Day 76. Talmont St. Hilaire. Oct 21 2001.

We woke to misery. The tent was coated in a thick layer of sand, the sky was gray and water had seeped in through the corners. Both of us were ill, Heather worse than I, but we were equally wracked with coughs we thought would have left by now and Heather was congested enough that her head ached.

To leave or not to leave was the question that plagued us. I wanted to go, Heather wanted to stay. I felt a need to leave this campground with its sandy plots and rattle of dead branches against one another. Heather wanted to stay, looking at the gray sky with a weary eye, not willing to deal with another day of rain. Finally I prevailed and had begun to load my bike when the clouds opened in a downpour that left me soaking.

We agreed to stay.

But time passed and while the clouds did not lift they lightened and I argued to go once more. Our destination town was not far and I wanted to be on the move. Finally Heather capitulated and we packed up once more, fearfully watching the skies. Even as we worked the clouds blew over and revealed beautiful blue sky and brilliant sunlight that shone down like a benediction.

Still, packing was not easy. Cleaning the tent of the grime and sand splashed on by last nights storm proved impossible. We were forced to give up and we packed our filthy dwelling away angrily. We rode out into perfect sunlight looked forward with an optimism that was misguided, if not foolish. Because it was Sunday all the stores were closed and we had no food. The lady at the counter of our campsite reassured us that there was a large supermarket nearby, ready to cater to our nutritional needs. But when we found it even the McDonalds in the parking lot was closed. We had little choice, today we would eat short rations, finishing off the leftover peanuts and hoping for a quick dawn tomorrow.

We headed east, leaving the ocean behind, but not the ominous gray clouds that peered over the horizon like a rising swell of waves. The gray became dark and black and the clouds swelled with a heavy weight of water until they could hold back no more and burst open in anger. We were caught almost halfway to our goal and were soaked to the skin once more. The clouds parted as swiftly as they had gathered but the suns feeble light did little to dry us.

We reached Talmont sometime in mid-afternoon. Even the restaurants and bakeries were closed and there was no sigh of the promised campsite. Finally we found a clue and headed back out of town.

We found the campground alright, the one our guide promised “open to the end of October” and once more it was closed! I stared at the “ferme” sign and felt anger boil inside of me. How can you plan a trip if your guides are full of faulty information? How many more time would we face the gut wrenching disappointment of “ferme” and feel the stress of not knowing where to sleep? My anger hit a critical juncture and I flung the book from me in disgust. Three hundred and sixty degrees from which to choose and unerringly I hit upon the ten degrees that are occupied by my distraught wife. The book bounced off the front of her bike and my anger dissolved into depressed apologies. It felt like I couldn't even get angry without screwing up.

Despondently we headed back to Talmont facing the inevitable fact that we had to break the budget once more and find a hotel. We had not lost all our spirit however and decided that a two star hotel was better than a no star hotel and hence we followed the signs out of town. What the signs failed to mention was that the two star hotel was in fact on the beach, a good thirty kilometers or so from Talmont. We gave up in despair once more.

We returned to town for our third time and sought the low budget places in the crowded streets. The first, catering to truckers, had a huge sign hidden on a back window, closed until October 29. The second didn't even bother with a sign and was merely closed. Mere words cannot convey the cold numbness that had dropped over us. We stood listlessly in the street, listening indifferently to the silence of the city. Even simple decisions became impossible to make. How could we make another when all the others had turned out so wrong?

Finally our aimless and careless wanders brought us to the Boule D’or, a restaurant with lodgings over top. I went in to ask, not even caring anymore what the reply would be. The young woman at the counter seemed surprised that she had a tenant and showed me the room with an apprehension that could have been fear, excitement or surprise. The room was small and I didn't really see it, didn't really care. I went down to Heather and we stowed our bikes in the filthy garage. We climbed the steps wearily.

The room was a square covered in white wallpaper with blue splashes and water stains near the ceiling. A yellow bed with a fold in the middle large enough to hide a person stuck out in garish repose from the rotten wall, beside it an old beaten wardrobe. On the east wall, where a window looked out to the back roof of the restaurant and a panoramic view of lichen covered roof tiles, was a single wooden table and a single wooden chair from which I am writing even now. The south wall sported a sink that hung loosely from the wall over orange tiles that covered the hardwood flood. Beside it was a booth two thirds the size of a phone booth, in which we could shower. Our toilet was down the hall, with no sink of its own.

Despite the crudity of the room it somehow added up to more than the sum of its parts. I could picture myself huddled over the skeletal table, beside the window that looked on nothing, scribbling madly with pen in hand, the very posture from which I write these words.

The room had, has, an ambiance that brings to mind lonely struggling authors, painters, artists of all stripes and the frantic need to create that can tolerate no distraction. Even the church bells sound sweeter from here, more real and relevant to the passage of human time. But ambiance and peanuts a poor meal make and I was getting more ill with every clang of the bells.

As night fell we went in search of a pizzeria that we had passed earlier. San Marco’s was a small dive with mural of Venice covering one wall, yellowed from cigarettes and age. The pizza was excellent. The pepper oil served in a long tapering beaker with the leaves and peppers floating in a golden soup with a taste that burned lips and tongues and left you wanting more. San Marco on the Avenue of the Sands. Our server was young and polite, as all those who want to be elsewhere but know you are their paycheck can be. His mother bustled about warning us to be careful of the spicy oils, watching with delight as we ate our first ice cream in months and running around with a happy smile and familiarity that made the restaurant her own. Even flustered as she was, trying to use their new, intricate, credit card machine, she never lost a brilliant smile. We left reluctantly, our bellies hardly full, the smoke from fellow dinners burning my lungs and forcing long painful coughs from me that tore at my throat.

As we climbed the stairs to our room Heather noted a strange light at the hallways end. She looked out and gasped. The fortress of Richard the Lionhearted, the centerpiece of Talmont St. Hilaire, was bathed in a gentle blue glow, as if rising from an ethereal mist. The church that rose beside it blotted from view.

We had visited the church earlier, after we deposited our gear and gained some volition back. We had sat in the pews of St. Peters and talked seriously about the future of the trip. With campgrounds unexpectedly closed at every turn and both of us so ill that we can hardly bike, let alone clamber over ruins and tourist sites, our future is hazy. I have no desire to end the trip, but our budget will not allow many stays like tonight's. I despair a little, feeling as though we have failed in some esoteric fashion. We have seen so much and yet so little. But tonight at least I am too ill to contemplate going on.

I cannot help but feel like a pale shadow of Keats, with my tiny room, wracking cough and despair. But I am not dying, I am not a poet and I have the hope at least that in the morning my despair will be gone. At least our walls do not shake tonight as I cough and I can sit up by electric candlelight. Darkness outside with light inside is strange to us and looking at the clock I see that it is almost 9:00. An hour past our bedtime.

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