It is already into October and while the days here have been beautiful the nights have been cold and wet. I used to listen to the stories of the trench warfare in World War I with some skepticism, especially when they would proclaim the wet and the mud to be their greatest enemy. They would bemoan the water and warn sternly about feet rotting. How could a boy from Alberta, where winter means cold and snow but not wet, really understand. I am beginning to now. But beyond the wet it is the wind that bothers us. It never seems to end and by some trick of nature it seems to always blow directly in our faces. It is harder to fight than the hills because it is unseen and unrelenting.
We left today bright and early and cycled down to the little town where one can turn right to the Mont or left, inland, towards Rennes. Regretfully we were forced to turn left and turn our backs on the sea, at least for the moment. The Mont disappeared slowly behind us as we advanced towards the hills. Everything at this point was related to the Monument in that tacky, endearing, way that happens when people try desperately to capitalize on nearby fame. Mont St. Michel cookies, camping, stamps, pottery, foie gras (I’m not kidding!) and especially bus tours. Everywhere you looked there were enormous buses and their drivers were not in the least bit hesitant to display their common belief that the roads were built exclusively for them.
At first the terrain through which we biked was nice, flat to begin with then gently rolling. The grass was very green and (don’t tell the French this) it looked remarkably like southern Britain. The only real difference was in the enormous and fantastically ugly concrete water towers that speckled the horizon. From a distance they are intriguing because at first you think they are the turrets of far off castle, or steeples of gothic cathedrals. But then they emerge from the haze of distance and your illusions are dispelled most brutally.
Today’s destination had a campground and seemed to be out at a reasonable distance to stop. When we biked into town everything seemed normal, except for the very loud French music blaring over everything. Then we found the street to our campground blocked off! The street was lined with booths of every description, each manned by a local and selling used goods of all types, from magazines to spoons. We had run into the mass garage sale of Antrain. Only, with very few garages, they filled the streets instead. Sometimes the imagination boggles to see the things people burden themselves with. Humans must share a certain genetic chemistry with the pack rat species, or perhaps it is an innate desire to nest.The more useless things you have the more secure you feel about your financial situation. The collecting of tacky trinkets seems to have been icluded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
“Nations shall pass no laws infringing on the right and ability of humanity to collect and sell objects of unspeakable ugliness and of no use whatsoever”Still, a garage sale, however ugly, was not our problem. What was our problem was the traveling fair that had been set up in the municipal campground, which now offered rides instead of camping.
Not ones to let such a setback set us back we rode down to the local bridge and ate lunch. After lunch we pulled out our guidebook and looked for the nearest campground between here and Rennes. There were plenty of campgrounds, but unfortunately they all close at the end of September. It now being October we needed an alternate solution. We thought back to a conversation we’d had on the ferry over to France. The old man Heather had spoken to said that while the campground officially closed the grounds often remained open and some even left the water running.
With no other choice we headed for the nearest closed campground, the one at Sens de Bretagne or, as it was referred to on the signs Sens de B. We were forced to skip the Castle Bonnefontaine but since we hadn’t planned on going there initially it wasn’t much of a loss.
After Antrain the going seemed to become harder, with lots of hills dotting the countryside. They are very picturesque, if you are in a car. The only thing that lightened the journey was the advertisements for a pornographic website someone had slapped all over the backs of signs on the other side of the road. They featured a young lady in a rather bizarre pose that you couldn’t quite figure out from the far side of the pavement and, in spite of yourself, you kept watching them at they went by trying to figure out exactly what she was doing. It took me many signs to figure it out.
After a ride that seemed to go on forever we reached the campsite. It was closed and it had no running water. It was nestled against a beautiful park with hundreds of trees and a nice sheltering hedge, but it was all lost on us without washrooms. Still, it was getting late by now and the next nearest campground was an equal distance to what we had just ridden…and still closed…so we reluctantly set up camp.
We had a choice between the sheltered back of the site or the relatively exposed front. We chose the front and escaped a hail of acorns during the night that turned the back portion into what seemed like one giant nut.
I’m afraid that camping in such a place was harder on Heather than on me. A lifetime of city living does not exactly prepare a girl to use the local bushes as a washroom, whereas men are trained from early childhood. That being said, I haven’t noticed that French men require even that, anything and everything seems to suffice, including the walls of UNESCO monuments.
When I got up in the middle of the night I found my eyes drawn to the sky and noticed that even here in essentially the countryside of France, you could scarcely make out any of the stars for all the light pollution. We have not noticed it, but the last few generations of humanity have lost the stars, preferring instead to gaze at a heaven decorate with lights of our own making. Even I, who am interested, find myself able to name only a few constellations: Orion, Cassiopeia and the Pleiades.
Even as science opens up the skies and we peer deeper than we ever thought possible into the vastness of space, that vastness becomes more and more a vanished kingdom for the common man on the ground. Will it ever be regained? Or will even interest fade under the lighted nights and we won’t even care. Deep thoughts I will admit, for a man simply getting up to pee in the bushes.
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