Thursday, October 13, 2011

Letter From Nantes

Bonjour les amies:

Nous sommes en France. Nous avez...oh wait...sorry. We are in France. Rumours of our demise have been greatly, or at least a little, exagerrated; First of all you must forgive all the spelling mistakes that are bound to appear, the French have a really messed up keyboard, q is in a's spot.

Well, we left Brian and Sylvia's house and biked off happily, waving at Kerry and Simon as we passed, right into the worst day of the trip. Heather's tire went flat, twice, her pannier rack broke, twice, and every hotel in Portsmouth was full, not to mention the incredible vanishing campgrounds. Never again will I trust a map. The Brave Traveller then dubbed her bike Jinx, while mine, unbroken but bedecked in red received the name Fidel.

In Portsmouth we did...nothing. Neither would you after spending a night in some poor unsuspecting souls backyard and searching the rest of the day for a bathroom, any bathroom. We boarded the ferry with relief.

Five hours later we had left the comforting embrace of the English language behind and enbarked on a brave new world of French. Heather spend the journey over reading the varied translations for "where is the campground" while I polled the passengers with regards to where they were spending the night. I think more than a few of them got the wrong idea.

Cherbourg, our receiving town on the French end was delightful, for me. The Brave Traveller was a little bit miserable about her lack of French; Especially when she realized that she now had only me to talk to. Never fear, her strange brand of charm still worked and soon old men were once more approaching us and telling us their life stories. I must say however that our Brave Traveller was quite shocked the first night when I went in and asked for a site at the campground; I think she believed I'd been lying about being able to speak french. Unfortunatly she now wants me to do all the talking.

We had a very good time inside Cherbourg, especially trying to help the crabs escape from the local supermarket. The French didn't like that very much and pretending to be stupid and repeating "I don't speak French" over and over again didn't work, most of them spoke English.

From Cherbourg we pedalled down the Cotentin penninsula and spent a wonderful time on the vast deserted beaches. French motorists are pretty good but they honk the horn all the time. We never know if they are saying hello or "get off the road."

Since the tourist season has passed there is virtually no one around the campgrounds. The only problen with that is the fact that it makes every town seem like a scene from a vampire movie. No one for miles and we are the only fresh blood! They don't want us, after all the biking we would be a dry and stringy meal. We also stopped at the Castle of Pirou, a fantstic place that had sponsored a knight to invade England in 1066. Don't hold it against them you Brits, the castle was forgotten about for the next 900 years and used as a grain silo.

We took our first major break from biking in Granville. Here we encountered Olivier, a fellow cyclist from Canada. He was from Quebec. Apparently the Quebecois have an bit of an english accent and whenever he spoke french to someone here they answered him in English, which he could hardly understand. I was the first person to speak french to him in two weeks. Just imagine an ardent seperatiste over here!!

Granville was a typical french town with the buildings jammed so close together you could hardly tell were the streets began; We did manage to visit the Gardens of Christian Dior's house and we explored the graveyard next door. In our ardent search for fast food we combed the entire city one night and finally found a 1960's american style dinner. If you find one in France don't go in!!! The burgers were cheap but Coke cost us 15 dollars each. There is a reason they don't put the prices in the menu!

From Granville we journeyed to Le Mont St. Michel and if you don't know what it is definately look it up. It was great, a massive church built around a rock in the middle of an enourmous tidal bay.

When tide is in it becomes an island, with only a line of tourist buses anchoring it to the mainland. The few streets are truly medieval and there is a host of black and white cats crawling over it, can anyone guess what the Brave Traveller did with most of our food those days? The island was covered with a seething mass of aged tourist, who all brought their dogs (sad for the cats, and the bottom of our shoes). But the greatest secret of the Mont is this: everyone follows the guided tours. Wait for the tours to pass and you have the entire monument to yourselves. We especially enjoyed the cloister gardens, with a drop of a couple of hundred feet on one side, and not a soul in sight; We attended a Catholic mass that we stumbled onto in a deep hidden grotto so we figure we aren't going to hell anymore, can't speak for the rest of you though.

After Le Mont we went to Rennes, a city we cannot pronounce. We didn't know anything about the city when we arrived but we found it delightful. The first night we arrived in the worst storn you can imagine, wind was tearing tents to shreds, rabbits were flying and the goats were just downright ticked off. No trading the Fearful Voyager for those!! The Fearful Voyager, living up to his name, had forced the travellers to spend an hour that afternoon finding a very sheltered spot, due to a traumatic experience on the beaches of Granville. So all we felt was a light breeze, and the occasional flying rabbit. The Brave Traveller did not sleep all that well, especially after discovering a rabbit hole beneath her in the tent. The rabbit was very happy to have Heather as shelter to keep him from flying off with his buddies.

Downtown Rennes saw two bedraggled Canadians searching its streets the next morning. We were on a quest for the holy arches, but the french seen to build their McDonalds on stilts and they run away whenever you approach. Don't bother following the signs, they are decoys. We did, however, see the inside of a few churches in Rennes and wow! One had an alter that dwarfed...just about anything. All of them were coated with small marble plaques, dedicated to the virgin Mary, saying merely "Merci." Our final stop in Rennes was the Museè des Beaux Arts. It was great. We both saw many of the things we had studied in Art History, Picasso, Renoir, Rubens, Anonymous. We saw a painting by Picasso before he lost his sight and man, he used to be good! The Fearful Voyager hopped excitedly from Athenian red figure pottery to Roman votive statues and to tiny mumified Eyptian lizards, hey, whatever turnes your crank! The Brave Trqveller freaked out the Museum staff by sitting on the floor and sketching, they weren't sure if that broke copyright. They knew that my flqsh photographie was not allowed, so I tried the "I don't speak French" card, no dice!

We left feeling very full of qrt and wandered the beautiful gardens of Le Thabor, nice but the rain put a damper on things...get it...damper...you can see why Heather was depressed when she realized she had only me to speak to.

After Rennes we headed south, running away from winter, as good Canadians do. We discovered the most horrible consequence of winter, closed campgrounds, and we had more than a few nights without washrooms. A city upbringing had not prepared the Brave Traveller for squatting in the bushes. The french however seem to regard everything as a urinal, witness the search and rescue guy whizzing on the World Heritage site.

The other danger of winter is fog and we have spent a few afternoons buried in a thick white blanket until late afternoon. We must have looked pretty miserable because Brian and Margaret Gealles fron Guernsey took us into their caravan for nice hot steaks one evening. After three glasses of wine and a few demonstrations of Brian's samurai chopping action and his anecdotes of why he had been wrong every year for fifty years of marriage we stumbled back to our site. Fog and wine do not mix.

Next morning we pulled ourselves out of the bushes and advanced towards Nantes. We hit a detour which ironically took us an hour out of our way into Angers. After a brief stop in Chateaubriant where The Brave Trqveller was yelled at in French for eating in a picnic area we forged on. Finqlly we discovered the elusive sacred arches were I ate my first Royale with Cheese, thus entering the Samuel L. Jackson fan club. The Royale unfortunately soon left me. MacDonalds is a food you must build up an immunity to.

Now we are here in Nantes and we have no idea what to do next. Based on the results when I have share our plans in the past I think the best course of action is to let you know after it happens. We send out our best wishes to everyone in the hospital and hope for their rapid recovery and to the rest we say: stay out of the hospital! For those who are concerned about our involvement in Afganistan...where do you think we are anyway? Seriously though we don't get much news so when you worry about us it freaks us out. Don't worry, very few people bombed locked campgrounds with closed toilets, and those that do are seriously twisted! We miss you all very much and we will do our best to avoid fanatics of all stripes so that we can see you soon. Thanks to everyone who wrote, we enjoy hearing from you even if we can't send back personalized messages.

Love The BT and The FV

P.S. We will write again at the next internet cafe we find. Based on the way the French give directions you might never heqr from us again;

P.P.S; We have also doscovered thqt the middle finger is useless in France, but mqn they must hqve thought Nixon weird!!

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