Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Day 66. Le Meillerage-De-Bretagne. Oct 11 2001.

Fog and Spiders Part II.

We woke this morning to a fog as thick as yesterdays. But today we couldn't roll over in our sleeping bags and sleep or sit up and watch the intricate patterns. Today we had to pack our soggy things and carry on with the trip. Everything was wet and had begun to acquire that wonderful smell of moldy bread and we have little left in the way of clean socks and underwear. Not ones to be daunted we rose early, I cannot say bright because the sun was hidden, stuffed our soggy things into our wet bags and climbed out of our little vale towards the main roads.

Breathing was like drinking and before we had gone very far we were drenched to the skin and all our hair, along with any fuzz on our clothes, was coated in a thick pattern of white beads that made us look hoary and grey. We passed out from the village over the dam that held back the reservoir and to our right a rocky little stream bubbled down over the stones and fallen logs to disappear mysteriously into the mists. Looking down on it was like looking through a magic mirror into an enchanted land and we forgot, for the moment, our sopping bodies.

Biking in a mist as thick as today’s was an interesting challenge for we could not see more than a hundred feet in front of us. Trucks appeared out of the mists like magically summoned beasts or the ancient ones of lovecraftian stories, leaving behind their roar and swirling clouds as they disappeared once more. Trees appeared like leering specters on the edge of our vision and houses sat silent as though deserted. Used to mists at home, that scarcely last past midmorning, we waited for the sun to emerge and burn off the fog. We waited and we waited and we waited.

We also passed some very interesting signs on the road.

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Today we had planned on a big push towards Nantes to avoid staying at a closed campground. But we had not reckoned for roadwork. The road we should have taken to Chateaubriant was closed for construction and we were forced to take a very long detour. Long at least for those on bikes, it was perhaps twenty minutes to half and hour out of the way for someone in a car.

At the intersection where we would have turned off the French tourist board had erected a replica Neolithic monument amidst a circular garden.

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It was very eerie to have watched such a monument loom at you out of the mists, no matter how contemporary it was.

I wonder if genuine ones really marked a road of power for the ancients, if they did in fact follow ley lines of mystic energy or were only solitary isolated attempt to mark, in a human way, the feeling of the numinous. Perhaps in much the same way as Cathedrals and spires do.

Again today the spiders were out in full force, eventually growing to numbers that put yesterday to shame. They dropped from the tress and spun webs between vast distances, linking lamp posts and telephone poles and road signs in one vast cobweb. Even we, who were constantly on the move, became hosts for spider webs, eventually trailing them like streamers in long lines behind us. Occasionally a cluster of webs would break from their moorings and float along an imperceptible breeze, riding currents over furrows in the fields like dragons over mountaintops.

We followed the detour signs away from our destination, Chateaubriant getting more and more distant with very turn of the pedal. I grew first concerned, then worried and finally mad that we had to move so far from our path. Ironically enough the road which we now followed led straight to Angers.

Finally, after a brief consultation with the map, we took the next turn south, despite the sign warning “no through traffic.” Now we entered a dark and gloomy forest that sheltered us, for the moment, from the mists. At last we could see ahead. It was like pulling off a blindfold. Soon we left the forest, reentering the mists and eventually hooking up with a westward road that would take us straight to Chateaubriant. It seems the road detour went all the way to Angers despite the fact that you could shorten the distance the way we did. Perhaps the locals didn’t want the traffic.

Now at last the mist began to dissipate and we were treated to a wonderful blue sky and no wind to speak of. It was enchanting to watch the mist lift off the fields in long columns of vapor but a little strange to watch it happen an hour after noon. Just on the outskirts of Chateaubriant we saw a monument peering through the trees and through we might break for lunch there.

It was a large patriotic monument dedicated to 27 locals who had been executed by Nazi’s. 27 pillars with portraits of the dead ringed a square while at the front were wooden posts like those they were tied to before being executed behind them and looming over all was a stone carving of the men dying at the post.



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Beneath were glass canisters in a wall with earth from every place important to the French resistance. Overwhelming it all was a spirit of “Never Again” But I was forced to ask myself, never what again? Never again should people be executed? But hundreds are executed around the world every year, many of them in the US and few protest. Never again should people die for their beliefs? What about Waco or the followers of Falun Gong? Never again should people be under the rule of a people like the Nazis? But the Taliban forced Hindus and Jews to wear yellow badges’ setting them apart and nothing was done ecept a little posturing. The war in Afghanistan has nothing to do with the Nazi-esque behaviors of the Taliban. So the question remains “Never Again” what? Does "Never Again" only apply to stable westernized democracies and even then those with a sufficiently large nuclear arsenal are left alone?


We left there without eating and entered the town of Chateaubriant and decided to take our lunch in the courtyard of their beautiful castle.
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Here a man approached Heather, shouting angrily in French that there was no eating allowing in the yard, despite picnic benches and garbage cans everywhere. When she did not understand he became exasperated and his lady companion translated in disgust. As we left we were glared at from every corner. We would have liked to explore the castle and look at the theater next to it but we left in disgust instead. The theater across the street from the castle was a small cube, supported inside by four pillars. The outside was entirely of transparent glass and it was called La Theatre en Verre, the Theater of Glass. Very intriguing.

We headed south once more and once more were wrapped in cocoons of spider silk. Eventually we became too exhausted to go much further and in spite of being far short of our goal we began to look for campground signs eagerly. We found one at a small town and occupied its municipal grounds with vigor, despite the locked washrooms. At least the water was running. I have discovered something about France. The smaller the town the larger the name. Paris, Nantes, Avignon, Bordeaux. One or two, even three syllables. The name of this town, the one before, tiny places, long names. Inferiority complex perhaps?

Here too we were reintroduced to the sound of church bells, unheard since Mont St. Michel, every hour and half hour. But after six o’clock the ringers began making mistakes, ringing four times or fifteen and, after a mistake, they would ring the bells like crazy as if to cover their error with a cacophony of noise. Enchanting as bells can be, after three mistakes we were ready to blow up the church. Perhaps explaining many religious wars in the process.

This campground was very isolated and the youths who dropped by to check us out from time to time did little to sooth my jumpy nerves. We kept looking in askance in the direction of the town, made very tense by the constant loud shouting and violent barking of dogs. We felt sheepish on peering over the bushes and watching a man try desperately to teach his dog to fetch a stick. Stupid dog! Still the constantly falling acorns made strange noises in the dark and I did not sleep particularly well.

 

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