms as friends turned a raging hose on us both, soaking us to the skin.

I remember too walking her home that night and talking to her on the gentle slope of her parent’s lawn as pale blue became deep violet and the sky filled with stars. We had become an official couple before I left for home that night.

I remember Heather on our first trip out of the country, a graduation gift really, traveling with my parents to the highlands of Scotland. She was so sick then, a strange foreign country for the first time in her life, jet lag and the rocking motion of the motorhome all conspiring to turn her stomach. She had drugged herself insensible but still struggled gamely to raise her head and watch as we passed through Sherwood Forest. She was so beautiful on that trip, so amazed with every new thing that we experienced. Delighted especially in the soft purple heather that covered the highlands. Nothing daunted her on that trip, not the high stairs of the Wallace Memorial or the thick pollution of London.

Heather has always fascinated me with her wonder at the power of the natural world, whether on our trip to California or Prince Rupert.

She looked at the redwoods as though she understood them, feeling the slow beat of wooden hearts millennia old.
I remember Heather amongst the tombstones below the rocky crag of Sterling Castle, or in Confederation Park at home, enjoying the quiet serenity of flowers and carefully carved stone as thought it was all a spiritual temple for her, a place of meditation.

She has an equal fascination with all things gastronomical. Her insistence that we try the local food of wherever we had traveled. Crabs on the coast, smoked salmon in the car as we drove to Vancouver. The bagets that we ate in Southampton on that first trip that I don't even remember. The way her eye is always drawn to the fanciful displays of food in a window, the same way most would be drawn to a warm fire.

I love her delight in the rain, pulling out chairs onto the sheltered deck of our home by the University to watch a spring down pour wash away the snow and the grit. The rain that fell as we sat on the couch in my parents living room and I asked her to marry me.

I find myself in awe of her righteous indignation at the indifference of the universe and at casual cruelty. She cannot abide a person who so casually swats a dog or mistreats child. She has always been quick to leap into the fray and defend those who cannot defend themselves. I remember my early days of driving and Heather's panicked warning whenever an animal crossed the road, glaring at me angrily if I commented that it was better the animal be hurt than we.

These last few years of school have been very stressful for her. I remember frantic nights as she tried to prepare for her all important "crits" at art school. Her passionate arguments about artistic styles and what constituted quality work. Her anger when she thought someone's work was criticised unfairly and her admiration of the beauty in others works. I remember her surprise and almost stunned amazement when she sold her first really major piece and her reluctance to part with the bowl of dancing leaves in which she had invested so much of herself.

Heather has grown and changed since I first met her on a trampoline in her friends backyard. She no longer wears her hair short or worships heavy metal bands. She has gained a measure of class and sophistication and her vocabulary has mellowed dramatically but the core has never changed. She has never wavered in those virtues that I love.

Now here we are in the middle of France going nowhere and everywhere and still my love for her is strong. We have seen so many things that have inspired and taught. Who can know what lies ahead of us? I don't have Heather's cheerful optimism in the proper unfolding of the universe. I am the pessimistic yin to her yang, but I know that when she has faith I begin to believe.

So tonight we will indulge her gastronomical yearnings and pamper our tired bones with the comfortable bed of a hotel and I will tease Heather about becoming old while looking forward to long life and much happiness

Heather Matwe Designs

Day 87. Saintes‏

Sometimes the words to describe a sense of awe, beauty, wonderment and an almost overwhelming feeling of ancient power, simply do not exist. It is the difference, to borrow a phrase, between talking about lightning and being struck by it. But I will try to put words to the indescribable.

We awoke early today, worried about missing breakfast. Our alarm had cratered a couple of days ago and now only makes a horrific noise whenever it is opened. As it happened we didn't miss breakfast, we were the first ones to it. It was the same fare in La Rochelle but enjoyed much more because we were expecting it. This time we both stole jam.

After a brief morning nap we set out. There was no exploration today, we were both sure of our goal. We cycled up the steep streets directly for the Arena. We locked our bikes against the metal rail that surrounded the upper rim of the site, paid our five francs entrance fee and walked in. Here words fail me completely. I have to pause and think for even the smallest description to come to mind.

I have spent the last five years studying histories of people long since dead, the Romans foremost among them and, Virconium and Rockbourne Villa aside, I had scarcely seen a Roman site. Walking into the arena was like walking into a physical manifestation of these past five years, each stone a word in a textbook or a minute in class. In mere seconds I felt Rome, the weight and history of Empire, as no book could convey. I could hear the roar of the crowds, see blood flow on the sands, smell the sweat and excitement. I travelled time as I walked the steps, phasing effortlessly between the now of grass and ruins and the then of living breathing history.

The arena was an enormous structure built to hold between fifteen and twenty thousand people, the entire population of Mediolanum Santonorum. It was a mixed structure so that some was built into the sides of the valley while other parts, particularly the Processional Port of the Gladiators rose from the valley floor in enormous arches. The upper floors were gone, half the seating disappeared as time and people eroded the arena to the level of the valley. It was built in 40 or 50 AD when the Emperor Claudius reigned and had decayed for 1500 years and it was magnificent.
We walked down decaying stairs to the floor of the arena. The sand that had absorbed the blood of dying gladiators was buried from sight but you could feel the weight of the crowds gaze and despite the empty ruins you could hear the cheering. Smooth stone, like modern side boards, rose to protect the wealthy patrons from wild beasts or escaping warriors

We walked up the Procession Way under an arch too high to be captured in words. A massive entrance to a massive structure. The borders of stone had smudged and run together with age and dripped now with ancient stalagmites so that it seemed more cave than structure.


We explored every nook and cranny that we were allowed. The ruin is crumbling, though partially restored in some places, especially the arches. Cold blooded lizards crawl over the sun warmed rocks as they must have done since before the arena was built.

We crossed the vast arena floor, ants on a tabletop, and found the other arch, the exit. It was almost buried beneath the risen ground, a half arch the seemed sinister in the light of day. It disappeared into the hillside beneath the road. We entered the darkness and allowed our eyes to adjust. The tunnel was half filled with the accumulated dirt of ages but the arches were still impressive. Here as nowhere else in the structure, beneath a patina of white lime deposited by centuries of seeping rain water, the patterns on the rocks cut by the builders were still visible. The whole scene was very eerie.

We emerged from the tunnel, back into the area, blinking in the sunlight. Together we found a seat in the nobles section of the arena, naturally, sat down and pull out sketchbook and journal respectively. Scarcely had we begun to record, in our individual way, the sights around us then we were approached by a friendly American couple, Scott and Amy, with mother-in-law and child in tow. In a place of foreign languages a familiar tongue is a magnet and we are drawn together, if not as fellow expatriates then as neighbors on a continent.

Scott, it turned out, was working for a French company. He was having difficulty adjusting to the less competitive atmosphere of Europe and was on an enforced vacation that seemed to leave him chomping at the bit. Amy's mother was visiting them, feeling safer here than in her hometown of Washington DC. Their boy, Clayton, enjoyed running about the sand floor and reenacting ancient gladiatorial battles, climbing his father's side and demanding to be shown where the dead bodies had been taken out. Only after they left did we realize that we had failed to exchange any contact information. Too bad, because as they left Scott said, "I wish we could throw your stuff in the back of the car and take you with us." Me too.

We returned to the writing and drawing, feeling the atmosphere and the quiet of the place fall over us like a physical thing. It was so tranquil and yet energizing to sit in the midst of the vast ancient place. And then the gatekeeper came and kicked us out for her lunch break! Never have we been so discontent with the hours the French maintain. We stomped back up the stairs and tried to recapture the mood while looking through the iron fence, but it had disappeared, not to be regained.

We left with a little disappointment but still immensely grateful we had seen such a sight.

We cycled across town to the ancient Roman baths, hoping to find something similar but the baths had been small and abandoned early. When the town had regrown the site had been a church, then a necropolis and tombstones littered the grassy plain. No fence regulated who could enter here and the mausoleums were was filled with broken beer bottles and a smell of vomit and urine.

We spent the evening at the feet of the great Roman arch that had once crowned the road into town. Built at the end of the first century AD the road had linked Lyon with Aquitania. Caius Julius Rufus, a high priest of the Imperial cult, had built the arch in 18 or 19 AD. The arch had marked the entry to the town’s bridge, each arc a direction travel.

With the advent of the Middle Ages mills had been built on the bridge, backing up the waters so the river flowed around the front of the arch. The bridge was then connected to the rapidly erroding riverbanks using long planks of wood, inadvertently creating a drawbridge.

The coming of the 18th and 19th centuries had seen the gradual destruction of the bridge to make way for river traffic and only the intervention of the Minister of Antiquities had saved the arch.

The arch was built of enormous blocks of stone, out of which perhaps ten had retained their original shape. The rest of the blocks crumbled and chipped until the whole structure was a child's set of building blocks with the overwhelming feeling that anyone could walk by and destroy the ancient structure with an accidental shove. I had to resist the urge to try.

All things considered, today had been one of the trips highlights.

Day 86. Saintes

Halloween. The dark night has closed in around us, but nothing roams the streets.

Based on the sight of a single pamphlet we have come to Saintes hoping to see the wonderous Gallo-Roman ruins. We set out from our well feathered nest early, our tent, bikes and bodies bedecked with dew. Leaving was hard. It has become harder every day that we are in a comfortable spot, the unknown ahead of us.

The trip back into Rochefort was quick, if a little confused and we saw in passing anything that we might have missed on our previous visits. The library, the war memorial, the thermal baths (flying a Canadian flag, among others) and some of the town wall. I was enthralled, there is no other word, by the industrial port as we passed by. Enormous freighters filled the small space. The only entrance or exit was a lock that seemed no more than two or three of my body lengths across. It was impossible to visualize the delicate skill that must be needed to maneuver in such a space.

Last night Heather and I had stayed up late and watched as an empty freighter had chased the disappearing tide down the Charente river. The night had been inky black, the river so low the bottom was creating new rapids and the freighter has been so light in the water that its bow seemed to lift from the waves. We had watched with held breath expecting the vessel to run aground at any moment or crush one of the tiny fiberglass pleasure craft beneath its steel hull. Nothing happened and the ship gradually disappeared down the river, heading for open ocean. The sheer weight of such a vessel on such a small river is breathtaking, a whale in a fishpond.

After leaving the city the ride had little in it worth writing about. The countryside was mostly flat, the road well traveled but not too busy. We passed a few vineyards and could not help but notice that they rose a little higher here, closer to how we envisioned them. But we did not stop. We were pursued by a dark cloud that bruised the sky and just as we reached the boundary of Saintes it began to rain. We biked down what seemed to be the main street and were unimpressed. The city was gray. The rain let up but still threatened. We stopped at a map and were unenlightened by it. No mention of our hostel anywhere. We stopped at the tourist office, it was closed from noon to two, then after five. So tired were we that we assumed it must be after five. I found a small map with our destination marked on it so we set out, down the long slope towards the Charente river.

We crossed and found a massive Roman arch, the Arch of Germanicus, the ancient entry to the town’s Roman bridge. Its sheer bulk was impressive, the physical presence of long dead Romans made manifest in cracked and pitted stone.

We stopped to read its scant information then hurried on to our hostel. It too was closed, opening after 5. Our exhaustion had played with our minds, it was hardly after 1 o'clock in the afternoon. We had hours to wait.

We sat and ate lunch and I read to Heather. Scarcely had I finished the first page when a lady approached us from the hostel and asked if we wanted a room for the night. At that moment our gloom lifted. Not in a physical fashion, it was still blustery outside, leaves whipped in a frenzy across the lawn, but our gloom had not been physical, more the constant pain of readjustment we felt every time we pulled up roots and left a city. We stowed our things in a room much like La Rochelle but with carpet and comforting brick wall that changed cold into warmth and gave the room a certain intrigue, as if we had set up camp in the warmest most comfortable back alley in existence.

We rested for a while and then set out to see Saintes. The city's name comes, oddly enough, not from any medieval Saints who may have dwelt there but instead from the tribe of Romanized Gauls who had built it, the Santones.

We found an abbey next to our hostel and walked its covered walkway. L'Abbey aux Dames, a cluniac nunnery with an almost beehive shaped bell tower. Tours of the inside were offered but at a price, a price paid more for an exhibit of French photographers’ works than for the abbey. We passed.

We walked back towards the river and discovered a park tucked neatly away. We went in and walked beneath green boughs while young lovers courted and kissed on benches, looking up in annoyance as we walked by and disturbed them.

We passed, to our surprise, the Lapidary Museum of Saintes, a small building that housed the greater portion of the Roman statues found in the city, their intricate carvings almost faded to nothingness with the ravages of time. The prize of the collection was the torso of a Julio-Claudian prince, bathing in a soft golden light while ancient stone muscles flexed in a posture frozen by age.

A marble of classic proportions in a room of decaying stones and headless torsos, all excavated from the fragments of the city wall the inhabitants of Mediolanum Santonum threw together in a panicked haste to ward off the barbarian hordes. They had pulled down the forum and the baths and the houses of the rich and poor alike in their terror.

We stopped again at the grandeur of the arch and admired its power even in decay. But we had more of the city to explore. Tomorrow was All Saints Day, a religious holiday in France and we don't now what will be open. We crossed the river once more and followed tiny medieval streets to the Cathedral of St Peter. The cathedrals clock tower loomed over the city. It seemed as though it had been built in stages, each stage piled atop the other, like some Egyptian step pyramid transported to the western coast of France. St. Peters was like dozens of other flamboyant gothic cathedrals we had visited, the outside a beautiful series of flying buttresses. What shocked us was the stores and shops that had nestled between the foundations of each buttress. The cathedrals main walls forming the back walls of beauty salons, galleries and private residences.

Next we followed the marked path to the Roman Arena that had brought us here. We followed streets that narrowed and grew rough beneath our feet. We passed the manicured beauty of the L'Hotel de Ville into coarse alleyways and stairs that seemed to climb the walls of houses to the rooftops of the city many times over, only to descend into a valley once more.

The Arena lay at the head of a valley, along a wide swath of grass that had once been the main roman road, so that the gladiators could march down in a dazzling public spectacle. The Arena was amazing, even from behind locked gates closed for the night. The stones seemed alive in their decay, as if infused with centuries of bloodlust and excitement. I longed to clamber over the iron bars blocking my way and race among the ruins. Instead we left, vowing to return tomorrow.

We followed the signs leading to the church of St. Eutrope and its famous (although unknown to us) crypt, a milestone on the pilgrimage to Compostella. The altar had been dedicated by Urban II in 1096.

The church was darkly beautiful, lost in shadow, the crypt lost to sight. Urban's face gazed down from stained glass windows in a beatific peace, irony in glass. We went out and walked around; looking for the crypt, but found nothing. The clock tower rose above our heads, sheathed in scaffolding that made it echoed the layered temples of the far east, an unintended symbol of ecumenical outreach.

We dropped back to the Charente again, the highway the Vikings had followed in search of pillage and plunder. Fishermen lined its tranquil banks. The fish were wise to the devious plans of those with rods and clustered in schools of schools that chased and fed on another in the shallows on our side, away from the rods and hooks, their silver underbelly's flashing as they climbed the road of the pier in search of other fish. It grew dark and as cold as the October night it was. No ghouls, ghosts or goblins emerged to torment us, either in search of candy or earthly recognition. Instead clusters of young girls puffed rebelliously on cigarettes while nearby boys watched and waited for the cool moment to saunter over with the requisite "feu" We bought our dinner for tonight and tomorrow and walked home, glad to be out of the cold, for tonight at least.

Day 85. Rochefort

Today is another "stay with the tent and do nothing" day, so I will continue with yesterdays saga.

From the Corderie we went outside and walked the Gardens of Return, a modern replica of the gardens that had existed here in the yards heyday. The plants represented all the flora of distant lands visited by the French navy. The area had been left to rot after the yards were abandoned and the fire set by the Nazis had been the last insult. The entire complex was rebuilt after 1960's. We walked the lawns and a path through the trees and found the rigging area, a pair of masts rising high against a brilliant blue sky.



We walked out of the garden towards the pleasure port, past the four star hotel. Next to it was a burned out hulk of a building, rotting with age, filled with broken wine bottles and ceramic jugs. The pleasure port was full of boats but empty of people and we left quickly. Kinda creepy.

The spiders are out in full force weaving strands of spider's silk across impossible distances and crawling into everything. Our bikes, our backpacks, our hair.

We found a phone to call home, our weekly check in, but a Frenchman asked if he could use it first, swearing that he only needed it for a minute. Ten minutes later we left, seeking another phone. We found a trio of phone boxes in a square not two feet away, in the shadow of St. Louis's church, a columned building recessed from the street, done in Roman style. We chatted with my parents, shocked to discover that, on a day in which it had become too hot for us to wear our jeans and long sleeved t-shirts, it had snowed at home.

As Heather took her turn at the phone I watched the life of the square around us. A fountain splashed with life in the centre. A young couple made out in the shadow of a tree. An old man sat on the edge of the fountain while a young baby almost fell in only to be scolded by his frightened mother. Old men fed birds while old women read the news or watched me watching them. The sidewalk cafes bustled with life. The couple got up and left, the girl cuffing the boy as his gaze wandered to the life sized, almost nude, ads in the lingerie shop across from us. The square seemed full of life. People with lives to lead, leading them. Even we seemed a perfect part of the picture, a tourist couple, dressed the part, calling home to reassure worried parents, while we secretly collapsed from exhaustion. I half expected a Hollywood director to scream cut and everything to freeze. But it never happened.

We hung up and walked into the church, good tourists that we were. But we were very tired and the sun had almost completed it's tiny arc across the sky and the church, despite it's impressive exterior, had almost crumbled to nothing inside, given glory only by it's elaborate altar.

We returned home via the Pont Transborder, which I discovered has been translated as the "aerial ferry." Built in 1908 instead of 1901, by Ferdinand Arnodin. An impressive idea, impressively executed, that now fails to impress. Poor Ferdinand.

The ride home is much like the ride out, though we do encounter a crew paving the cycle paths, who stare with consternation as I almost ride into their newly laid patch of tar. Whether worried about me or their tar, I don't know. We try to follow the path through the marshes as long as possible, a plan that leads to us getting trapped when the path ran out and forced us to climb a ditch back onto the road we had been trying to avoid. We arrived at our tent, to a campground full of people, and we felt good even if a little tired. It is nice to share a campground with people and know that we are not totally insane.

A group of four men play boules beside our site, in fact they are doing it now as I write, a ritual of unknown antiquity played out in endless repetitions. We try to go out for a walk after the sun has set but the mist is too thick. We are driven back to our campsite which is soon covered in a sheen of water as the night sweats. We talk about faith and spirituality and the order of the universe.

I postulate a universe surrounded by a god so complex as to make the ordeal of understanding the Trinity child's play by comparison while a satellite flies its path through the nether regions of the constellation Cassiopeia. Somewhere God giggles.

Today has been the antithesis of yesterday. We have done almost nothing. I walked slowly out to the end of the our small dock and scribbled a few lines and gave up, instead standing to watch the dock writhe in the wake of a cargo freighter as it makes its way to the ocean. I work some more sitting at the table, watching the sun descend too quickly once more. We went in to town to buy groceries and for the twentieth time I marvel at the seafood counter. I played with the clams snapping in their search for food, unaware of any irony in their actions. I watched as some shellfish crawled from his shell and tried to escape his basket prison, sure that if he survived, I would be watching evolution at work.

We flipped through the posters. French absorption of American pop culture is a few years behind Canada, so everything was just a touch out of date. But what caught our attention most were the world maps and how far we have yet to go. Rome didn't seem so far away when we were in Canada. A pamphlet describing Lafayette tells that it took him 38 days to join Washington in American and lend his aid. 38 days means so much more now. 38 days on a cramped wood and hemp and cloth ship. I wonder if it was better than a tiny tent and a leather seat.

Day 84. Rochefort.

Today was a very busy day and I faced it in exhaustion. The problem with living by the sunlight is the unnatural hours it imposes. How strange that sounds! But last night, for example, we went to bed no later than 7PM. Even considering that we got up no later than 8AM this morning we still lay in bed for 13 hours. Despite occasional accusations that I am lazy, even I found this to be too much. But what can I do? After it is dark all our activity ceases. It's impossible to write, to read, even going for a walk is an insecure activity at best. I'd thought to reserve activities that don't need sunlight, like showering, until dark but by then it's too cold and such a mist rises off the river that I don't dry until midway thought the next day. Anyway, an upshot of this is the fact that I spent half the night lying awake and staring at the ceiling of our tent. By the time the sun rose I was about as exhausted as I was just before climbing into bed.

We rose, dressed in warm clothes, because the misty morning was chill, and rode into town. We had a few goals. We had read a brief book on the Corderie Royale and the old arsenal, so that was on our list and we had seen advertisements for Rochefort’s ancient transborder bridge. Great. The only problem was that we had no idea how to find them. We set out blindly, almost randomly choosing directions, always trying to follow the river and head towards the centre of town. Soon we found ourselves on a major road between the town and marshland, a great concrete crescent of a bridge rising before us, a military airfield at our side. We turned aside just before the bridge and followed a well worn path into the marshes, stagnant canals so thick with algae that they looked paved flat, that paralleled us on either side. A swan sat in one, seeming frozen in by the stagnant waters, perfect white feathers stopping abruptly at the algae line.

Ahead of us loomed a massive structure of girders, cantilevers and cables that covered the river. At first we couldn't make it out, then it seemed like an enormous industrial crane, and then we were there. The structure was in fact the bridge. An enormous iron temple. Two metal pylons rose on either side of the river supporting a track high above the highest ships. The "bridge" was in fact a flat open aired cable car with a deck for carriages and seats for people. Completed in 1901,it was a centennial celebration mirroring the structure of the Eiffel tower. It was a modern celebration of steel and cable and girders.

We eventually followed the bike path around to the streets, found the municipal campground, conveniently left out of my Michelin guide, and eventually found Rochefort's docks.



I must admit to disappointment. The first artifact we encountered at the docks was the Napoleon III drydocks. It was famous as a Floating Entrance Drydock. The entrance would be blocked by the hull of a ship. When the tide came in the ship floated out of the way, whichever ship was to be repaired sailed in, the blockade ship was returned to a set of grooved tracks, tide went out, the blockade sank and was ballasted down to block in the entrance. Simple and elegant, tried for the first time at this drydock. But all that remained was a huge ship-shaped hole in the ground, bottom filled with slime and water, sides overgrowing with moss. The floating barricade was a rusting hulk scarcely identifiable as a ship. The only thing keeping water out was a new earthen embankment cutting the drydock off from the river.

Next to the dock a great white plastic hutment covering the entire waterfront, looking distincly unimpressive. We walked to the front. This was the site of the reconstruction of the French frigate Hermione.

We walked into the huge plastic hutment and things changed. Great wooden ribs rosed from the floor to the ceiling and the overwhelming sensation of creation filled the air. The presence of a ship being birthed by human hands was palpable. The ship had a form so obviously feminine that questions about why ships are called "she" or her" were relegated to the bin of obsolescence.

Planking rose from the floor to the heights like the desiccated ribs of a mammoth sea creature but unlike the decay of death, flesh flowed onto the ribs, building almost through the force of human will, a living thing. There was no pall of death before this skeletal figure, but the energy of an idea that flowed and crackled between dried wooden planks. The Hermione was unborn, a schrodingers box of potential more than anything else, but already it seemed to strain at invisible moorings.

The Hermione, the original, had served to ferry the French Lafayette to the American George Washington to discuss French support for the American revolution, making this version a palpable symbol of French-American friendship. We walked slowly through the site, enjoying the smell of fresh cut wood and the sight of a ship being born. Plans call for the Hermione to sail to Boston in 2007. Perhaps we can meet it there.

From the Hermione we walked the old arsenal, reentering the Port of the Sun. The centerpiece of the old shipyards was the Corderie Royale, the massive structure built for the purpose of spinning the millions of miles of rope for the French Navy.

The building was unique,. It was an H that spanned an entire meadow, the crosspiece almost ten times longer than the sides. Curving buttresses held up the long two storey high wall. The entrance was through the sides. and again we walked into another world.

During the age of fighting sail rope was needed in such abundance that it dwarfed the need for trained men or good wood. Spun from hemp and soaked in the tar made from the resin of burned pine trees rope was the lifeblood of the sailing navies. We learned a history that we had not even considered in the long half of the rope factory. The walls were decorated with twisted cords of rope in the hundreds of different sized required and to the centre was a huge beastly machine of black iron that spun rope in ways that even after a dozen demonstrations seems bizarre to me.

But the corderie also had displays of ship building and recreated a fascinating world new to us from our landlocked home. That ships were always buildt in drydocks facing north - south so that the sun beat on both sides equal seems an obscure but logical enough fact, but that every two or three years the navy would haul out the heaviest ship, push them on to their sides on dry land and burn off all the barnacles, old tar and caulking with enormous fires seemed truly bizarre.

Rochefort it seems had been a perfect shipyard for the French. Far enough inland to be protected from assault by the sea, at a crossroads for food, wood, rope, it rebuilt a navy that had been in serious decline since Richelieu.

The previous owner of the area, a Protestant lord with little support at court in a time of Catholic extremisim, had disappeared completely after protesting against the building of the shipyards. He was avenged, in the end, by the Nazi's, who torched the entire complex when they were forced out by the allies less than sixty years ago.

Day 83. Rochefort.

Another day with a beautiful sleep to precede it. The more of these I have, the happier I will be. Today is a day of respite from travel and sightseeing. We sat on the banks of the Charente River
and watched the boats sail by.

To see the actions of a tidal river was a real eye opener for me. The mechanics are well known, the effects so myriad and diverse in their subtlety. When tide flows in the flow of the river ceases, coming to slow and languid stop as though entering the still waters of a lake. Then silently, slowly, the current reverses, flows upstream in a seeming defiance of nature. With inexorable slowness the yachts, catamarans and pleasure craft that fill the river begin to turn. Previously they had all faced upstream, bows cutting the flow of the river with the uniform singularity of soldiers at attention. But the flow swings them slowly around, until eventually they all face downstream with the same precision. Ducks float back on the current they had ridden down, seemingly bewildered by this turn of events. The water rises rapidly and quickly reaches a peak, then, with infinite patience, stops. The waters come to a standstill, swirling whichever direction takes their fancy. For a few hours the river in truth becomes a lake. Then the downstream current reasserts its supremacy. The waters begin to flow; the lake becomes a river once more. The current slowly picks ups, faster and faster until it borders on a torrent as the tide is sucked back out to the sea until the river drains an becomes a stream, brooding in it’s muddy bed. We wake as the river is filing and we sit on the docks to watch the creeping waterline and the passing boats.

The day becomes hot, too hot for late October, but we enjoy the heat, letting it soak into us for future needs. I try to tan, to color my pasty pale belly but it no use. White or red are my options. The day itself is lazy. Even the air seems to feel it. The wind blows listlessly, if at all. The sun seems to hang in the sky as I write and Heather draws. The sound of Heather’s pen against paper is an out of place sound that makes a soothing counterpoint to the bubble and swish of water beneath the dock.

Tomorrow we shall have to get up and explore this soothing city. Today, however, proved perfect for our rest.