Tadamaran

Day 101. Arles. Nov 15. 2001

2011-11-15T07:00:00.000-08:00

For a day in which we woke, still tired, for a day in we passed by the Roman amphitheater with a dismissive wave because our minds were too numb to care, we have seen more than I ever thought possible.

Arles woke us with a grey coldness and the typical hostel breakfast. After days of inadequate sleep we were eager to return to beds. But despite purchasing another nights rest we were evicted during the 10-5 closing period. We set out to explore Arles, the Roman city of Arelate, with drooping eyelids.

We climbed the main streets back to the centre of town, to the town hall and the church of La Cathedrale Saint Trophime with its adjoining cloister. The cathedral's great gates are an ornate masterwork, smooth stone statues in a gentle curvature, with mythical beasts over the lintels. the inside of the church does not equal the exterior but it is a nice place to sit and rest. There is a large collection of relics, a grisly display of spiritual wealth. The bones of St. Roch, St. Etienne and many others all in gilded casks. Many have small holes in which the faithful can insert a finger and touch a bit of holiness.

The cloister next door looked intriguing, but we weren’t really interested in paying. We climbed the streets towards the arena, past the amphitheater where again we are not too interested in paying. Our minds are too numb to appreciate beauty or history. We circled the arena but did not go in. We wander aimlessly and wait for the hostel to open again so that we can go back to our beds. And then we stumble on the Cryptoportiques.

Unsure of what they are we enter the building with the sign, an ancient abandoned church with only the altar remaining. The sanctuary is deserted, only a staircase leading down and a small booth to pay. We buy the pass to the city and embark on an adventure. We descend the staircase, down, down below the level of the streets, beneath homes and sewers and layers of rock. We emerge from the staircase in a dark, damp and musty tunnel, twenty feet below ground. Rows of arches split the tunnel in two and at the junction of the stairs it turns a sharp right angle to disappear into the darkness.

Arles is on a hill. When the Romans made it a colony after it aided Julius Caesar against Pompey, it required a forum. The Romans leveled out the land around the hill by building a massive basement, where we now stood. The cave was eerily silent and the light, only provided by slits to the forum above, was a pale yellow light that illuminated nothing. We followed the tunnels beneath houses and hotels, an enormous artificial cavern of darkness.

The far side had once opened on to the side of the hill, to the backs of roman shops that catered to Roman material needs and the great basement had served as a subterranean highway for goods and horses that weren’t wanted in the city streets. The caverns were bare and damp smelled of age. They spoke of ancient confidence and ability to build whatever was required. The Romans never fail to impress.

But beneath the deepest basement of the Hotel De Ville our imaginations began to run away with our minds. Heather remembered the Balrog the Dwarves unearthed when they delved too deep beneath the earth, while lovecraftian horrors from the Mountains of Madness nagged at the back of my mind. We left quickly.

But, whether by the excitement of exploring or the desire to get our money’s worth from our tickets, we had a renewed vigor. We returned to the cloister of St. Trophime. From deep beneath Arles we climbed to a garden secluded above the city. The cloister was beautiful, and secreted away from the wind, very warm. The carvings were smooth and full of energy and the stone seats were inviting but if we had not bought the tick for the whole package it would have been an entrance we regretted.

From the cloister we returned to the arena. The arena belonged to the cats of Arles and they basked against ancient stone seats as the wind raged outside of the ancient arched walls. Gently curving corridors circled the building and we followed them around in wide circles. Two dogs roamed the upper stories and we passed them many times in our rounds. They seemed lost and unable to find their way back to the ground but they seemed to enjoy their explorations even as they lost themselves deeper into the arena.

We climbed to the rooftops where three strange, very non-roman towers loomed. The exposed tops of the Roman arches rolled away from us in an endless series of stone waves. We entered the towers and looked down on the city below us. Hotels and apartments, crammed together, made red islands of roof tiles beneath us.

When the Empire collapsed those living in the ruins were faced by with the loss of technologies and the waves of invasions. They had a unique solution. Not trusting their ability to fortifications and not having enough money or manpower to build them anyway. They retreated to the structures the Romans left behind. The arena became the new city. Protective towers were erected. The arches were divided into apartments and a city was erected on the arena floor. Even now the windows and the doors of the middle ages could still be seen. How far the world fell. The arena city speaks of a terror and a loss so complete it is hard to imagine.

We left the arena and followed the streets back to the medieval gate at the entrance to the city. We passed the intersection where Vincent Van GoghMaison Jaune.” Paved over now by a new roundabout.

The quay over the Rhones edge, where the Romans has once raised a bridge of boats and Van Gogh’s fevered vision has wandered, was a filthy mess with bricks crumbling and moss covering all. The baths of Constantine were not much better, obviously not a priority for the town. We picked our way among the rubble with hesitant footsteps. The walls seemed to decay around us.

From the baths we returned to the Amphitheater in the shadow of the arena. Little was left of an amphitheater that could at one time hold 10 000. The walls were gone, the upper levels, the stages settings that had risen 3 stores above the town in a series of columns and statutes that must have been amazing. All that was left were two pillars and a piles of intricately carved and absolutely beautiful rubble. Here school children scrambled over the ruins and hid in secret niches for a forbidden cigarette far from the prying eyes of the teachers.

I wondered what plays had unfolded on the long vanished stage. Oedipus? Antigone? The Medea? Amateur performances of poetry and local auteurs that had failed and were lost to history? Flocks of pigeons blocked the sun and wind howled where once a chorus had sung. No deus ex machine had saved this theater from the ravages of time. We left feeling the weight of years.

We walked out of the city in a long walk to the ugly buildings of the Museum of Antiquity. Blue panels on a concrete triangle that seemed the epitome of bad architecture. Falling away in the gray starkness of a concrete pit were the remains of the Roman circus, the curving apex of the racetrack. The rest disappeared beneath roads and marshland.

The inside of the museum was a completely different story than the outside. Here we found one of the richest and most complete museums of antiquity we had yet seen. The towering, heavily muscled statue of Augustus from the the destroyed amphitheater at the apex, the museum fell away in the smooth geometric lines of a triangle. You begin in the prehistoric period but rapidly move into Arelate, Roman Arles. There are beautiful carven marble heads, Augustus, Tiberius, Hadrian, Caius and Lucius Caesar. There is a great augustan shield of marble and the intricate relief carvings of sarcophagi.

But it is the stories of everyday life that most fascinate. Lead pipes by the dozen, keys to locks crumbled to rust, most fairly conventional but many on rings in a style I have begun to associate with the grandeur of Rome. Objects for primping and preening that have not changed in 2000 years of history, especially tweezers. There are mock ups of the major areas of town, forum, circus, arena, which help visualize the scale of the structures on which we stood. And there was the most impressive collection of mosaics yet. Europa abducted by Zeus, an homage to Triton, the allegory of the seasons in small bits of colored tile. Most are damaged but some are impressively intact. Telling stories to the descendants of the descendants of those who sacked Rome. There is so much to see. The few preserved remains of the 28 000 wooden pilings that form the base of the circus, the shattered head of a marble child.

One exhibit that caught my eye is the remains from the hydraulic mill of Barbegal, a flour mill that ran down a hillside and was powered by twenty waterwheels. With one structure enough grinding was done in one mill to feed the entire population of Arles.

Arles sat on a crossroads of trade, the Via Domitia, the Via Agrippa and Aurelian Way all pass through the city. The Rhone with it’s cargoes of rich wines bathes the banks, the camargue plains region teems with sheep and bulls. The legacy of ruins and structures and a pervading sense of history that Romans left Arles is a powerful one indeed.

When we finally left the museum and headed back towards our humble lodgings for the night we were more tired than I thought possible. But still we have found time to follow the small yellow tiles inset in the concrete to the sanitarium of Arles where Van Gogh spent some of his time. The Garden, sheltered from the wind and rain in the courtyard of the hospital, was untouched by the ravages of weather and was beautiful in the depths of November. The hospital was clean and crisp and exuded a sense of health. But whet, I wonder would Van Gogh make of the shops that had replaced the wards, ship-owners the doctors and tourists the sick?

Previous Entry: Day 100. Arles

Day 100. Arles. Nov 14 2001.

2011-11-14T07:00:00.001-08:00

I began to wonder If there was not, perhaps, some sort of problem in Avignon. Yesterday as we walked we saw more genetically damaged people than anywhere we had yet traveled. The streets had far more people exhibiting deformities, twisted arms and legs, wrenched feet and hands, that I believe I have seen in my entire life and everywhere we stopped it seemed that there was a person with some form of brain damage or mental handicap. Even as we left the campground the people working in the office seemed only modestly functional. Perhaps there is a hospital nearby and those out and about are part of a program to reintegrate them into society.

The hard part of the day's trip begins at once. We had to leave Avignon by a small southbound highway. We followed the road around the city all right but after what seemed like hours of pedaling and fighting unsympathetic traffic we found ourselves on the road to the autoroute. Definitely not where we want to be. The wind was not helping, pushing us into the paths of oncoming traffic. We backtracked and, after another hour in the chaos, found our exit. For some reason it was not sign posted from our original direction.

Heather has announced that the cycling portion of our trip is drawing to a close. After much discussion I convinced her that we must bike to Marseilles before we well and truly decide but the chaos of this morning did little for the cause of biking.

But the ride outside of Avignon was almost ridiculously easy. At times the Mistral pushed us with such force that we didn't have to pedal to reach our top speeds. If it was always like that then the whole world would be on bicycles.

The landscape became very rocky and promontories of white stone thrust skyward with unexpected power. The maps shows only a small rise and green forests but the hills seem to be living things rearing from the land with vengeful fury. At one point the railway tracks the road follows cleave though the middle of a small but steep hill and it suddenly looks for all the world as if a massive Faberge egg had been folded back to reveal the miniature trail within.

The land began to level out after that and soon we were on grass flats that rippled and swayed to the wind we couldn't feel as it pushed us along. There seemed to be castles spreading from every hillside and I realized that this will be the thing I miss most when we return home, the sense of history surrounding you whether you visit everything or not.

I am happy that we have reached our hundredth day. We have been in Europe as long as Napoleans failed return to power lasted. “The Hundred Days” his return is derogatorily called to emphasize its ephemeral nature. But a hundred days seem like eternity to us. I look back in this journal and even things ten days ago seem hopelessly out dates. England seems like a lifetime ago and Canada a fevered dream of the mystic who believes in reincarnation.

We reached Arles faster than expected. We arrived before noon and coasted into the city in bewildred amazement. The youth hostel was closed for the afternoon, from ten until five. Neither of us was in any mood to explore the city and we are both tired. The coldness of the day grows and once we are no longer moving we feel the cold as the bitter bite of a million tiny needles. We wrapped ourselves in jackets and mitts and as much clothes as will fit and still we were cold. We waited and we waited. Time passed at a snails pace and by the time the hostel opened we were frozen and almost beyond caring.

We stood mute in the entrance for long minutes while the old woman who runs the place looked at us impatiently. Finally the warmth seems to thaw our frozen brains enough and we get a room for the night. We are led to a room with a leaking radiator and we remembered with a sudden laugh that Chantal, from Nimes, and her boyfriend had complained that they were forced to stay in a room with a leaking radiator in Arles. This then must be their room.

This time our hostess notices and leads us to a dorm upstairs that we have to ourselves. It is cold but the blankets are plentiful and thick and warm. We turn the radiator on full and pile beneath the blankets. We are tired. Too tired. We do very little this night.

I have begun to worry in recent days. I wish for my journal to be so much more than a record of places and dates, an index for the inevitable photos. I want to paint pictures with words and bring us back in all our later incarnations to the travelers that we are now and to what we now experience. But I am so exhauseted by the time that I set pen to paper that my mind is numb and the least desire of my heart is to search for adequate words. All I can do is a mechanical recitation of facts and figures, places and things. The only witness to the beauty we have seen is photographs after all.

Next Entry: Day 101. Arles
Previous Entry: Day 99. Avignon Continued.

Day 99. Avignon Continued. Nov 13. 2001

2011-11-14T07:00:00.000-08:00

We wandered away from the church and found food, then climbed the Rocher Des Doms to eat our lunch.

The Rocher is the rocky headland that breaks the path of the Rhone River and sends it twisting and writhing southwards. It was the acropolis of prehistoric Avignon man, the watchtower of the Popes, the industrial windmill park of the Middle Ages and now a lush green garden that sways in the wind.

We looked over the edges and saw medieval Avignon at our feet, the modern city lost to the distance. We looked to the north and see the wild Rhone tamed by tiers of dams. The Fort Saint Andre spreads its angry fortification across a nearby hill and the riches of Villeneuve, where the cardinals made their homes, climb out across the Rhone hillsides. The wind is too much and soon we were forced from the heights, picking grit from between our teeth.

We descended long stairs and spiraling ramps out of the garden. The helpful and cheery park workers urinate in the bushes at the approach of sightseers as if to provide the perfect snapshot of the French Atmosphere.

We made our way through the maze of streets to the base of the Pont Saint Benezet. Benezet was a local shepherd who heard the voice of god command that he descend to Avignon and cause to be erected a great bridge. France and the Papal states would eventually be separated only by the Rhone River and only cities with bridges could become sites of international importance so God was obviously planning ahead. Benezet descended to the town and proclaimed his dream to the assembled faithful during a festival. The crowd laughed and taunted Benezet. The local bishop demanded that Benezet prove he came at the command of God and lay as the bridges first stone an enormous piece of masonry left over from the building of the Cathedral. Without hesitating, we are told, Benezet lifted the rock and placed it in the river. The bridge was finished in the year 1185.

Benezet did not participate in the actual construction of the bridge; the placards describe him as “Not a technical man, but a grand fund raiser and motivator.” The art of building bridges had been lost with the Romans and Benezet founded a Brotherhood of the Bridge, men of God whose mission was to study bridges, including the Pont Du Garde, and recreate one in Avignon. The men lived and died on the bridge and it was their sacred mission to maintain it. Benezet eventually travelled to Rome then returned and built a bridge in Lyon. He was renowned for healing those injured in bridge building. There is a chapel to him beneath the second span of the bridge.

The Bridge of Avignon soon gained a dangerous reputation, for in winter it would ice over and the mistral winds would blow crossers to the water below. It sounds almost funny but it was true. There where no railings and we were almost lifted off by the incredible force of the winds. With ice it would have been a death trap.

Most of the bridge is gone, washed away by tidewaters and floods. Only the smallest nub of the Avignon side remains. The Rhone proved too much despite the flood channels opened in every span. As each span collapsed wood planking was extended until finally too much was gone. The bridge had been a source of contention between the French crown and the Popes over who owned it, but no one wanted to pay the cost of upkeep. Interestingly the river belonged to the king and he taxed the residents of the shore when it flooded. Nice guy.

The bridge proved to be a benefit to the citizen of Avignon in that the ruins provided a place for the sediments to drop out of the river and form an island. It was here, among the bridge’s ruins that a popular café sprang up with lively dancing.

“Under the bridge of Avignon we’re all dancing.” Sur and Sous. On and Under. With the passage of time the words got confused and the song changed from dancing "Under the Bridge" to "Dancing on the Bridge".

So, in complete ignorance of the history involved, Heather and I danced a lively but very short reel above a busy street on the shore of the Rhone.

We returned via the drawbridge and portcullis that led to the Castle of the Bridge and then onto the walls of the city. Behind us was the ancient hospital where the Brotherhood of the Bridge ministered to those traumatized both physically and spiritually by their river crossing.

We descended from the wall through the Tower of the Dogs and returned to our less than pleasant campground. The wind was, if it can be imagined, worse than ever and our night was a nightmare of wind and roaring waves of air. The floor of the tent would inflate with every gust and threaten to carry off the whole structure. We did not sleep well, in fact hardly at all and by the time the Sun rose we were too exhausted to move. If we could have stood another night in the campground, or another night exposed to the mistral we would have happily slept. As it was we packed up and began the difficult trip to Arles.

Next Entry: Day 100. Arles
Previous Entry: Day 99. Avignon.

Day 99. Avignon. Nov 13 2001

2011-11-13T07:00:00.000-08:00

Sur le pont d'Avignon

On the bridge of Avignon

On y danse, tous en rond

We awoke early, the Mistral driving us from our bed, and we crossed the short walk into the old walled town of Avignon. The walls were intact, their crenellated barrier separating old Avignon from the progress of time. Great towers peered out, ancient sentries whose old foes had disappeared long ago, remembered only as names in books, if even that. The walls were a mythical barrier and crossing them transported us through time to an era of grandeur and strife. An era when the Popes were not safe, even in Rome, when crossing a river was a phenomenal challenge.

We made our way through a labyrinth of streets to the grey shell of the Popes Palace, a windswept square before it. We entered the Hall of Dignitaries beneath two turrets. The ancient entrance was closed, the wood and iron bands decaying and rays of light piercing through.

Avignon had become the Papal residence when Clement V grew weary of wandering about Europe but was too afraid to settle in Rome. In 1309, the year of his arrival, Avignon was part of the Papal States, a separate entity from the Kingdom of France across the Rhone River. The location was also better for the spiritual Lords of Europe, at a crossroads between France, Spain and Italy, the strongest nations in Christendom. But from the moment of their arrival the Popes began efforts to return to Rome. The histories say that without the aura of power cast by the Eternal City the Popes were worried about their legitimacy but I think it had more to do with a desire to escape the Mistral.

The Courtyard of Honor was a paved square between the old palace, built at the command of Benedict XII, and the newer palace of Clement VI. It was a cold grey ugliness between cold grey and ugly walls. We hurried along the tour to the Treasury Hall. The Upper Treasury Hall, where the Pope's accountants would keep their record books, was full of displays. The coins of the realm, models of the Palace, the faces of the Popes. Of particular interest was the small display consisting of all the things that people would throw at the Popes while they were in residence in Avignon. From rocks, to catapult ammunition, spears and ballista bolts. The exhibit of the skull and the corresponding spear that was removed when the body was exhumed speaks volumes about the nature of theological disputes.

But it was the empty Lower Treasury that really caught our attention. A lager square stone chamber, only poorly lit, with uneven rock tiled floor. It was not very imposing. One could imagine racks of papal treasure here, walls dripping with gold and jewels. But it was under the floors where the real action was. The floor of the treasury was a disguise. It looked perfectly solid. Rock slabs resting against the rocks of the hills you could see outside. But underneath rectangular slabs a foot thick was the Pope's secret hoards of money. Without the audio guide and the slabs pried up in demonstration there would have been no way to know.

Above the treasuries was the Jesus Hall, an unimpressive room so named because of the X symbols on the wall.

From here we walked to the Consistory Hall, a long chamber filled with the relics of destroyed paintings. Paintings that had been slashed, punctured or beaten or that had merely rotted away with age in an unexplained display of artistic carnage.

We hurried into the upper cloister, then up a flight of stairs to the Grand Tinel. The Grand Tinel was the great dining hall of the Popes, a vast hall that echoed now to the footsteps of tourists. Here Popes and Cardinals and royal guests had dined beneath colorful tapestries. Strict etiquette applied and the Pope tested every meal with the liberal application of unicorn horns and sharks teeth to magically detect poisons. He also sat alone on a high dais overlooking the assembled faithful. It must be lonely to be Pope.

Here, in a bricked over arch hidden in one corner of the room, was the entrance to the Conclave. At the death of every Pope the wall was smashed in and the College of Cardinals sequestered behind iron bars, fed like prisoners through an iron grate in the wall until they decided on the

new Pope. Great incentive to choose quickly.

Behind the Grand Tinel was the tour of the kitchen. Instead of a fireplace the tower narrowed at the centre to a small aperture. Food was roasted on a great fire in the centre of the room, burning the flagstones on the floor.

Fire devastated the Palace of the Popes in 1431.

We descended into a bleak undecorated square of cold stone, the Chapelle Saint Martial. It is here that the Popes announced at Easter who was to be the recipient of the Golden Rose, a rose in solid gold with a sapphire gem. The recipient was to be the greatest Christian that year had produced. Here too he announced the recipient of the sword, belt and hat at Christmas, an even greater honor. But the glory left with the Popes. Now the room is merely dark and cold.

Finally we entered the Popes chamber, a dark blue room overgrown with intertwining vines and colonized by birds and squirrels, all in the paintings that decorate every wall. The Popes, it appears, loved captive birds, so much so that they painted their walls with them. The room is darkly beautiful. As beautiful as the Popes bedroom is, so too is the next one strange, the Stag Room. A large room decorated with the purely secular themes of the woodland hunt. Streams pour from the walls while trees reach for the ceiling. Men chase deer and haul fish from a pond while children cavort through the wilds. In one corner a pair of rabbits mates.

We exited to the Popes Balcony on which he could stand and bestow his blessings to the privileged few who filled the Courtyard of Honour on festival days. To our left was the Tour De La Gauche and we climbed it to the rooftops. Here the Papal guards mounted their watch each night, more to detect fires in the city than to discover the enemies that might be sneaking up to attack Avignon. The Mistral howled amidst the gothic sculptures and leering gargoyles. We fought our way to the terrace to peer down on the city but the wind ripped at us as we peered between the crenelations.

We returned to the Popes balcony and descend the Staircase of Honor to the great audience hall. A room as long as the great chapel, vaulted ceilings of bare rock. In one vault in the far corner the remains of a frescoe by Matteo Giovanni, painter to the Pope. The Palace of the Popes has been like great skeletal remains, abandoned by its mother church. Great events transpired here but when the Popes left they took with them the heart and soul of these buildings. All that remains is the dead bones, the calcified arteries and veins and organs of a colossal giant. But it is empty and it is cold.

We climbed to the neigbouring Cathedral Notre Dame des Doms. A glittering golden Mary, crowned by a halo of stars, looked down on us from her heights. The wind howled past her with blasphemous demonic fury. A couple was lost in each other charms beneath the Cathedral's cross and a poor man begged in the doorway beneath the riches. Life rolls ever on.

The church was magnificent, a dark grotto on a windy day. Dark niches line the walls, a faint beam of light descends from above on the altar, a crimson Bishops Chair is recessed into the wall, looking at the Popes Door from which the Popes emerged.

The statues of saints and holy figures are more sumptuous here than anywhere else, their vestments gleam in yellow light, bronze or gold I don’t know, but it is obvious that the Papal presence elevated this place above many others.

There is a concession shop next to the church, glass doors opening onto the sanctuary. There are faithful here but there are more tourists, who dig out money to buy pictures or chocolate bars. I cannot help but wonder what the Christ who overturned the stalls of the money changers in the temple would made of this new permutation of capitalism.

Next Entry:Day 99. Avignon Continued
Previous Entry: Day 98. Avignon

Day 98. Avignon. Nov 12 2001.

2011-11-12T07:00:00.000-08:00

The Day of Bridges.

The morning dawned blue and still, the rain clouds drained, the Mistral exhausted. We woke reluctantly and dressed even more so. We rescued our bikes from the dank garage in which they had rested from the past few days and loaded up.

The ride down the hill from the Auberge was a slick glide of effortless descent that saw us to the door of the nearest market, the last effortless moment of the day. We gathered our food and ate breakfast in the Jardin De La Fountain. Children on a field day crowded the beautiful lanes of plants and groaned as they were made to run laps around the 18th century fountain. If there is a better way to make children hate history I can't imagine it.

We left Nimes down a long broad avenue, the sides lined with trees, the centre occupied by a lively market selling everything from used clothing to amusement park rides. There was an elegant pyramid erected in the central park, flanked by two stone men holding stone rifles eroded with age, a monument to the martyrs of the French resistance, gleaming bright and cold in the November morning. Behind it, rising high on a pedestal of glory that threatened to reignite old diatribes was “La Taureau,” a proud statue of a defiant bull raising his head and horns to the sky. The pamphlet for the town of Nimes regally declared the Bull to be the true king of France. Based on the way the French treat their kings…

But no, I expressed myself on this subject yesterday and the day before.

We cycled out of Nimes and into a blasted hell of jagged rocks, rising hills and wind. A hurricane of air swept over us, around us, through us, making every inch of land a twisted epic of battling muscles and raging elements. The rocks here were pure white that leered skeletally from open cliff faces and roadside verges. A bare and stark castle rises to our left, an extension of the pale earth. We slowly inch up the curving roadside and somehow, impossibly, find ourselves looking down a long hill into a deep valley. Surely we cannot have climbed so high? But we look forward to the joy of descent, the unfettered rolling of wheels down a long gentle slope. We are disappointed. The wind has become so strong that we have to fight our way downhill, peddling like mad to gain even a modicum of momentum, which is stolen away by gusts of wind even as we struggle.

I begin to get angry; our one method of relaxing while biking has been stolen from us. But then the valley closes in around us, the trees shelter us from the worst of the wind and a cathedral silence begins to descend. Something awesome approaches. The bridge is visible only as arches through the trees at first, a span here, cut off by an overhanging branch and a cluster of leaves. Another span over there, impossibly distant, too far for them to belong to the same structure. The leaves and trees thin slowly, revealing span after span, arch after arch until with a sudden shock of exposure it appears in its entirety.

The Pont Du Gard.

52 arches of delicate filigree spanning the Gardon Valley. 50 400 tons of rock. A monumental construction of astonishing beauty. Built around 50AD during the reign of the emperor Claudius, the Pont du Gard aqueduct was built to supplement the flow of Nimes' holy spring with 400 liters of water a second. It was never meant to be beautiful, but it is.

Each span is impossibly wide. The whole structure unbelievably high. You cannot believe that it is older than the oldest government still in existence, older than almost any building you can find. It seems so delicate that the slightest push will send it tumbling into the valley below. We climb the steps that lead under the first set of aches. There is a solemnity standing beneath the bridge, as though you stand under a grand religious edifice. We climb to the second span and follow the footbridge across.

We follow the rocky hillside upwards to the arches that led to the water regulators. All are gone now, evidenced only by deep cavities in the dirt. We descend and cross back after exploring the far bank for awhile. There is an olive tree planted near the aqueduct that began life in 908 and was brought from Spain. It seems impossibly ancient and yet it is 850 years younger than the bridge.

We climb the other side of the bridge to the topmost arcade, high above the valley floor.

The aqueduct is locked off, fear of tourists preventing easy access but you can stand in the depths through which the water coursed and you can see the stone lids that prevented evaporation.

Behind us is a tunnel through the mountainside, dug in 1863 as the beginning of an attempt to return the aqueduct to working order. The Roman aqueduct curves around the mountain to the left. We cut through the tunnel and rejoined the watercourse on the other side, its passages filled with dirt now. We come unexpectedly upon the Pont de Valmala. One of the Pont Du Garde’s forgotten lesser brothers.

The aqueduct continues on, lost now beneath dirt and the roots of trees young by its standards, all the way to Nimes.

There is something about the faint ruins peering through the dirt that seems to lure you on, some ghostly liquid quality of water long vanished that entreats you to follow the course. With difficulty we resist and return to the valley of Gardon river. The aqueduct is difficult to leave. It is amazing in its scale, in its age, everything about it. We lunch in its shadow, hardly able to pull our eyes from it.

We must go and we tear ourselves away with effort. The Pont Du Gard recedes into the foliage once more, to rest majestically long after I, and this journal, fall into the unremembered dust of history.

The going is harder now, as if the bridge is drawing us back. We fight our way into the Mistral and up the hills that have become our burden. We are forced to climb, a long steep slope filled with angry drivers who were less than pleased to share the road. The climb went on forever, the mistral wind pushing us back with every advance and it does not relent even after we pass the hills crest and begin to descend. A long descent into Avignon cutting through cliffs and racing down a long bridge with a speed that makes our knuckles clench white.

We cross the Rhone into the city. One bridge of Avignon.

The Palace of the Popes becomes visible as a misshapen grey lump against the horizon, a glittering Mary looking down in gentle benediction. Then we are forced across the Rhone again to the flat shifting soil of the Isle de la Barthelasse. 2 bridges of Avignon.

Our campground is large, almost entirely abandoned. Moss grows in place of grass. The trees bend and dance beneath a wind that we hardly feel. The Pont De St. Benezet shattered by times and tides is clearly visible from the entrance. 3 bridges of Avignon. The bridge of Avignon.

We are too tired and too cold to dance. Instead we hurl ourselves into the tent sleep.

Next Entry: Day 99. Avignon
Previous Entry: Day 97. Nimes

Day 97. Nimes. Nov 11 2001

2011-11-11T07:00:00.000-08:00

A day of rest.

Our disgust at the horrific carnage of the night before cast a pall over us for the rest of yesterday evening and it seemed to take so much of the beauty out of everything we had seen in Nimes. It was hard to reconcile such a beautiful city with such ugliness.

But it unfair to tar the whole city with the same brush. Nimes is a very beautiful place, a glistening city of marble and stairs. Oh the stairs. They have left a lasting impression on us, most especially in our calves.

The long sinuous curving stairs that cling to hills in the Jardin de La fountain, winding their way through vertical avenues lined with plane trees, impossibly green in the depths of November. Stairs that climbed over a waterfall that spiked into a small pond far below. When the stairs finally burst from under the trees to the base of the Tour Magna it was with a shock. The air had grown warm beneath the sheltering trees and now the cold assaulted us once more.

The great tower rose up like a monolith, impossibly white. The inside was alarmingly hallow, like a jar flipped upside down and scrapped clean by a child desperate to have every last taste of flavor. All that rose in the centre was a modern staircase of concrete, looking alien with it’s smooth spiraling contours in the rough brick of the tower. Climbing stairs became painful now, a strain on our legs and feet. The top, when it came, was a burst from the darkness to brilliant light and blowing air. The view, or the wind, was breathtaking.

Knowing the emptiness that was in the tower beneath us I was overcome by waves of vertigo even as I took in the landscape. I tumbled back against the wall and held the cables to the lightning rod that rose next to me and reflected on the irony of being electrocuted while worrying about the dangers of height. All that separated us from the gardens below was a thin lip of stone and a fatal drop. I cannot say now that I was sad to climb more stairs, this time down.

Next were the stairs of the Maison Carre, the building a testament in stone to so many of the reasons we came on this trip. Flawless white marble, chipped and stained by the passing eons, in a design so ancient and familiar that we almost felt compelled to drop to our knees and genuflect to gods long dead.

Then there were the stairs in the parks. The long singular staircase of Imperial faith leading to the sheltered sanctuary of the ancient temple, dedicated to Diana I have since discovered.

Then the short stairs that descended to spring of Nemausus itself, and exposed us to the source of all Nimes fountains.

Fountains abound, almost as much as stairs. The Jardin De La Fountain of course, but the Place D’Assas as well with it’s illusion of waters flowing uphill to fall in a cascade on a startled man while nearby a monolithic face spews water.

Or the Fountain Pradier with its cryptic name and nameless heads spewing forth a torrent of icy water that chilled to the bone.

Finally there are rough hewn wooden steps of the arena as well. Always today my mind is drawn back there. The pain and the suffering we saw has left me filled with words and yet speechless, filled with poetic rage and yet reduced to incoherent ranting. I write rants against the human race, filled with shame and despair for the future of our species. I am surprised by the depth and virulence of my own reaction.

But enough. Nimes has been a place of outstanding beauty and horror for us and I do not have the right words to describe the experience.

It has become cold and and the Mistral wind has picked up clouds of rain that turn the sky a sickly yellow. The small courtyard of the hostel is soaked and even racing to our evening meal has become a challenge. We will roll ourselves tight in our bunks and try to save as much of the radiators warmth as we can for the rest of the trip.

We have the room to ourselves tonight and it will be nice to be able to roll over without worrying that the creaks and groans of our bed will not awaken the room. Tonight I hope to sleep without dreams.

Next Entry: Day 98. Avignon
Previous Entry: Day 96. Nimes

Day 96. Nimes. Nov 10 2001.

2011-11-10T07:00:00.000-08:00

The Day Of Bitter Winds.

A day of excitement, beauty and brutality so great it has shaken our faith in humanity.

The deathly winds of the Mistral clutched Nimes in icy talons, tearing at branches and shutters until the whole hillside howled in protest. We retraced our journey into the city slowly and explored the Jardin De La Fountaine with excited awe. The god Nemausus had raised a bubbling spring here and the Egyptian veterans of the Battle of Actium found welcome refuge beside his cool waters. The gardens were built over a series of canals that channeled water to the city, deep watery grooves in the earth.

Behind rose a veritable mountain of stairs topped by infinite greenery that hid the sloping hill from sight.

An ancient temple's ruins rose in a shadowed niche, crumbling ruins to an unknown god trapping the crescent moon of the morning between decaying stones.

We climbed the stairs to the shelter of trees and the howling of wind dropped to a quiet susurration of leaves, the sun beat down with no wind to cool it. We climbed crumbled stones paths until we slipped from the shadow of trees to the shadow of Nimes Great Tower. The tower of Roman Nimes rose from the highest of seven hills, a warning to would be conquerors and a beacon marking the gushing waters below. The tower rose 30 meters above us on the top of the hill, a white shard of antiquity gleaming almost painfully in the sun.

We climbed it’s two thousand and sixteen year old interior and looked out on a view that spanned all of Nimes and the country around it, gasping for breath in the heights. The towers innards were gone and our rarefied perch rested on a stairway built after an obscure Frenchman gutted the interior searching for a treasure prophesied by Nostradamus.

We returned to earth and the pleasure of the garden, walking a double spiral of labyrinthine hedges in delight. We hurried to the coliseum that we had seen the night before and we admired its grandiose arches the bespoke ancient power. But it was closed today for the Corrida and we bought tickets, excitedly eager to see a cultural event renown for its beauty. Then we retraced our steps through the town, back into the mazelike streets of the city’s market district, everything stamped with the city emblem of crocodile and palm tree.

Then we found the temple. The Square House of Nimes, One thousand nine hundred and ninety eight years old. Perfect Corinthian columns supporting ancient roofing tiles raised to cover a sanctuary of the Imperial Cult. The temple was magnificent. The wind whistled between the fluted columns and bit deep beneath our layers of clothes.

Our final sightseeing stop was the Castellum, the distribution tank of the in rushing water from the ancient aqueduct which ran over the Pont Du Gard. The pipes sending water throughout the ancient Roman city were still visible and although it was mostly a pit in the ground it was still a practical working part of Roman life. That more than temple or coliseum or ancient towers brought the dead to life for me.

We returned through the tiny medieval streets, a thousand colorful storefronts opening their doors and spilling their wares out into the cobblestone paths invitingly. The wind howled overhead, angry at the protection afforded mortals by the canyons of stone. We gave in to the cold and the invitations of the street merchants and bought gloves for our frozen hands. Then to the Arena for the Corrida.

It was exciting to line up with the rest and know that the arena was being used for something approaching it’s original purpose. Our hearts raced as the adrenaline surge of the crowd rushed over us. People waved happily to one another while the band played and vendors danced along the ancient roman railings, tossing peanuts and chips to the crowd and deftly catching coins tossed their way. The intensity built as we waited until the stones seemed to throb with impatience. The doors opened and the players walked to the sands. There were the matadors, their assistants, men in armor on armored and blindfolded horses and wagoneers with heavy horses and chains. They filed off the sand and took refuge in the wings and waited for the bullfight to begin. The music blared and it started.

The spectacle began in beauty. The expanse of sands, a long blast of familiar music and the powerful fury of the charging bull taking to the arena. The swirling flowers of color made as the man danced around the deadly thrust of horn or the heavily muscled bulk of head and neck. The soft, indrawn whisper of Ole as the beast surged majestically around the man.

Then the slaughter began.

The poetry of the corrida tells of the meeting between man and beast. It tells of the struggle between mind and muscle and the beauty of the dance of death.

The poetry of the corrida is a diseased lie told by those who gorge themselves on feasts of blood and agony. The songs that are sung say nothing of torture and torment, of enraging an innocent beast over and over again, so he is driven to a froth of exhaustion, nothing of spears thrust into writhing muscles and tender flesh to destroy the strength of a bewildered animal. Those who praise the arena and the masculine strength of the matador speak only softly of the darts flung into the back of a beast who cannot understand what is happening. Barbs of pain to snap a mind already at its bestial limits with terror, barbs that drain strength in spasms of frantic energy as the beast tries to free itself from agony. And nothing is ever said of a beast too exhausted to move, to stand, collapsing in a pathetic mewling heap on sand stained with its own blood, while the savage crowd boos the poor sport. Not even in whispers is it told of the shame of desperate matadors, trying to drag their ravaged prey to its feet with angry tugs on it’s tail, until they are almost dragging the beast around the sands by its ass. Advocates of blood sport don’t discuss the confusion and terror on the face of a dying bull, understandable even across the gap of species that separates us. They speak not of torment and torture. They say the matador faces a dying bull alone, ignoring the men who distract it with fluttering capes because the matador is too frightened of the savage mess of blood and agony he has created. They don't speak of a beast so wounded that it is vomiting, pissing and shitting blood across the sand. And no one ever, ever, talks about the bull falling to its side and a terrified little man thrusting a dagger deep into its skull and pureeing its brains while it spasms across the sand in it’s death throes.

We rose and left after the second bull, unable to bear the shame of being human any longer. My awe for the beauty of the stadium dissolving in a rush of disgust and humiliation that my species should be the perpetrators of such sadistic crimes. That crowds should cheer it!

A guard sneered as we left and proclaimed that “There is always one that can’t take it.” He cannot know that my heart pleads that such should be the case, that somewhere people know shame.

Next Entry: Day 97. Nimes
Previous Entry: Day 95. Nimes

Day 95. Nimes. Nov 9 2001.

2011-11-09T07:00:00.000-08:00

The Day of Friendly Voices.

We woke to rain. We had woken every few minutes through the night, worried about time and the rising tide of water that threatened our sanctuary.

We dressed in layers and cycled back the long road into Bordeaux. The day was painfully cold and our small biking gloves did nothing to shield our fingers. We passed a clock that read out the time and temperature. 2 degrees and only an hour until our train left. We hurried. When we reached train station's welcoming bulk, its clock reading out a different time, two and a half hours to wait.

The train rolled into the station early, a gray series of bread-loaf cars, cold and metallic, the seats like ordered lines of soldiers with backs still at attention. No sign guided us in loading the bikes or our vast pile of luggage. Finally a harried station worker lifted a metal gate and led us to the baggage car with silent impatience. We stacked our bikes and made them as secure as we could before finding our seats in a cubicle designed for eight.

The train rested in the station while others passed, loaded passengers and hurried away in a mechanical dance. Our luggage filled the overhead racks and the spaces beneath the seats. The train jerked into motion with an unexpected suddenness and we changed our seats quickly to face the direction of travel. We moved out of the yard slowly, past trains that rested in the quiet indignity of old age, grass high around metal wheels, a patina of graffiti staining once proud cars. We passed gleaming silver and blue TGV Trains already stained with the tags of would be artists.

We quickly gained speed and were abruptly out of the city and racing through the Aquitaine countryside. The Garonne River swam lazily beside us, growing cleaner as before our eyes as silt and pollution disappeared downstream. The train began to slow before it reached peak velocity and pulled in a station many days bike ride from Bordeaux. People bustled through the narrow corridors, intent on finding open spaces in cramped quarters. An old couple filed into our car, watching a bevy of youth file past them smoking foul cigarettes. The man was dark of skin with ruddy cheeks and a white beard, like Santa Claus after a diet. His wife seemed younger, but not by much, raven hair streaked with snow. In their hands they carried panniers much like ours. They wore biking clothes like we would have wished for. They sat and dug into dinner like engines starving for fuel. Even as they ate they began to speak to us. The sound of cheerful French voices as we passed along the banks of the Garonne, the spires of churches dotting the horizon will remain an indelible memory.

Raymond and Maesa were no longer young, but if youth is measured in vigor they will outlast the world. They cheerfully share their food and their company, delighting in my stuttering French and the fact that I tried at all.

The train began to fill. The corridors flickering as people filtered through at every stop. The train pulled into Toulouse and the chattering voices fell silent in contemplation of the great blast here not so long ago. But the heartbeat of the city goes on and today was Friday, Toulouse a university town. Students filled the train in their hundreds to journey home for the weekend. Our cabin filled with youth and vigor to match our conversation. Voices sounded out in French, English, Italian, and Spanish. A young French girl whispering endearments to her Italian lover while Raymond practiced his ancient Spanish. A pretty woman across from us buried her eyes in her English copy of Harry Potter while Maesa, Heather and I bantered in a patois of languages.

The countryside flattened in a broad plain between two rising waves of hills, the vegetation became sparse with grey rock peeking from beneath low scrub and grass. We pulled between two hills closer together, the buildings becoming thicker and suddenly a vision from a fairy tale beckoned from the distance. The crenellated walls of the medieval city of Carcassone.

Here Maesa and Raymond left us and a gentle silence descended, as if no one could match the energy lost and all hesitated to try. The people crowding the train grew in number until every seat was filled and the crowds began to spill into the corridors, clogging them like unhealthy arteries. The train began the long descent into the Mediterranean basin and, somewhere between Sets and Montepelier we glimpsed the fabled sea for the first time, a thin line of brilliant blue racing along the horizon. But though we came closer and closer to the ancient waters we never saw them directly again. Ships crowded industrial harbors, canals ran in rough waves out of view, but the sea was always lost to sight until we turned away and began to climb the Rhone Valley even as the sun dipped towards the horizon.

We scurried nervously out of our packed compartment to the luggage compartment beginning to worry about how we would transport our bikes. The cars were full, no room to move and though all were friendly our constant shuttling luggage back and forth began to wear on the patient smiles. We struggled to maneuver bikes in tight spaces, rubbing rubber tires against skin and losing more goodwill. Finally we pulled into Nimes. Other bikers wrenched open the door with powerful tugs and we dropped our bikes the meter to the pavement below. A chill wind raged through the tunnel to the station and the light began to dim.

Our connection Avignon appeared on none of the boards and seemed to have passed from the knowledge of bewildered station personnel until finally one calmed us by saying slowly, in patient tones “It has been delayed for two hours.” Not willing to wait and not ready to face the stress of reloading our bikes when our connection arrived two hours from now we agreed to forgo the rest of our journey and stay in Nimes.

We biked away from the station with trepidation in our hearts, but soon we passed the golden lit colosseum rising from the street in gracefully arched tiers that put the ruins of Saintes to shame and lulled us into a sense of security, We pedalled on past fountains that sprayed the road in the wind and graceful buildings that glittered under golden lights even as they vomited hordes of youths reveling in the freedom of a Friday night on the town. We passed the Roman Temple and the Garden of the Fountain, a beautiful city that left us eager to explore.

The hostel was high atop a hill and it took our last reserves of energy to push our heavy bikes up the slope. We were greeted at the hostel by music and by a cheerful ex-patriot Brit who demanded to be called Andy, On discovering our Canadian nationality he cheerfully assigned us to the “Canadian Room” where he had put the other Canadian couple he was hosting.

We waited in trepidation for our roommates to return from their exploration of Nimes, feeling like intruders in spaces they had claimed. Chantel and her boyfriend were Quebecois taking advantage of cheap prices to explore France. They were as delighted as Andy to find fellow Canadians sharing their rooms. We talked about everything from the separation question to their itineraries through France and found a deep and comforting camaraderie. Chantal barked short quick coughs in a sound so familiar to us from our sojourn in Talmont St. Hilaire and Heather sympathetically plied her with remains of our medicine. We talked into the late hours of the night as the wind howled outside.

Today has been a rarely social day, filled with long conversations with fellow travelers. All seemed delighted, energized by the chance to share stories and complaints and recommendations with those in similar circumstances. Everywhere today were quick smiles and helpful hands and words of advice. Each person seemed excited by the tales of the others and it was hard not lose oneself in the romanticism of the road.

When we finally gave in to hoarse voices and nagging exhaustion it was with the comforting feeling that we were no longer really alone on the road and carried the spirits of our companions with us.

Next Entry: Day 96. Nimes
Previous Entry: Day 94. Gradignon

Day 94. Gradignon. Nov 8 2001.

2011-11-08T07:00:00.000-08:00

A rainy day at home, doing preparations of our train trip to Avignon. A respite from racing around the narrow streets of Bordeaux and a chance to catch up on writing.

There was such a flurry of things that passed us by in the last few days that I was bound the miss a few. Most glaring among the omissions were the plethora of names left from my list of famous painters who failed to make much of an impression on me.

There was a painting by Van Dyck, one by Rubens, Chardin, Van Gogh, so many that they were beginning to flow like water.

Delacroix’s “La Grece Sur Les Ruins De Missolonghi" was stunning and powerful and if it had been in a room alone or with two or three other paintings, each chosen specifically to highlight one another it would stop you in your tracks and force you to explore the visual details for hours. But here, mounted with a hundred other paintings it became nothing more than wallpaper. Nice wallpaper, but but wallpaper nonetheless.

I can't remember if I wrote about the statues lining the entire second wing and I am too lazy to check so I will, perhaps, repeat myself. Only three in particular caught my attention of which I know the title of one and none of the artists. The one whose title I remember was “La Garonne” an allegorical representation of the river Bordeaux faces. It was a bronze of a woman reclining in a flow of water, leaning so far back she is almost lost in the waters. On either side of the flowing water is shore composed entirely of grapes.

It was beautiful but that was not what caught my attention. The piece seemed composed entirely, I’m sure not by the artist's original intention, of irony. Nowhere along the Garonne had we seen anything to evoke beauty or tranquility. Instead the river was a churning mud mess with the detritus of a thousand kilometers choking the banks and spilling out to smash against the docks of the city. Perhaps the artist was thinking somewhere upstream.

The other two that caught my eye seemed to belong to a set. They were statues of women out of marble that had obviously been outside for a very long time. They were weathered and scratched were vandals had gotten to them. One was of a young woman with the idealized body of womanhood, large breasts but perky in defiance of gravity, thin waist, well muscles arms and legs, almost a doll-like form.

The second was a woman, still beautiful, but now with a form that was humanly possible to achive. Full breasts that curved lower across her chest, a more curvaceous figure, fuller but more sensual, less heavily muscled. The pair seemed to show the ideal of beauty and the reality of beauty.

The Museum of Aquitaine, from the day before, had many exciting works of art, many pieces that seemed to capture the feeling of an era, and they were displayed exceptionally well.

The remains of Roman statues, often only the chest and stubs of neck, arms and legs, had lights trained on them to give them a unique glow, or were mounted against a red wall to contrast with the white pallor of the statues. The most impressive piece in the collection was the bronze figure of Hercules striding purposefully through the room. His face seemed so alive that his sightless eye sockets evoked a sense of pity and dismay at the blinding of such a powerful figure.

Many of the Museum's Gallo-Roman pieces had come as the city was excavated to make way for new buildings. One particularly rich source were the excavations for a supermarket's parking lot. Interestingly, since the supermarket was destroying old buildings to get their parking spaces the city of Bordeaux forced them to preserve the facades, so now shoppers park behind 18^th century homes.

Another portion of the museum that really caught my attention was the few model ships on display, although by the time we saw them we were hurrying through the museum to see as much as possible before it closed. There is something so intricate in the workings of a model ship. Even thought they can reach enormous size the detail is amazing and the knowledge required phenomenal. I remember at the naval history museum in Southampton they had displayed the bone model ships made by the French prisoners of war and the guest book had commented derogatorily about the lack of correct detail. You had to ask if the people writing the comments could have done better. It would be fun to make model ships, but there is something infinitely sad about a person making models of ships when they live twelve hours away from the ocean.

Today the rain had mingled with the cold to become a real danger. The water runs through the rocks like the beginnings of a river and though our belongings are wrapped in plastic they are beginning to get wet as the water seeps upward. Somehow the waterproof groundsheet of our fabric home has become waterproof no longer and the spreading stains of the damp congeal into puddles within our tent as we watch, as if the water is willfully forcing its way through the plastic.

I peer outside and see a torrent of water that streams down the gravel road of the campsite. Rain in November is new for us and I can see suddenly why the world sneers at the idea of warmth in Canada. For Calgarians the best we could expect in November is clear skies, the worst, heavy snow. Never rain.

I am reminded of our trip to Prince Rupert where we were almost rained out completely. Yet it was a very rewarding trip. Not so much in the conventional fashion of most vacation, but because it revealed so much about the inner workings of our vast country and the diversity of the people who call it home. The Tsimshian people were so proud of their heritage and their homeland was so beautiful. Deep fjords, misty islands and rain drenched forests.

Somehow I am back on the topic of rain. It will be, I fear, a dominant theme.

We stopped the other day, on our way back from grocery shopping, at the ruins of a wine making estate on the road towards our campground. There was a twelfth century church and an old estate home, both closed to the casual tourist such as we. But the garden was magnificent, overreaching green trees making a ceiling of foliage, only a few leaves clustered on the ground dropped from their lofty perch. There was a pathway of concentric arcs through the green grass and it was lined with flowers of all description, still in bloom. While we stood there the cold chased at us through our jackets and sweaters, chilling skin and making us long for warm soup but it left everything around us untouched. It was as if the cold taunted us and made us imagine that the cold was only in our heads. the beauty made it seem that we are trying to flee a phantom that cannot harm us. But the rain that beats a staccato rhythm on our huddled shelters is real, it has an icy grip and we have to try and get from beneath it, at least for a while.

Bordeaux, despite it’s generous museums and hidden beauty has been a disappointment. The grandeur here has faded beneath a veneer of indifference. You can still see the magnificence, like a beautiful painting left in a puddle of mud at the roadside, but its faint manifestations are almost sad. I know that we have not been charitable to the city, nor credited its successes, the museums and the shopping district, enough. But when cities that boast only half the population, or even less, seem to make more of an effort to show what little beauty they are gifted with and seemed to take so much more pride in their patrimony, you are little inclined to be charitable.

Or perhaps you cannot blame cities but must look more to the individual. Even in Saintes there were those who treated crypts as garbage cans, in La Rochelle those who pissed on the street. There is always a certain percentage who do not give a damn for beauty or heritage.

I cannot help but feel pity for those who strive so hard to make their city beautiful and are defeated by an uncaring few. It only takes a few to ruin it for the many. Michelangelo’s Pieta was wrecked by one crazed man.

At least the people seem to have been very friendly particularly our ticket agent and the guy at the museum. Friendliness makes up for a lot but not the tons of dog shit and not, for us, the rain.

Next Entry: Day 95. Nimes
Previous Entry: Day 93. Bordeaux

Day 93. Bordeaux Nov 7 2001.

2011-11-07T07:00:00.001-08:00

If yesterday was busy then today was only slightly less so. We awoke, hungover from our disastrous encounter with a wine bottle, got dressed and headed for downtown. Today was much warmer than yesterday, which is not to say that it was warm.

Today’s long bus ride had none of the relaxing qualities of yesterdays. Our driver was determined to complete his shift as soon as possible and careened down the street with frantic speed, running lights, skipping stops and accelerating with stomach churning speed. By the time we were dropped at the base of the arch in the Place des Victories our heads were spinning more from the ride than the cheap wine.

We followed a side street to the train station and passed by the University of Bordeaux’s medical building. There was a statue out front of a full bodied woman labeled “Nature” lifting her skirt over her head.

We found our way to the Market of the Capuchins and wandered among the fresh crabs, tomatoes, cheeses and rabbits with their fur still on. The place swarmed with activity.

We did eventually make it to the train station and were helped by a man who seemed so genuinely delighted to be assisting people that he should have been the rail systems official spokesman. After finding out the prices for Nice and Rome yesterday we had come to an official decision. We would go to Avignon.

It was impossible to get a direct train there and still take our bikes but our helpful train representative almost exploded with delight when we found an alternative way to go. Every once in a while you encounter people so happy with life that their attitude is infectious. In Bordeaux we had encountered two.

Last night at the Museum of Aquitaine the desk clerk had been so delighted when we were surprised by the entry fee of nothing, he had leaned acrossed the desk and whispered conspiratorially “Don’t Tell Paris.”

Today our SNCF rep, after I apologized for my horrible French, had leaned across the desk and said “At least you are better than the British.”

We walked back to the market after buying tickets and Heather looked longingly at all the fresh produce. Then we headed for our goal of the day, the Museum of Beaux Arts.

We followed a little used back alley and came upon a spectacular gate in the old city wall with an intricate medieval clock in gold, silver and red mounted by a massive bell and a pair of turrets. The gate was romantically named the “Gate of the Big Bell.” Who says poetry is dead?

From there we followed the road of St.Thomas into an intricate warren of medieval cobblestone streets fronted by art stores.

Eventually we found our way to the Museum of Beaux Arts and, shouldering our way through the people drinking in the entrance, we made our way in.

The museum was nice enough, a long hallway in each wing divided into separate schools or themes. But Heather got more out of it, especially the first wing, than I. She was delighted to find examples of techniques she had studied in art school, but to me most of the paintings blended into a nice background.

The Dutch and Flemish schools of Art might have a lot to offer but I found little attraction in paintings of dead ducks and birds hanging on walls or still life paintings of decaying dinner.

There were many high profile names in the museum, Matisse, Delacroix, Renoir, Picasso and their works were spectacular. A Renoir of blowing trees was inviting enough that you could almost step through into the windy forest. The Picasso of “Olga Reading” seemed transitional between his early phase, when he drew realism, to the beginnings of his more impressionist style. Even Titian made an appearance and there was a bevy of Delacroix's on the walls.

But typically it was not the big names that struck me with their beauty, There was a painting of the Sphinx by an artist whose name I have forgotten where the sand seemed to flow like water and the hard stone had a liquid quality. It brought to mind H.P. Lovecraft’s assertion that the Sphinx concealed something of immensely ancient evil.

But the most stunning one of all was a life sized painting by Henri Martin called “Chacun sa Chimere” the visual realization of a poem.

“They came from we know not where and they go to the morning of desolation of their dreams unrealized.”

A procession of people across a desert following hopelessly after Winged Victory and Youthful Glory, each bearing their demons on their backs. It’s scale and power were overwhelming. The rest of the museum paled in comparison.

The naked ladies were nice though.

From the Museum of Fine Arts we went to the Museum of Decorative Arts where there was an exhibit displaying posters from the Salon Des Cent, including works by Toulouse Lautrec. I was more enthralled by the Art Nouveau pieces of furniture in the rooms as the rest of the Museum was mostly porcelain collections from old hotels. Nice, if you like plates.

From there we walked. First down the Rue Des Trios Conils where we stopped at a fantastic Bonsai tree shop. The floor was smooth river pebbles and the scent of green living things filled the air. Behind us was the Place Gambetta, a beautiful park surrounded by heavy traffic where 300 people had lost their heads during the revolution.

From here we walked to the Rue St. Catherine where yesterday I had seen a child prostitute for the first time in my sheltered life. She had smiled coyly in her backpack and little girls clothes while nearby a sinister looking man whistled tunelessly and flipped through a magazine without seeing it, eying instead the passersby.

The rue was a pedestrian mall where all the most trendy shops were. We had visited the Galeria Bordelais yesterday, a covered arcade in neoclassical style, so today we walked south, the Arch of the Porte D’Aquitaine our landmark at the far end.

The shops were great to browse but we soon became hungry and had to search out a supermarket. As we scurried about buying groceries I somehow attracted the attention of a security guard who followed me about the store, picking up a single box of food to look as though he was a regular shopper. Eventually I opened my jacket show him I had nothing hidden and he slumped away in angry disappointment.

From the supermarket I wanted to go to the synagogue that the Nazi’s had used as a prison in WWII but the police vans and men armed with machine guns out front gave us pause. Watching the Bordeauxians walk around them without concern I walked to the gate of the synagogue to go in, at which point the police started to yell at me that it was forbidden. Prudence being the better part of valor, we didn't go in.

The police presence in the middle of Bordeaux had begun to swell alarmingly. Every corner suddenly seemed to have armed men on it. We thought it would be a good time to leave. Whether something was happening or there were always that many police, I don’t know.

Next Entry: Day 94. Gradignon
Previous Entry: Day 92. Bordeaux

Wine and Pregnant Castles

2011-11-07T07:00:00.000-08:00

Bonjour tous les amis.

Wow, long time no write, what was the last thing? hmmm....

We explored Nantes thoroughly. The condition of the bathrooms at our campsite was a great incentive to go out and see the sights. Particularly their toilets. We spent some of the time at the Museum of Fine Arts where we saw a Picasso exhibit and had possibly the most amusing experience of the trip, listening to poor beleaguered french teachers explain to their field trip students just exactly that man was doing to that woman. Picasso had a bit of a dirty mind in his later years I must say. There were some really good pieces and apparently the man had something like 100 000 unfinished ones in his workshop when he died. Heather had better get sketching. Picasso is so famous that they hang up pieces of cardboard that he touched, so save anything Heather ever gave you, even if she was being mean when she gave it to you.

There was a really good exhibit in the museum called "An Uninterrupted Dialogue" where artists reinterpreted old works. Neat to see how things would come out now! Let us simply say that artists of our time are less bound by the conventions of space, perspective, or anything else for that matter. One of the modern artists had, unfortunately, defaced the older piece of art, which happened to be one of our favorites in the museum so I got to learn just exactly what makes Heather mad!

Nantes Cathedral was having ages of black pollution scrapped off its facade, so it was an interesting study in black old stuff and smooth as putty new stuff. Truth be told the polluted stuff was neater to look at. We also went to the museum of archeology, started by a man as rich as we would like to be. Man that guy had stuff! After the Egyptian room, the Roman room; the Greek room; the jewelery room and the medieval weapons room we got to look at the Chinese room, the medieval money room, the...you get the idea. Great place but our eyes started to hurt after room one thousand and twelve. The best part was the washroom, that guy knew toilets! And he even had toilet paper, heaven. Any guesses about what becomes important?

We wandered all the myriad streets of Nantes and got extremely lost but somehow always managed to find a MacDonalds, just like being at home. Always one when you don't want it. Such enticements aside we did eventually leave and set out for Bordeaux.

We found ourselves in vineyard country but the vines scarcely came to our knees, we would have laughed at them but weren't sure if that would make us look like stupid tourist indoctrinated by Hollywood. For all The Trekkies like me there was no sigh of either Jean Luc or Q.

We made it to Les Sables D'Olonne but the stupid Michelin guide was wrong and the campgrounds were NOT open. We had to contend with rain and very inquisitive cats that kept stealing our garbage. All the feline attention, or perhaps the rain, made Heather sick and open campgrounds became as rare as Canadian bikers to fill them.

We succumbed to the inevitable after two days and checked into a sleazy hotel in Talmont St. Hilaire. Water stained wallpaper, shower smaller than a phonebooth; bed beaten to a pulp from generations of...sleeping, and it was the best thing that ever happened to us. The Hotel, The Golden Ball, was filled with a phenomenal ambiance that made us both fall in love with it. Sitting at the window, looking onto terracotta rooftops in an interconnected highway of tile and smelling the frying onions from downstairs had a charm that cannot be convey in mere words. Go outside, sit on a rock and burn some onions, it might work for you too.

Of course immediately after checking in Heather got better. But the scales balance out and I got too sick to do anything but cough for hours on end; not very entertaining and something I don't need to travel all the way to France to experience.

Still we did get the chance to explore Richard the Lionhearts supposedly impregnable castle that sat on the outskirts of town. We pregnated its walls quite easily.

Heather waded into the murky waters of the french language and managed to find me an expectorant, pretty good eh? We also ate at the Pizzaria San Marco on the Avenue of the Sands, great food, awesome hot sauce and an owner too happy in her job to be real, If half the world enjoyed their jobs as much they wouldn't be exploring France and getting Castles pregnant.

From Talmont we cycled to La Rochelle, stopping briefly in Lucon where Cardinal Richelieu was in charge for a while. He must have left the place in pretty rough shape though because it was one of the ugliest Cathedrals we have seen.

La Rochelle was interesting, the guy peeing in the storm drain in front of us especially so. Must have been a pretty exciting party that we missed because there was puke on all the sidewalks. But the town itself was pretty neat too. You've heard of the leaning tower of Pisa but have you heard of the Leaning Tower of St. Nick in La Rochelle? Legend has it that a fairy flying over dropped a pile of rocks from her apron and created the tower. Still, leaning thing aside, if I dropped a bunch of bricks and they built a fortified castle I'd be pretty darn impressed. We climbed to the top and looked down on the city far below and began to understand the French a little more because it was very tempting to pee over the side. For Heather, not me. The water was green anyway.

From La Rochelle to Rochefort, where we stayed for something like five days. Rochefort had the best campground ever, the bathrooms were so/so, the grass unmown, the price pretty high, but we got to sit in chairs! CHAIRS! It was heaven. We even got a table! A TABLE!

They were rebuilding a French frigate that had been used to beat up the British on behalf of the Americans in the American revolution. The Hermione was not named after a Harry Potter character, just so you know. The rope making factory was better than it sounds and we got to learn a lot of legitimate uses for hemp.

From Rochefort we biked to Saintes, a French town built on a medieval town, built on a Roman town. The Roman amphitheater was great, especially the little American kid pretending to be Russel Crowe, and then demanding to see were they stored all the dead people. His parents looked over at the two biked out Canadian tourists but had the good grace not to point to us. The site was very inspiring and Heather sat down to sketch, only to be kicked out for the renown French lunch break and I got to learn another thing that will make Heather really mad.

The Roman baths were not so great, being used as a pisspot for the local drunks will ruin a place's ambiance, Heather did not sketch.

Our next stop was a little town; Mirambeau, which was devoid of touristy things but had a hotel and posh restaurant were we celebrated heathers 128th birthday, sorry I mean 24th...ouch, another thing that makes her mad. At least I'm learning a lot on this trip!

The vines in the vineyards have grown so they reach our shoulders and they cover everything. The french mostly use them as urinals and duckblinds from which they shot at anything that moves. We spent a hysterical morning screaming DUCK at Ducks but it doesn't come across well in print. Finding a duck hiding in our tent has become a common experience.

Finally we entered Bordeaux, possibly the most disgusting city on the face of the planet. If you like your dog feces fresh and on the sidewalk then this place is for you. But the museums are nice.

The weather has turned very cold...Very Cold. We bought our first wine last night and it should be nice and chilled by now. Incredibly we couldn't find a nice Bordeaux wine in the stores.

We are looking at fleeing to warmer climates so who knows were the next email will come from?

Lots of Love

The Frozen Canadians.

PS.

We are no longer brave or fearful, merely cold.

Day 92. Bordeaux Nov 6 2001

2011-11-06T07:00:00.000-08:00

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.

Next Entry: Day 93. Bordeaux
Previous Entry: Day 91. Gradignon

Day 91. Gradignon Nov 5 2001

2011-11-05T07:00:00.000-07:00

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 quickly 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 tonight. 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 groceries 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.

Next Entry: Day 92. Bordeaux
Previous Entry: Day 90. Bordeaux

Day 90. Bordeaux Nov 4 2001.

2011-11-04T07:00:00.000-07:00

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 through 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 roofs 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 swirling spoon of a hungry child.

The bridge ahead of us was a series of intermittent metal girders that brought to mind the Eiffel tower, stretched 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 other side, but here things become confused. Bordeaux was no longer meant to be reached in this fashion and the roads had disappeared 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 churches 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 repetitious 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.

Next Entry: Day 91. Gradignon
Previous Entry: Day 89. St. Christoly De Blaye

Day 89. St. Christoly de Blaye Nov 3 2001.

2011-11-03T07:00:00.000-07:00

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.

Next Entry: Day 90. Bordeaux
Previous Entry: Day 88. Mirambeau

Day 88. Mirambeau Nov 2 2001.

2011-11-02T07:00:00.000-07:00

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

Next Entry: Day 89. St. Christoly De Blaye
Previous Entry: Day 87. Saintes

Day 87. Saintes Nov 1 2010. ‏

2011-11-01T07:00:00.000-07:00

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 eroding 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.

Next Entry: Day 88. Mirambeau
Previous Entry: Day 86. Saintes

Day 86. Saintes Oct 31 2001.

2011-10-31T07:00:00.000-07:00

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.

Next Entry: Day 87. Saintes
Previous Entry: Day 85. Rochefort

Day 85. Rochefort Oct 30 2001.

2011-10-30T07:00:00.000-07:00

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.

Next Entry: Day 86. Saintes
Previous Entry: Day 84. Rochefort

Day 84. Rochefort. Oct 29 2001.

2011-10-29T07:00:00.000-07:00

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 dark all our activity stops. 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 ships, 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 extremism, 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.

Next Entry: Day 85. Rochefort
Previous Entry: Day 83. Rochefort

Day 83. Rochefort. Oct 28 2001.

2011-10-28T07:00:00.000-07:00

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.

Next Entry: Day 84. Rochefort
Previous entry: Day 82. Rochefort

Day 82. Rochefort. Oct 27 2001.

2011-10-27T07:00:00.000-07:00

Writing on a floating dock on a muddy river that disappears into grass and the sunset, that is Rochefort. Watching a tidal river receded, leaving behind mud and muck while youth cycle by and sing off key, that is Rochefort. Rochefort is a town built in 1666 when the French king and his advisers decided to found an Atlantic shipbuilding port to rival Brest. A city on a spit of land where its tidal river flows to the sea, that is Rochefort. And Rochefort is a city chosen because we like its name and the fact that it has a year round campground more than anything else.

We woke early. Earlier than our alarm and we walked in a desultory fashion to get our breakfast. The only different today was yogurt instead of fruit cups. I piled my tray high with breadrolls and jams until the staff asked me to leave something for the others. I almost asked why they would want it but bit my tongue. We ate in silence, an island of quietude in a room that filled to capacity mere minutes after we walked in to the deserted chamber. We stashed away honey this time, not quite ready for the wholesale plundering recommended by Dawn and Julie, but not all that far from it anymore.

We headed south and found a supermarket to stock up on food, after which we had to backtrack roughly ten kilometers before we could cross the autoroute, a path that forced us to do a huge U across the French countryside. We joked that we were writing a huge word across France. The path let us see the beautiful marshy park on La Rochelle’s east side and pass through a series of innovative, and very ugly, apartment complexes. The must be a French law demanding that anything less than a hundred years old be ugly enough to peel paint.

We stopped for lunch at a roadside turnout, a few picnic benches above a horse trough. Heather’s strange charm worked it’s magic once more and before we had begun our second sandwich an old man on bikeback appeared, as if out of nowhere, and began to regale us with his life story in French so fast and idiomatic that I caught maybe one word out of ten. Pausing only to pull down his pants, step back five paces and pee in plain view, he proceeded to explain exactly what was wrong with children these days, why the Germans are so rude and what he wanted from Santa Claus. Why he even thought we could understand him I don’t know as we spent the entire conversation nodding and sidling towards out bikes. At the first break in the stream of words we leapt astride out bikes and pedaled faster than we’d ever done before. We should thank him really, we made it to Rochefort in record time.

Typical for us we came into the city on the industrial side where we were greeted by long ugly warehouses, the garbage dump and huge piles of timber ready to be shipped, reminding us strongly of our trip to Prince Rupert. Our campground proved to be on the far side of the city and is less than inspiring. Not even the huge concrete ship that served as washrooms impressed us. But there are other people camping here and we feel less alone than we have in a while. We set up camp and watch the sailing school on the tidal river beside us. Tiny boats with tiny sails, close enough to see the sailors. It was great fun to watch them tack across the current and gasp in surprise as their tiny boats capsize. Getting them upright by jumping up and down on the keel is a tactic I would have never thought of.

Suddenly remembering that today is Saturday and that stores are closed on Sunday we bike to the Intermarche to stock up on food. We are stopped by a bevy of grotesque youth at the front door, celebrating the mall’s version of Halloween. They are fascinated by our bikes and ask us questions in French that we cannot hope to comprehend. Finally they loose interest in the inanimate and turn their curiosity to the riders, puzzled by our stilted language skills. They swarm us like flies. Remembering guidebooks warnings about pickpockets in groups I clutch my wallet with determination but there is nothing sinister in this group, they are merely fascinated by the aliens in their midst. Finally we manage to break away and find refuge in the crowded supermarket.

The seafood counter is once again a wonder. I don’t think I will tire of seeing fresh clams and oysters and fish lying on a bed of ice. Too bad we have no way of cooking them.

For the rest of the evening we settle on the campgrounds dock and read and feel the tide go out beneath us. The sea of grass across from us barely moves and everyone going down the river waves cheerfully as they pass by. The sun has begun to set so early now, our days circumscribed by the arc it cuts across the sky. The sun dies spectacularly this night, a blazing fireball extinguishing itself in grass and water. The clouds are thin lines, like surf on a liquid sky, coming in slow languid waves with no breeze to blow them on. The water becomes a golden fire as we sit. We don’t turn away until the only light left is a faint glimmering between the grasses. Tonight felt very peaceful, a tranquil rest undreamed of at the youth hostel. We worry less about the future and bathe in the now. I think we will stay in Rochefort for a couple of days at least. I can’t speak for the rest of the city, but it is beautiful by the river.

We are, I must admit, a little nervous about the coming of Halloween. We don’t want to get caught up in mischief with only our tent to shield us. But it is a few days away and it remains to be seen if we will still be here, or in the youth hostel at Saintes. We have thought about going out, dressed as Canadians…on bikes.

Next Entry: Day 83. Rochefort
Previous Entry: Day 81. La Rochelle

Day 81. La Rochelle Oct 26 2001.

2011-10-26T07:00:00.000-07:00

Breakfast was joke. Not a quick slap on the knee joke, but a comic farce that was elaborately staged and set, delivered by unsmiling kitchen staff who had missed their calling as straight men for an army of comedians. “Why?” it was asked by a bevy of puzzled hostellers, “Why is there a menu, when our choice is between sauced apples and apple sauce, sliced baguette or a baguette in slices?" With a choice, it must be added in fairness to the hostel, between minuscule containers of jam or microscopic containers of honey. But we were given a full choice of drinks; water with our orange juice, or orange juice – watered down. The hot chocolate was a hit with the desperately hungry inmates sopping up the dregs with stale bread, desperate to preserve every drop of flavor. The offered cereal and yogurt never materialized and the only toast was dried bread left in the sunlight. To quote Mel Brooks: “What a world.”

The hostel was crowded and some of the youth seemed barely into their teens, how they could afford to travel a mystery. They filled the cafeteria and the front office but seemed strangely absent elsewhere. I got a strange feeling from them, as if they were at the hostel because it was cool and not because of any real travel needs. The same way as adolescents we would tune in to the university radio station and read the Gauntlet, not really understanding the content but sure in our hearts that if university students did it, it must be cool.

We left quickly, leaving almost everything in three stainless steel drawers locked by our feeble locks. We followed the boardwalk back into town, enjoying the sound of calmly lapping water broken by the ringing of bells or the slap of steel cables against metal masts as a breeze swept through. By the maintenance shed of the pleasure port a great orange beast of a machine had lowered its slings into the water and we paused to watch as it hoisted a small dis-masted craft from the water, its owners watching anxiously. The boat broke contact with the water hesitantly and looked forlorn as it rocked in its cradle, dripping water like tears. Behinds us boats of all description lay in hard metal cradles and shed water like artificial rain as proud proprietors cleaned and scrubbed and painted.

There was an air of activity, as if being near their boats made the owners feel more alive and they scrubbed with an enthusiasm that made it seem more pleasure than chore. Something about the sea air perhaps. We passed slowly, reluctantly, as if wanting to partake of their energy and by the time we passed we felt more awake and revived.

The Saint Nicholas tower leaned over us like a drunken soldier of fortified tower of Pisa. A long walk up the stair of the rampart walls brought us to the office, a space filling the second floor and reached by crossing an ancient wooden drawbridge. The center of the room was a stone circle around open air, covered by glass and looking down on the first floor, closed now as it was too dangerous to visit. Above us a similar eye looked down. We were given a badly translated guide in English and left to our own devices. We climbed the stairs and found ourselves in the governor’s chamber, a large circular room occupying the centre of the structure, an ornate carved merchant’s ship of stone hanging over the fireplace.

The governor of the tower swore never to leave the building during his tenure and was paid with a portion of the profits from every ship that entering the port. Around this room was a series of modern collages detailing the first exploration of the Mississippi. As France's largest Atlantic port La Rochelle is, appropriately enough, obsessed with the New World and many of the new world’s explorers have set out from the area.

The displays led us in a ring to the stairs that climbed higher to the roof and we followed the hallways that cut through the walls like mites in worm’s tunnels. Everywhere was ancient graffiti, much of it religious. La Rochelle had seen some of the worst fighting in the Wars of Religion and was once France's strongest Protestant stronghold. The stairway to the Protestant dungeon had long been walled up, to protect the governor and his family, so we took the stairs to the roof instead. The view from the roof was fantastic, looking out over the rooftops of La Rochelle or out to sea. A distant red pillar in the channel to open water marked the spot where Richelieu had built a massive dyke to cut off the Protestant La Rochelle from the rest of the world, especially aid from Great Britain. 20 000 French died of starvation in that siege and only 5 000 remained when the finally surrendered. 10 days later a tidal wave opened a breach large enough for the British ships to enter, too late.

From the main rooftop we climbed even higher to captain’s lookout. Even more impressive and a little nerve wracking. We could look out through the crenellations and see everything on down to the green water far below. Looking down on flying birds is an interesting experience. From here we could also look across and see the chain tower a stones throw away, closed for renovations. We climbed back down and explored a little. Tunnels honeycombed the main level so that the activity of the tower could continue without disturbing the governor’s family. One such tunnel widened unexpectedly into a small chapel, ornate once but now eroded with age. The font drained directly out of the building. From there stairs led down in a spiral so tight that my feet did not fully fit on the stairs, a bit of a dangerous descent. Then we were back in the office, the tour complete.

Just behind the desk was a giant iron rectangle bound in iron strips and studded with enormous bolts that held the thing together. The door was almost invisible so well did it blend in and was only discernible because of the hinges. The locking mechanism made no send sense at all and seemed almost like belt buckles. Not at all how I pictured a medieval safe.

A beautiful painting hung above it, Richelieu on his dyke. “siege de 1628, Richelieu sur la dique” by Henri Motte.

Our tour at an end we returned the guide and walked out into the city. We made out way to the Cathedral of St. Louis. From the outside it was ugly, a low bunkerlike building looking more like a train station than cathedral. Inside it was ugly too, except for the fantastic decoration that transformed ugly stone into mere frames for beauty. The church had been built over the ruins of a destroyed Protestant one in the 17th century. Richelieu’s final nail in the Protestant coffin. While it was being built they excavated the nave of a Templar church and displayed the vault covers and gravestone in a niche near the front. Eleanor of Aquitaine had granted the templar’s two tidal mills in La Rochelle.

From the church we wandered the streets aimlessly and found city hall, an old fortified building with an elaborate clock tower and a memorial from the second world war.

La Rochelle had been the centre of a massive Nazi submarine base and so had been the last place in France liberated. From city hall we walked into the gardens by the remains of the templar mills.

We are still undecided about our future. Do we continue on our journey or head home? Heather is feeling very homesick, but beyond family it doesn’t feel like I have much to return to.

Next Entry: Day 82. Rochefort
Previous Entry: Day 80. La Rochelle

Day 80. La Rochelle. Oct 25 2001

2011-10-25T07:00:00.000-07:00

We hadn't actually intended to go to La Rochelle, our planned destination for today was Rochefort. But our plans are as changeable as the weather. Our eloquent host of the night before virtually insisted we go to La Rochelle and extolled its many beauties.

The ride into La Rochelle was long but probably easier than it felt to us. Marans proved harder to leave than to enter. We found the main road out easily enough but avoided it based on the advice of our host last night “It is shit, all the drivers are assholes.” He had been kind enough to point out an alternate route, following the La Rochelle-Marans canal. But the French have an interesting habit of changing street names and “La Rue De La Stade” which we kept biking past was in fact ”La Rue Des Quatre Chemin” and the one we were looking for. Of course when we found the Canal there was nothing to indicate that it was THE canal and in a land composed entirely of drained marshes we really wanted to be sure. Needless to say we ended up a little lost.

The road to La Rochelle was flat and featureless, befitting a road raised from wetlands. The ocean breeze had picked up and although we could not see open water we could feel its influence as it ruffled our hair and pushed back our bikes with unrelenting force. Herons and sea birds took to flight as we passed and a pair of antique spitfires fought a mock duel across the sky. Our only companion was the constant howl of the wind and we tried to drown it out by singing, our voices making up for a lack of skill with a surfeit of enthusiasm. The birds took to the air in greater numbers, but since I leave their chirping uncriticized I felt they should have afforded us the same courtesy. We passed a fortified church and a sad multitude of cats that had fallen victim to murderous rubber.

La Rochelle did not so much as appear as fade into existence. First we saw jagged peaks, like hard rocks emerging from a grassy hill in the distance. The traffic passing by grew; one car, two, a whining motorcycle, then a flood of vehicles, drowning us in their roar. The distant rocks grew harder, more solid. From a distance they looked like castles, fortified towers, the peaks of great cathedrals. Then the illusion dissolved and they were merely apartment buildings and cell phone towers.

We followed a lush green park as it curled its way through the city like a serpent, ending at the bustling central terminal for all of La Rochelle’s public transportation. A thousand people swarmed about us on their diverse errands, each unerringly heading to their destination. But we were lost. To our right was a great cathedral in a style new to us and a map of the city’s bus routes. I can only stare at it blankly but Heather finds our destination, the Auberge de Jeunesse, on the other side of the city.

We ride down beside the cathedral, its glory shrouded by spider webs of scaffolding and dimmed by students getting drunk in its shadows. But the street we follow is straight out of the movies. Narrow pavement with overhanging buildings three stories high, a covered sidewalk arched over with stone, turrets rising from the street corners and shop fronts. A maze of streets with a dazzling array of shops and scintillating smells, freshly baked baguettes, chocolate and coffee. We dodge around fashionable ladies, beggars with their dogs and frowning gendarmes. Suddenly we emerge from a great gate topped with an ornate clock tower. We are in the old harbor and two of La Rochelle ancient defensive towers rise before us like sleeping sentinels. The one on our left, the tower of Saint Nicholas, tilts at a strange angle, reclining in its sleep. We walk our bikes around the slippery stone at the edge of the harbor. One slip will plunge us into the jade green water of the inner harbor. We walk for an eternity, until is seems like we are walking out of the city. We pass ships, then boats, a vast flotilla of boats, and then we arrive at the hostel.

We haggle at the front desk seeking a room to share apart from the crowds, then we unload our mountains of gear and trudge up the steps to our new abode. What we were expecting I don’t know, but where Talmont St. Hilare was old and dirty this is sparkling clean, whitewashed concrete. It has no soul. We collapse on the beds and sleep.

By the time we go out it is evening, by the time we reach the harbor again it is dark and a fairytale vista beckons. The two towers of the harbor are lit and glow yellow in the night.

The passing lights of cars inside the walls are like glittering gems. We cross a footbridge and watch the crowds surge around us. The streets are busy, the city has come down to dine and the enjoy itself. The restaurants are full. We circle the harbor, smelling the salt sea breeze and we climb the ramparts. The lantern tower is aglow beside us, the tower of the chain behind. The tower of the chain was home to the great iron chain that was strung across the harbor at night to keep out the unwanted. It looks like a squat beer stein. But the Lantern Tower, prison since its creation, is a Gothic dream in the night. A pointed rooftop with a dozen gargoyles climbing its slopes, ornate windows looking out forlornly on the night while great crests and ornaments for the sake of ornament that fade to darkness as the tower curves away from the city into darkness. We follow the high ramparts around the city and peer into French windows like voyeurs. A home is lit comfortingly; a man sits at his computer and types beside a shelf sagging beneath the weight of books. Baguettes and wine sit untouched on his table. We follow the road around until it returns to the harbor.

The restaurants are alive now and their preparations spill into the streets. One, its staff serving a party its kitchens couldn't handle, spills oysters and ice cold trays of seafood out into the street. Chefs pry open oysters with knives that glitter in the streetlights, sliding harmlessly along chain mail gauntlets. We linger, secretly dreaming of pockets stuffed with ill gotten shells, but the chefs are too wary and we sidle away with the others who share our lustful watch.

Now we choose streets at random and pass through crowded night markets and deserted alleys. In a hidden square with age darkened statues a congress of the disposed is in full swing and the smell of cheap wine and urine taints the air as glass bottles are thrown at ragged dogs. In another square lovers embrace, oblivious to passersby, half hidden in the shadow of a decaying church. A crowd gathers at a nearby bar, cheering and celebrating until it seems impossible that today is not a holiday. We turn and avoid the man pissing down the storm drains and instead we find the harbor once more.

The walk back is calm, relaxing and as dark as a forgotten memory. A forest looms beside us waving gently. There are no leave, no branchs, no soil, only great fiberglass and steel trunks, spikes rustling with the faintest ripples of the water. 3000 pleasure boats like a bed of nails too large to contemplate. The view is awesome and more than a little frightening.
We find our hostel and climb to our cold concrete room and take our separate beds, soft but solitary, and dream of the sea. La Rochelle is dusty by day, beautiful by night, a chaos of old and new. I am glad we came.

Next Entry: Day 81. La Rochelle
Previous Entry: Day 79. Marans

Day 79. Marans. Oct 24 2001.

2011-10-24T07:00:00.000-07:00

I woke today from the best sleep I've had in a while, since well before this trip. The greatest gift a person can have is the gift of perfect sleep. What I woke to was less encouraging. A storm raged outside our window. Sheets of rain pounding on terra cotta rooftops and lightning igniting the walls of our room in arcs of electric blue to be followed by a thunderous boom that made the panels of our ancient dresser rattle like old bones. It was beautiful to behold, all the more so behind solid walls around which we could hear the howl of the wind and not feel it.

I listened to the storm for a time that seemed almost frozen, wrapped in warm blankets next to my sleeping wife, listening to a downpour of water that a few nights before would have sent me scrambling for earplugs and something to block the single leaky Velcro strap at the top of the tent. I tried to figure the time from the depths of the darkness at the window and calculated it to be three or four in the morning, plenty of time to slip back beneath the warm covers ands regain my beautiful sleep…and the alarm went off!

We rose and dressed with languid disregard for the time, despite the long distance to be covered. We had no desire to leave. Eventually, despite our reluctance, we slowly filtered down the wooden stairs, paid for our lodgings and got our bikes from the filthy garage. The rain still dripped periodically as we loaded our luggage and as we set out, making us none too eager for the road.

We cycled listlessly at first, as if by leaving half heartedly we could preserve the comfort of the room behind us. But the sun soon came out, driving the rain away and our strength picked up in an old familiar rhythm.

We had not gone long before I noticed a strange grey shape. Unexpectedly a menhir loomed into view, an ancient site marking…what? We cycled in close. An old, obviously seldom used, gravel path led out to the menhir. The menhir was somehow beautiful in its ugliness, standing upright in a circle of red gravel ten feet beyond where the path gave out.

It rose grey and monolithic to the sky, which changed from white to blue as we watched in awe. The lichen crusted skin only added to the surreal atmosphere of the stone. Standing not a hundred yards from a major highway we were transported to another, far older, world.

Then we noticed huddling in the shadow of the menhir before us a second, smaller, stone, the second point in a broken triangle. They were the Menhirs of Plessis, all that remained of an equilateral triangle of stone raised before the conquest by Rome. One, the first, rose seven and a half meters while the second squatted toad-like at a mere 3 and a half. The third had been destroyed in some unnamed accident almost a hundred and fifty years ago.

Ironically enough a modern power line ran nearby, as if mocking the ley lines that some believe were marked by the menhirs.

Returning to the road was almost like time travel, rejoining the century we had left behind, cars rushing heedlessly forward while the rocks stayed, silent and unchanging. The trucks honk again as they pass us and we have reached a new conclusion. They are honking even as they cross over into another lane to give us as wide a berth as possible. It is possible they are not honking angrily at us to get off their road but instead giving us ample warning so we will not be shocked as they barrel by or so we won’t be caught in the current of wind they pull behind them like the wake of a ship. It is preferable to think that they are being kind whatever the case may be.

We continued on and welcomed the arrival of flatter country. The sea was still some distance away but the terrain was flat, the wind was at our backs and we arrived at our halfway point of Lucon far earlier than we had expected. We bought lunch and cycled to the cathedral to eat.

From the outside I must say that Notre Dame de Lucon was very ugly indeed. There was a fine facing and large gothic windows, a series of rising Doric, Ionic and Corinthian columns and a spire that looked as though it could touch the clouds. But generations of rain and wind had worn delicate carving to nothing and years of neglect had eroded any beauty to a hideous mockery of it’s former self, like an old hag who can see echoes of the beauty she once was in the wrinkles of her face. There was little to entice us in. Even the monastery rose like an ancient growth from the cathedrals side, its conglomeration of architectural styles more like a cluster of cancerous cells than a thing of beauty. But we went in, more to find shelter from the cold breeze that had sprung up than from anything else.

Inside lived up to our expectation and yet did not. It was ugly, falling apart in a fashion that makes the word dilapidated kind. But every niche was full. There were statues of St. Joseph, Christ and Joan of Arc. There were paintings; Christ on the cross, our lady of Lourdes, a dozen others. There were also marble testimonials to cures or prayers granted. All this transformed a decayed look to a lived in look, from dead to well used. This was the first church in which I had seen testimonials to St. Joseph for his intervention. Mary gets all the press.

We found the door to the cloisters and filled out in silence. The cloister was almost flooded in the middle. Last nights rain too much for the medieval structure. But it was from here that the cathedral looked best, its spire echoed many time over in points rising above each stained glass window.

We returned and discovered the cathedrals pride and joy; an ancient lectern, colours fading, from which Cardinal Richelieu had preached between 1606 and 1623, his years as bishop of Lucon.

Turning back we saw Lucon's second pride, a great pipe organ, a gift from Napolean III, rising like a curtain of silver, filled the back of the cathedral. One could only reach it on a bridge from the monastery.

Outside the day had turned colder, more than once I have been tempted to steal candles from a church, but we set out none the less. We had entered the region of the wetlands, a flat stretch of France in the grassy armpit beneath the peninsula of Brittany and the Pays du Loire. It was flat and so we liked it but the wind was harsh. Heather rode before me, her bike tilted at a constant pitch of 5 of 10 degrees just to match the wind. Everywhere were massive fetid channels into which the marsh drained, channels that flowed with the speed of sludge towards an eventual rendezvous with sea. Cows stood at the edge of the canals and stared forlornly across, as though the draining of the marches had happened overnight, leaving them trapped on islands that they could not understand.

Marans was one, actually a series of many, such islands, titleling itself “The Green Venice.” Better than “The City With Sewers that Never Drain.” The place where we pitched our tent was so damp and muddy that I was ready to believe the cows; the marches had only been drained yesterday. The host at the campground was very excited to see us. He ran out from where he was helping city workers dig up the water mains and talked to us most excitedly in English. He followed us around our site giving a running commentary on our fellow campers and even looked ready to pitch our tent with us. I followed him back to his office to talk to him.

He was enthusiastically helpful, calling ahead to campgrounds he thought would be open and fuming angrily at the phone when no one answered. He was very vocal. I showed him my Michelin guide to camping and he snorted “Oh, it is shit!” I asked him about the work being done at the campground and he said “Oh, those government guys, they are shit!” He wanted to talk about the weather and said “Oh, it is shit!” Finally he told me that he had to go, he was meeting with a government minister about getting the work done. “Oh,” he said “He is an asshole.” I can guess which first words he learns in any foreign language.

Setting up tent was a strange and unsettling experience. After all the effort cleaning it sinking our fabric home into a hillside of mud seemed almost like a desecration. A small canal ran just behind our tent, a thick soupy green, and it was hard to believe that it was not more solid than the slippery ground beneath us. Our tent pegs sunk in so easily they almost disappeared beneath the earth and when we sat down on our sleeping bags the ground shifted around like a waterbed beneath our bodies. At least it was comfortable, but I miss the solidity of four wooden walls and the convenience of a shower in the room. One stop at a hotel and you’re ruined.

Next Entry: Day 80. La Rochelle
Previous Entry: Day 78. Talmont St. Hilaire

Day 78. Talmont St. Hilaire. Oct 23 2001.

2011-10-23T07:00:00.000-07:00

What a relief to wake from a night of sleep with no interruptions and feeling a hundred times better. Today I feel as though I am almost me again and I am anxious to get going. But a hundredfold improvement is still not all the way. I still hack and cough, sputtering for air, even if only once or twice every 10 minutes. We resolved today to stay for the whole day and sleep one more night in our sagging bed. Our next destination is a long ride from here and there is little sense in tackling it while still sick.

Today we are homebodies resting body and mind, cleaning and clearing and getting ready to tackle life with canvas walls once more. We find that when we rest in a place it become our home, we leave our marks, scattered debris that proclaims our territorial boundaries, and we learn the features and it is hard to leave.

Fear for the unknown has sent me searching for a phone. I am not willing to trust the guide that has proved so deceptive, so disappointing. We tramped out together and found a phone not too far from our lodgings. But when the operator asked courteously for country codes and city codes that we did not have I gave up in frustration.

We continued up Talmont’s centre street where we found the Super U and stopped for groceries. Heather showed me the seafood section in delight. Even after almost thirty days in France we are still delighted by counter tops swathed in ice and a colorful display of seafood. The shrimp in a woven wicker basket flipped and writhed in angry spasmodic jerks, as if cursed with a foreknowledge of their gastronomical fate. Eels and deep sea fish stared up from their frozen bed with lifeless eyes and the crabs here seemed listless and crusted with sand. Heather walked purposefully through the aisle of the market, trying to feed us and still not destroy a budget already broken and shattered. I fell behind and drifted away into the aisle of books and music and toys. ABBA came over the radio and the stock clerk counting inventory unconsciously broke into song. I flipped through books on Vendee legends, naval history and prehistoric artifacts. I was startled to find references to home in the book on naval history. The people of the Vendee had been delighted, it seems, by the crew of the HMCS Iroqois when, after liberating the area of Nazi occupation, they had erected a huge cake declaring “Vivre la France, Canada, Angleterre et Amerique.” What delighted the French so much was, unlike messages from their other liberators these words were delivered bilingually.

The books were a surreal mix of French culture and pervasive American influence. Dark French police novels, covers adorned with sexy women and guns rested on racks next to Buffy Contre les Vampires and Anne Rice novels. The racks of toys mixed unknown French action heroes and G.I. Joe dolls. But all the video games were American and even the boxes were English with no translation. French had been the international language of diplomacy but now gave way to English, international language of computer geeks.

Heather finished selecting our meals for the day, a fare not much different from yesterday or the day before, meat, cheese, grapes and the ubiquitous French baguette. We returned to our hotel, our haven, and ate our lunch.

We hauled out our sand and grime coated tent and threw it into the shower and let the water run. I leapt in and scrubbed dirt and sand away until the showers floor resembled more the sea bed than anything else. We threw our sopping dwelling out the window and let it dry over the kitchen roof. And then we did nothing. We lay in bed as I read Heather Hyperion, then she slept while I snuck out to the phone once more. Even as I walked our previously sunny and warm day disintegrated under an onslaught of clouds and down the rain came. Heather had woken up in time to see the rushing clouds and save our drying things. Armed as I was this time with calling codes and city numbers still I failed to get through and I feared my failure might have more to do with a closed campground than inability to use a French phone. I returned to our hotel in disgust.

As I did the clouds dissipated and a brilliant rainbow filled the sky, arching, like a tourist ad for the perfect vacation, over the crumbling ruins of Richard's castle. I stared and longed for a camera and knew that moments like that were not really meant to be caught on film.

I arrived once more at our sheltered door and a realization hit me. We have lived with the elements, on an intimate first name basis, twenty four hours a day since, it seems, before time began. We have considered weather to be our friend, our foe, our ally and our indifferent nemesis and we are always aware of it. We have come to think of ourselves as weather conscious, knowing the pulse beat of the skies, and yet, now, behind the shelter of solidity, weather is forgotten. Not merely relegated to a secondary status, not ignored, just forgotten. Rarely do we look at the sky and never to assess what the next minute of life will hold for us. The sky and clouds are merely pretty decorative objects that no longer dictate our lives like the stars on an astrologers chart. Three days and we have become absolutely disconnect from what had been the most important aspect of our lives, and we had scarcely noticed. How many other things pass from places of critical importance in our lives and we never notice their passing?

I entered our room, or rather tried to enter. Heather had set up the tent in the room to let it dry out of the rain and it blocked the door with a fabric barricade that yielded but would not give. After minutes of struggle I finally squeezed into the room. The tent was on its side and the blue groundsheet rose menacingly in our little room, a blue nylon monolith, a science fiction metaphor for our journey. I expected to look in to the mirror and see wrinkled hands and face, Also Sprach Zarathustra humming from spinning bike wheels in the garage below us.

The smell of sautéed onions and freshly baking pizza drifted up through cracks in the floor, taunting us with delicious scents and odors too expensive to inhale. Tentatively I went down the stairs and asked our hostess to kindly explain the phones to me. Instead she called the campground in Marans, a long ride away, and confirmed that they were open until nov. 15. I appreciated her kindness, but as the ancient saying goes: “give a man a phone…”

Strange how much I will regret leaving here. In the sunken bed and water stained walls I have found a sort of spiritual balm. Talmont can be an ugly little town, slowly decaying in the sun of southern France and the rains and winds off the Atlantic. But it seems to harbour a soul full of inspiration such as I have found in so few places, a taint of artistry that calls out to be created. Tomorrow is the pain of hard bike seats and the elements and I can only hope to find that feeling elsewhere...

...and pray that my bike will not say “we have a problem Dave.”

Next Entry: Day 79. Marans
Previous Entry: Day 77. Talmont St. Hilaire

Day 77. Talmont St. Hilaire. Oct 22 2001

2011-10-22T07:00:00.000-07:00

Last night was a nightmare collage of wracking coughs, fevered dreams and aching muscles. Every time I surrendered to exhaustion and slumped down to the beaten and broken mattress my lungs protested and sent me upright in a volley of coughs that sounded terribly like the vicious barking of a dog. So violently did I cough that my head began to explode with pain with every movement. Even as my body shook I castigated myself for imagining that I could bike across France, let alone a significant portion of Europe. Only as daylight touched the casements of our window and cast first hesitant rays of light across the mossy kitchen roof was I able to find the solace of sleep.

I woke to an incessantly pounding head and church bells that no longer sounded sweet, merely loud. Heather dressed then disappeared out the door to find food to sustain us. I crawled feebly into the booth that served as our shower and curled up on the floor, allowing the scalding water to cascade over me as if in a metal and plastic womb. By the time Heather returned the room had filled with a choking steam.

Heather hadn’t merely purchased groceries but had braved an unfamiliar tongue and a slightly deaf pharmacist to bring me soothing drugs and cough syrup. She was flustered and embarrassed, trying to convey her exact needs in a foreign language had been hard for her and she kept apologizing, as if I cared that she had mispronounced the word for “husband” or “heaving cough.”

After being drugged and having a rest I began to feel human once more. Unable to merely do nothing we set out, if not energetically, then at least with a little enthusiasm, to see Talmont Castle. The castle rose from a series of decaying fortifications on a rocky outcrop near the centre of town, its crenelated and corroded peak almost lost behind a swirling murder of crows that made the place seem sinister even in daylight. We climbed the steep path that led to the wooden shack that served as the twentieth century gatehouse. The castle seemed wilted, in a way that only a tourist attraction in the final days before closing can be. They had lost their credit card machine so we were forced to dig into our dwindling supply of coins.

Built by William the Bold in 1025 and modernized by Richard the Lionheart with ideas brought back from Syria, the castle sprawled out, a conglomerate of accreted pieces. The wall that separated the lower courtyard form the upper had disappeared with age, the majesty that once must have been the lord’s manor had crumbled to dust and the castles defensive face had fallen to reveal the bones building beneath. William the Bold had built his castle over the church of Saint Peter and the beautiful arches and vaults of the bell tower peered out from surprising corners.

We climbed the staircase of the western tower and stopped at its first branching. Here was the base of the ancient bell tower, a niche almost walled over during the hurried building of outer walls. A silent room with a single entrance and windows so high and narrow they could scarcely be seen. Here William, and Richard after him, had stored their money, their jewels, and their suits of ceremonial amour. Here was a treasure chamber any thief might have given his arm to find and we stalked its floors and casually appraised its vaulted ceiling.

Then we climbed again and climbed, to the second floor that opened to the wall walks and higher still to the command room that had opened to the sky as the ceiling collapsed and higher still to a terrace beneath the flapping flags of Richard and a view from here to the sea. Below us the clustered red roofs of town bunched together in silent huddles, their red paved surfaces a highway about the streets.

We followed the passages to the latrines, to the murder hole above the gatehouse and through a maze of stones and dim light that almost left us lost. The castle seemed a mountain, stones that had been heaped one atop another in careless disregard, and then hollowed to make space for those who inhabited it. Artificial caves in an artificial hill a hundred feet above the town.

We descended an endless stair on the castles far side, sure that we must be descending far beneath the ground, only to emerge on green grass. Outside an ancient defensive tunnel disappeared deep into the earth, its hidden recesses gated off from prying eyes.

We left the site and wandered outside and only then did we realize that even the hill on which the castle stood had been fortified, the walls serving now as the rear walls of sheds and houses. The castle had been shattered by Louis XIII and the famed Richelieu so that the region's Protestants would have no place to hide.

We returned to our hotel room, how strange to write that, my pen almost automatically wrote "campsite", our hotel room and we began to pack. There is a lively debate in my mind tonight about whether we will leave at the first sign of light tomorrow or rest another day with a solid roof and bed beneath us. We cannot really afford to stay. We will pack tonight and see how things are in the morning.

As we pack we are desperately trying to lighten our loads. There is so much that we carry that we do not use but we cannot easily bring ourselves to part with. Things of sentimental value or things those we “might use if…” I am trying to learn the mystical art of packing. How do you arrange things so that you can get at what you need without flinging everything else across whatever space you have? There is the story of the Greek man, I forget his name now, who wanted simplicity and so owned only his robe and a drinking cup, until one day he saw a beggar using his hands to drink from a fountain. With a cry of joy he threw away his drinking cup. We need resolve like that.

Next Entry: Day 78. Talmont St. Hilaire
Previous Entry: Day 76. Talmont St. Hilaire.

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

2011-10-21T07:00:00.000-07:00

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.

Next Entry: Day 77. Talmont St. Hilaire
Previous Entry: Day 75. Les Sables D'Olonne

Day 75. Les Sables D’Olonne. Oct 20 2010.

2011-10-20T07:00:00.000-07:00

Woke up this morning to a perfect day. I only wish that they’d stay like that.

We packed up quickly, after eating breakfast in our tent and trying to convince the farm dog that we had nothing appetizing for him. Neither of us mentioned the weather in the hope that it would remain bright and blue. Off in the distance we could hear the turkey gobbling. He was enormous and on coming in the night before we had been more afraid of him than the energetic dogs. The chickens had seemed a little abnormal as well, they had a huge spread of feathers on their legs that made them look as thought they were wearing bell bottom pants. What with the turkey’s huge fan of feathers and one of the dog’s shaggy beard it was a very fashionable farm.

I had slept well despite the downpour and the ridge of dirt that ran directly under my shoulders.
Mounting our bikes in the morning has become an art of compromise. We know that we must get moving but we are reluctant to begin the never ending effort and the sawing pain of insufficient padding. Generally, by unspoken agreement, the bikes are walked to the entrance of the site. When we finally climb our steeds of aluminum we try to avoid sitting for as long as possible. Today was no different and setting out was harder than usual because we had to face the one task we hated above all else, retracing our steps. Back we went, following last nights hard road, past the abandoned campground and past the turn to the lake.

Finally we found new ground and we headed towards Les Sables D’Olonne. Today the transformation in architectural styles is almost complete. Gone are the stone and brick houses with slate or shingle roofs. Every house here has whitewashed walls, terra cotta shingling and, more often than not, blue shutters on the windows. Before we had biked too far we came within sight of the Atlantic Ocean. Sea breezes caressed our faces once more. The houses look perfect nestled against the distant band of blue on the horizon. Design elements in the plan of an artist who has sculpted the world. The ocean has become our ally and our nemesis. The land near it runs in long flat strips, where we can see almost to eternity and worry not about what comes after a downhill ride. There are no downhill rides except to the water. But the sea breathes and its breath is a wind against which we are locked in terrible conflict. Every gust is our foe and every calm merely a pause in the struggle.

Soon the sea was lost to us once more, hidden behind the shelter of the island of Olonne. We cycled over a thin strip of pavement perching precariously over marshlands that stretched as far as the eye could see. There was an air of abandonment and decay here, a basketball court so overgrown with weeds that only the rotting backboard and iron hoop from a long vanished net spoke to its original purpose. The whitewash on houses cracked and fell to the ground in faint speckles as if snow had come too early. Pornographic posters, elsewhere left alone as if not worthy of notice, were blacked out in reactionary anger, only to be replaced by more until they papered over the landscape. In the distance a spire rose on a rocky hill above the marshes. Our goal, we though, until we reached it and another rose behind it.

Les Sables D’Olonne sat along a whaleback ridge at the marshes edge, separating wetland from ocean. We cycled in and were surrounded by urbanity once more. Urbanity in this case most obviously exemplified by the motorists who tried to run me over as I crossed the street, despite the light being in my favor.

The foliage was brilliant and verdant and I thought to myself how nice it was to be in the middle of October and see green trees. We found our campsite with little difficulty and simultaneously discovered the one place in town where no leaves, not a one, were left. All the trees were bare and most, I am sure, were dead. The broken wreckage of their limbs littered the grounds, filling the sites with the debris and detritus of approaching winter. We found a site clear of branches, not yet transfigured into a pit of slime from the terrible downpour of the night before and we pitched out ten on the sands beneath the twisted cedars.

We had made good time; it was scarcely past noon, and many hours of daylight lay before us. We stretched out our sleeping bags on a line, trying to let their smell dissipate before we crowded into them once more. While we waited we used the parks glass shrouded phone booth and made contact with those we left behind. They were well, Dad had just returned from his excursion to Halifax and was very excited about his new photos. We spoke for a long time, sharing news across countless miles of ocean and land.

On our side a storm began brewing and Heather raced off to pull our things down from the line. I finished talking and followed after her, arriving at the tent as the big drops began to fall. We huddled under our waterproof shelter and listened to the shower, the winds and the sound of the water trickling. At this last we sat up and noticed a small river forming under the tent and others to the side. Heedless of the freezing rain around us we leapt up and hurried out of our small shelter. The sand around us was pockmarked with a million pinhole craters, shifting and reforming under the bombardment of water from the heavens. We hurried to fill the trenches around our tent, trying to stem the surging rivers. The ground was saturated with water and would take no more and all the overflow seemed bent on filling our tent. We managed to fill in the area around our tent with makeshift sandy dikes. We hurried into the protective shelter once more, only to have the rain stop completely.

Heather is sick tonight, still, and I cannot seem to shake this cough that wracks my body from time to time. Whether we are truly ill or merely allergic to our surroundings, our tent, our sleeping bags, each other or ourselves, is a frequent topic of discussion. I must admit that we are both feeling melancholy tonight and the subject of our date to return home was the primary topic of conversation. Both of us are missing the comforts of home but leaving would mean an end to our journey and a return to normalcy. That would be, to put the best possible spin on it, anticlimactic.

Our spirits were lightened somewhat by the camp's cat. It rummaged through our garbage, hoping no doubt to find the sausage that we ate for dinner. We shoved the cat away but it was brazen enough to return eventually, near midnight. It grew willful enough to steal our garbage out from under my watchful eyes.

Next Entry: Say 76. Talmont St. Hilaire
Previous Entry: Day 74. Coex

Day 74. Coex. Oct 19 2001.

2011-10-19T07:00:00.000-07:00

A beautiful start to a nightmare of a day.

No one did come for payment, so the beautiful campground was free.

The day dawned crisp and clear and bright and today was one of those rare days when we could actually pack the tent away dry. But it didn’t last. By the time we had passed one of the two reservoirs at the front it had begun to cloud over. By the time we pulled into the picnic area beside them to eat, the clouds had opened up and curtains of rain swept across the water as we huddled under some trees and ate apples that had sat at the bottom of the bag too long.

We waited for the rain to lift, hoping that the torrent would not last long and it didn’t. It gave way and we resumed our ride only to have the clouds come down and spit like malicious children as we rode. The first town we came to sat atop a great hill. We climbed it afoot, not having the energy to pedal. Half way to the peak a farm dog raced out of his yard and snarled angrily at us. His owner, an old French woman who looked eroded through years of hard work, smiled at us and said “Don’t worry, it’s not a problem.” The dog crouched by my left ankle and snarled, pulling his lips back from his teeth. Just as he made to leap at me I kicked out with my leg and he retreated, only to come back just as fiercely. His owner still smiled and said “no problem.” Heather pulled up beside me and we made a box with the protective walls of our bikes to either side, daunting the dog. But he continued to growl and snarl the whole way up the hill until we mounted our bikes and pedaled off.

We are finding, to our surprise, that we are having problems with dogs. I in particular find it strange because I have always had an affinity for dogs and they have responded well to me. But dogs have a dislike for bikes, or French dogs are raised to be angrier. Every time we pass a household with dogs they go into frenzy. They race at gates or strangle themselves on chains or, admittedly rarely, they get out and charge after us. Pedaling madly away from snarling, salivating dogs was not how I anticipated traveling through France. And with every instance the owners come out and smile and tell us not to worry. When they stand their ground as a strange dog charges them with teeth barred perhaps I will reappraise my attitude but just because the dogs are friendly to them does not mean the same will happen for us.

We continued on and passed deeper into the rural countryside and into the sickly sweet smell of cow farms. The smell hangs in the air like a physical thing and clings to clothes and hair long after you have passed. It was everywhere yesterday and is again today and we seem to develop no immunity to it. Heather, stopping to look at wild flowers growing a ways from the nearest farm summed up the situation succinctly. “Pretty, but they still stink.” It is hard to enjoy even the beautiful things when enveloped in such a foul odor.

Though exhausted from yesterday we reached out destination town of St. Julien Des Landes all right. Heather, however, was sicker than ever and I was feeling none too perky myself.

On our way we stopped at the town of Aizenay. In the center of town was an elaborate fountain. Three silver gothic arches angled over top of each other and over a jet of water. To its right was an elaborate gothic cathedral. The sides were supported by flying buttresses and there was a large spire over the door. But where the nave met the transept there was a strange hexagonal roof. Intrigued by the unique design we went in. I could find no information about the church at all but it was beautiful inside. The church was dark inside and it took a while for our eyes to adjust. Because of the darkness the light from the incredibly elaborate stained glass windows was spectacular to behold. I could not discover whether it was a church or a cathedral or even its proper name. Outside we noticed the buttresses were coated with moss until at their very peaks they were as green as grass.

Once at St. Juliens we were very tired and more than ready for rest. The road today had been full of many small hills. For some reason this small town had four campground but according to our guide only one was open. We followed the signs out and found what we thought was the place. It was, however, closed, and occupied by a farm. We returned in dismay to the town. Heather had developed a raging headache to match her cough and was very eager to sleep. We found another sign to the campground indicating it was further out than we had though. We pedaled wearily out, past our first campground and on to the second. We biked in happily, ready to set up and sleep. It was not to be. Despite the information in our guidebook claiming that they were open, they were not. The lady left to look after the place for the winter was very helpful, looking for another place, but could find nothing. Finally she contacted a friend who ran a B&B and campground and asked if we could stay in her backyard. We could but it was seven kilometers away.

Having no choice we set down a horse path, down to a lake, across a bridge which at first we could not find and up a very steep hill. Finally we found it, or so we thought, a sign pointing to “La Ferme Latoi” our destination. But the campground was torn apart and there were no signs for a B&B. We biked further in on the road, one kilometer, two, before turning back. Despite a sign at the camp saying “open until the end of October” it was obviously closed. Heather checked out the water while I pedaled up the main road.

Finding no water we set out and suddenly found the place. What we got was an uneven field and concrete bathrooms. What the hell, we took it. Then it started to pour. I was very happy to pass out from exhaustion tonight.

Next Entry: Day 75. Les Sable D'Olonne
Previous Entry: Day 73. St. Etienne Du Bois

Day 73. St. Etienne Du Bois. Oct 18 2001.

2011-10-18T07:00:00.000-07:00

A Big Push.

The weather seemed to clear out for us this morning as we packed away our gear and biked off through town. Yesterday’s cleanup attempts had done little to get us ready and it seemed as though it took us the better portion of the morning to get moving. But get moving we did.

It was almost hard to leave the spot. It had become home and, if nothing else, we knew what to expect from it. I will not miss the washrooms however. The tenor of any voyage soon devolves down to how well the necessities of life are met. Anything else, however impressive, is secondary. The horrible bathrooms at the campground were a large stroke against Nantes. The city redeemed itself with the washrooms at the Dobree Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, but it was a close call.

We left the way we had spent a lot of our time in the city, by following the Rue De 50 Otages. We soon passed out of our usual haunts and headed south on to the Beaulieu Ile De Nantes, then across the Bras de Pirmil to the south shore. The south arm of the Loire River was an ugly churning muddy mess that looked more like a sewer than one of the celebrated rivers of France. We find the rivers in Europe almost universally muddy and I cannot help but wonder if our life near the mountain sources of rivers has spoiled us for the rest of the world. Perhaps we would find the St. Lawrence River equally muddy and I know that we both found the Columbia, flowing past the feet of Astoria, to be a little dirty.

The south shore of the Loire was not Nantes for much longer, but splintered into a series of suburban towns. The first was as repulsive as the river. Coated liberally in graffiti and slime from the decay of overflowing, untended plant life.

We followed a side road out of town; we couldn’t stick to the main road because it eventually morphed into an autoroute. We quickly noticed two changes. The first was the sudden appearance of vineyards to either side of us. They did not appear at all how we would have imagined. We picture vineyards as large hedges of grape vines, all intertwined, but these were rows of plants at about knee height. At first we weren’t even sure that they were vineyards at all, despite what the signs said, but we got off our bikes and checked out the plants and found bunches of grapes hanging. The other feature that we have noticed change as we head south is the architecture. Spotted here and there amongst the normal houses we have seen houses all whitewashed with terracotta tiles on the roof. They are like the houses one sees in pictures of Mexico and Spain.

A cross country journey with only a campground and a night’s sleep at the other end is not very exciting.

We passed out of the Pays du Loire, into the Vendee. I have seen a few references to the “War of Vendee” sometime in the 18th century but to what events the title is referring I have no idea.

Not much changed on the border of the provinces.. Eventually, after many hours of hard biking, we reached St. Etienne Du Bois. For a very small town it had a very large church, but we did not go in. The campground was set back between two small reservoirs sporting large signs proclaiming “Swimming Forbidden!” A small stream trickled out of these and we followed its running water to the campground. The camp was nice, climbing a small hillside, but its much vaunted pool was filthy. I have given up on the pools listed in the Michelin guide, every campground that had such a listing was talking about a puddle of water that I wouldn’t want my dog swimming in!

But the bathrooms!

Oh, the washrooms at St. Etienne were the stuff of song. Pure, clean and empty. Not deserted in the frightening way of Denneville, no vampires here, just empty. In fact there were no other campers in the place. But that doesn’t mean everything was empty. About ten minutes after our arrival a construction crew followed us in, two dump trucks and an excavator. They began removing material from a space perhaps a hundred feet or so from us. We watched the arrival with something like dread, but we could hardly hear them as they worked and the occasional passing truck was oddly reassuring, as if it was proof of human life. At any rate, today we found one of the rarities of travel, a good campsite with nice washrooms. No one has yet dropped by to pick up money, perhaps they won’t.

Next Entry: Day 74. Coex
Previous Entry Day 72. Nantes

Day 72. Nantes Oct 17 2001.

2011-10-17T07:00:00.000-07:00

A day of rest before the big push out of here.

It occurs to me how much I have left out in my accounts of Nantes and thought to record a little of it on this day of doing little.

Like how the day before last we went to the little Island of Versailles in the Erdre River and walked through a Japanese style garden in the setting sun, then through a Japanese style building filled with aquariums displaying the aquatic life of the Erdre.

We walked through slowly, enjoying the tranquility after a long day running around. We ate bananas and listened to a small French boy running frantically through the displays yelling “Vache, Vache!” as he tried to find the model cow that mooed every once in awhile. I don’t think he believed such a loud noise could come from such a small model and he was desperate to find the real cow that must be hidden somewhere in the large building. We ran into his embarrassed mother on the way out.

I see too that I have left out the fact that the street in from of our tent door seems to be a major meeting point for some of the male inmates of the campground. As far as we can determine they live full time in the little tents that surround our site. I found it hard to believe at first, most of the tents are, if anything, even smaller than ours and ours is none too big. They spend most of their time in big groups or in the washroom. At first it was disconcerting to always find them in the washroom but now I am convinced that they are simply longing for solid walls around them for some of the time. They seem to be French Arabs, so I am guessing that they are Algerian, a fact which is pure speculation on my part.

I notice as well that I have left out descriptions of most of the Dobree museum. When I see a place full of beauty I worry that I will run out of space and so describe it only generalities, then find myself with extra space left over. So I will describe a few treasures now. There was the pin in the jewelry collection that stood out, blue knot work in something like enamel. The sides were bordered in glimmering silver and the spaces between the knots filled with pearls and semi-precious stones. I cannot help but wonder what Heather sees when she looks at such a thing. I see a beautiful whole, a piece of jewelry but not much more. She must see the hours of painstaking work that created the piece, the art and the learning behind it.

Another big item in the Dobree museum that deserves description is the anniversary chest from the 17th century. A chest of drawers that folded out into three panels with stunningly elaborate drawings on the two folded out panels and a series of drawers in the center. The left panel held a painting of Constantine at the battle of the Milvian Bridge. The right was a painting of St. Louis, King of France and his marriage to someone whose name we have both forgotten. Each drawer in the center was decorated with a beautiful painting depicting a pious event in the life of a French king. At the bottom was a small slide out table. The wood was a dark mahogany and the whole thing exuded tranquility and peacefulness that no mere object should have. It was very beautiful and had only recently been restored to its original condition. It had pride of place in its own exhibition, in an alcove near the stairs on the second floor.

The final thing left to describe in the Dobree was the rather unique collection of medieval sablieres, I don’t know the English translation for them. They are the pieces of wood that line and important transition part of a structure. The ones in the Dobree collection were intricately carved with faces, each grimacing in some bizarre fashion at the face next to it, sticking fingers that appeared out of nowhere up noses and into ears, stretching lips apart to make inaudible rude noises or to stretch out an impossible long tongue. Heather particularly enjoyed one carving, of the way a woman prepares her husbands dinner. It was a grotesque carving of a woman peeing into a pot while her husband waited hungrily in the next room. Some people are really sick.

Today itself has been relatively uneventful. The only big ticket item on the agenda was getting our laundry done. Doing laundry in France is expensive, in the way that buying new clothes at home would be expensive. We wash things by hand but then we are reliant on the weather to dry things and "weather" and "reliant" are words that mix like oil and water. My hands are calloused from incessant wringing and my biceps are stronger than they have ever been. Forget expensive gyms and personal trainers, forget buying a washing machine and dryer, simply combine the two and save money.

We are trying to clears things out of our tent in preparation for tomorrow. Everywhere we stop we accumulate things, especially pamphlets on the region, and they get cluttered around the inside of the tent. We are trying to be like the proverbial rolling stone, but a lot of little nooks and crannies offer places for moss to grow and when we try to shake it free we only create chaos for ourselves.

It will be hard to leave Nantes. For the last part of the trip we have had immediate, nearby, goals. Cherbourg to St. Michel’s, St. Michel’s to Rennes, Rennes to Nantes. But now our next stop is essentially Bordeaux. It is almost as though we are following a track that has disappeared. We are going to follow a line made by connecting the dots of open campgrounds. It will take us out of our way but it will be easier and more certain.
I think.

Clouds are rolling in tonight, endangering our fresh laundry. Even as we pull in the clothes the clouds break and a storm dumps down. For the first time lightning lights the sky. At first we wait for the flash with a kind of wonder, but it soon draws neared, until the clap of thunder seems to come a split second before the flash and all the lights in the city blink out in sympathy.

Then we pull the comforting hoods of our sleeping bags over our heads and bury ourselves in warmth and security and a smell we will have to wash out soon.

Next Entry: Day 73. St. Etienne Du Bois
Previous Entry: Day 71. Nantes

Day 71. Nantes Oct 16 2001.

2011-10-16T07:00:00.000-07:00

The heart of Nantes, the living breathing pulse of the city, is not actually in the heart of Nantes. Instead it is just the merest smidge to the west. Not in the old quarter, or the Cathedral or the Museum of Fine Arts or even the castle of the Dukes of Brittany. Not even in the quays along the Loire, the much touted quays that were empty and deserted. Instead it's in a district north of the Loire and just immediately west of the Rue des 50 Ostages.

We biked downtown this morning determined to spend one more day exploring Nantes. We headed for the quays, for all the brochures named them as the “Heart of the City” or as “A Place of Beauty that awakes in Every Heart the Desire to Travel.” How could we stay away? But the Quays proved to be a disappointment. They were empty, ugly, the only thing of interest an aging warship trying to be a museum but that was more rust than anything else. We turned back in disappointment and saw a great dome rising over the rooftops of downtown.

Nothing with a dome had appeared in the city guides, only spires and turrets. We cycled towards it with cautious enthusiasm. We were well rewarded.

Notre Dame De Bon Port rose from the surrounding buildings like the sun peering over the horizon after the long night. It was a square building, not the cross shape of all the others churches we had encountered. We pushed our way in hesitantly and stood in awe. Great painting hung on the four pillars that supported the dome. Equally great paintings graced the arches of the barrel vaults between the pillars. The dome rose high above us, disappearing into an arch of blue with gold stars. It was easily the most elaborate church we had yet seen. Golden frescoes glittered everywhere and a bevy of saints cast down their stern gazes on those below. A scattering of art students sat among the chairs and on the niches in the walls, sketching frantically in charcoal under the watchful eye of their professor, looking up at us nervously as we approached, as if afraid of any comments we might cast their way or perhaps worried at the damage the addition of two bodies would do to their composition. We left the church feeling strangely satisfied, as if everything that had been missing from the cathedral had been found here.

For the next hour we proceeded to get deliberately lost, randomly choosing streets in this crowded vivacious corner of the city. The buildings pressed in close overhead, filled with bakeries and hairstylists and strange shops selling curiosities. Statues leaped out at us from many sides, surprising us with smiles or scowls or anything in between.

Our goal was the Palace of the family Dobree, now an archeological museum and the collection the family had accrued through years in the tea trade.
But since it didn't open for another hour we meandered happily. Eventually we found it, a long rectangular palace with gargoyles of bears that looked down in curiosity and lizards that clambered up the walls.

What a collection the Dobree family had amassed! Everything you could imagine. Gilded and chased medieval chests, the former property of Saints and Bishops, ancient processional crosses, a roomful of antique weapons, swords, polearms, armour.
There was a sword that had belonged to the dauphin of France and one of the Black Prince of England. A crossbow decorated in Ivy and a flintlock so large it must have taken two men to hold. I looked at the narwhal tusk in the collection sadly, for in its time it was believed to be proof of the existence of the unicorns. Science and discovery have created many wonderful things in their way but they leave behind them a trail of broken dreams.

Then we found it, the true heart of Nantes, the thing that gave this quarter of the city more life, more verve that anywhere else. The case that had held the heart of Ann of Brittany. In many ways Nantes had not forgotten Ann, nor the period when they, through her, had held the future of a unified France in their hands. When she had died she had been buried, as custom dictated, with all the other kings and queens of France. But, to quote, "her heart had loved Nantes so well that she had commanded her heart to be plucked from her dead body and buried in her home city". The golden case that had held her heart was empty now, poured out during the revolution, but her essence seemed to pervade it.

Upstairs in the museum we found the jewels of the Dobree family. Riveting pieces that defy description.We also found trinkets brought back from China aboard La Fils de France, the Dobree ship. Prominent among the collection was a gilded tea box encircled by two golden dragons on a field of red.
After what seemed like hours we left the palace to explore the museum of archeology across the courtyard. It was stuffed with weapons and tools of the Merovingians, Carolingians and Viking invaders. There was even a huge collection of Egyptian artifacts. It was as if everything that couldn't fit in the Museum of Fine Arts was spread out before us. Swords so rusted that you could scarcely discern their shape, intricate jewellery with detail so delicate it would take magnifying lens to properly appreciated, even a collection of Roman keys that belonged to doors long since turned to dust. Before we were halfway through the collection our minds had gone numb. Our brains became saturated and we leaked knowledge out of both sides of our heads as we walked. We left the palace of the Dobrees and the Museum of Archeology very happy.

We cycled back through town finding the opera as if by chance, actually in fact by chance, only a block or two from the museum.
We found also the largest bookstore and music store in Nantes, swarming with excited students. We looked inside but found no books in English and so instead went to a smaller shop we had passed yesterday and bought Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons. I am very far behind with this journal, however, so it is hard to imagine when we will find time to read.
We bought ourselves food and cycled to the beautiful Jadin des plantes. A walk in the garden always seems best to help us settle our food and to bring what we had seen in the day into context. We walked beside the patterned lawns and found an aviary filled with small birds fluttering excitedly from perch to perch, almost in the same excited and random way we had flittered from exhibit to exhibit among the museums.
We found also a penned herd of deer tucked away in the far corner. The male was very harsh to the does, chasing them away from any food they found but when his attention was distracted the does did the same thing to each other. When the cat is away the mice go back to war.
We cycled home tiredly, full of beautiful images of jewels and riches and palaces. It was interesting settling back into walls of fabric on a floor of covered earth with hardly enough room to toss and turn after seeing the days splendor. Still, we aren’t too badly off. At least we’re here and get to snoop through the treasures of people long dead.

Next Entry: Day 72. Nantes
Previous Entry: Heather's Picasso

Heather's Picasso

2011-10-15T17:00:00.000-07:00

Next Entry: Day 71. Nantes
Previous Entry: Day 70. Nantes

Day 70. Nantes. Oct 15 2001.

2011-10-15T07:00:00.000-07:00

We woke up today to a beautiful blue sky, no rain clouds in sight. I turned to Heather and said “look, blue sky” and rain clouds rolled in and opened up. Never, ever, ever, comment favorably about the weather!

But after a day inside yesterday we were definitely going to explore Nantes. First on our list: La Musee des Beaux Arts and the Picasso Exhibition. We had not expected the school children! We walked the distance to the museum and even followed one of the classes as they marched resolutely to the entrance. But the museum was still closed when we got there and stairs were crowded with youngsters so we decided to walk around the building first.

To the side we found broken stone sculptures, as if they had been cast out the back door to crumble and rot as mold and greenery ate them away. One was a mother and child, her arms shattered by an ancient calamity, so her babe hung precariously on her knee. The other was an angel, buffeted in the wind, his arm severed at the shoulder in a ragged stump. We returned to the front to find that the children had not dispersed but that the doors were open. We waded through a sea of young faces to buy our tickets.

Our first stop was the main display, Picasso La Peinture Seule, a series of works that had not been displayed since just after his death, the works from the final decade of his life. Picassos’ work, for me at least, is a strange mixture of perfection and grabage. His was a lifelong struggle to find beauty without form, an ideal that he reaches only rarely, one painting out of every hundred. To convey the feeling of a thing, a place, a person, without recourse to the fragile shell that makes its form, is to understand it as well as its creator, and that is a gift handed out parsimoniously.

It seems like Picasso found that ideal once, in a painting from his youth, and spent the rest of his life trying to find it again, his few successes only spurring him to try all the more desperately. Perhaps that accounts for his prolific collection. So many works, so few successes, but those spectacular.

Even more interesting than the works of Picasso was watching the desperation of the teachers as they tried to explain to their classes of eight year olds what his work meant, why he was such a force in the art world and what, exactly, that man in that painting was doing to those women. To their credit the teachers were a lot less flustered than any adult in North America would be in such a situation. They told the children that the couples were making love and left it at that. Our museums would, I think, just ban those paintings.

We left the main floor and climbed to the displays above, surrounding the museums central court. Here we found classics paintings mixed with an exhibit called The Uninterrupted Dialogue. The classics paintings were good. I enjoyed a scene of the eruption of Vesuvius; in fact I enjoyed all the ones that referred to classical myth or history. There was a piece called “The Aftermath of Lucretia’s Rape” where Rome was about to become a Republic that I enjoyed. Also memorable was a composition that was an allegory for the Parisian school of fine arts.

The detail in the women representing Gothic Art and the Art of the Renaissance, respectively, was magnificent and they seemed to shimmer with an internal light. The artist had done a smaller study of them, along with some priests from the main image, and they seemed almost alive.

Paul Delaroche was the artist.
But by far my favorite, and I think Heather’s as well, was “Jeune Fille” by Hippolyte Flandrin. It was a painting of a young woman with downcast eyes, coy and seductive. It was enthralling.
One other painting in the museum really stood out for me, in both a positive and negative fashion. “The Deluge” was an amazing painting, capturing the desperation of those last left alive during the biblical flood. An amazing painting that captured the suffering and the anguish. It also raised the question “How can God claim to be compassionate and yet do this?” A truly awe inspiring piece.

But it was also part of the Museums “Uninterrupted Dialogue” show. The show was meant to show older works reinterpreted through modern eyes and was quite successful. The old must constantly be re-evaluated in the context of the new or it becomes irrelevant. But the “artist” who reinterpreted "The Deluge" had draped the painting with netting filled with stuffed animals, almost totally obscuring the original painting. We only saw the original in a photograph hung next to the work.

Covering and obscuring the work of another artist, in the interests of promoting your own work, seems like one of the most obscene acts an artist can commit. The modern "artist" had a screed posted with the works denouncing the use of nude women in the painting, ignoring the naked men alongside them I suppose. She claimed to be obscuring the original in the name of feminists everywhere, doing more damage than good from my perspective.

We left the musem and went to the nearby Jardin Des Plants, a beautifully manicured garden, to discuss art and feminist theory and feelings without form. We meandered through patterned lawns, past trees and monuments to Jules Verne, and left finding our thoughts in close accord.

We went through the St. Peter gate and entered the St. Peter and St. Paul Cathedral I had seen the other day.
The inside of the cathedral soared above us, great gothic columns supporting a high ceiling. It was most impressive but cold and empty. The only art was on two tombs, those of the financial supporters of the cathedral. One was surrounded by beauty, justice, virtue and temperance in the shapes of women. But one of the sculptures, we could not figure out which, had a man's face carved in the back of her head. His beard flowing where her hair should be.

Interesting.
Overall the Cathedral and, to a lesser extent, the museum, had left us both feeling a little cold and unsatisfied, as if we had seen a beautiful body with the soul departed. The heart of Nantes seemed to have little heart.
Perhaps there are unforeseen consequences when you cover a river. The River Edre had once cut through the part of Nantes that we visited today, until in had been encased in an underground canal. A river can give a city energy and vitality might encase that power so that it can never be used.
We wandered the streets of downtown, looking for a bookstore. We went into the church of Ste. Croix and found it filled with the homeless and destitute drinking in the pews.

We went into the Palace of the Dukes and found its inside beautiful and closed to the public. It’s history inaccessible.
We walked the forever back to our campsite and found the insides of a tent small consolation after the bleakness of the gloomy day.

Next Entry: Heather's Picasso
Previous Entry: Day 69. Nantes

Day 69. Nantes. Oct 14 2001.

2011-10-14T07:00:00.000-07:00

Rain, a lot of rain. The sky opened up and it came down in buckets. Heather is feeling very ill, a chest cold that she can’t seem to shake and since today is Sunday and everything is closed on Sunday’s anyway it seemed a perfect day to sit in our tent and try to recover. We settled in for a long and uneventful day of falling rain and contemplation of tomorrow’s activities.

Then I made a fatal error.

I began to think.

I calculated the days in the notebook against a calendar and found, to my surprise, that today was in fact Saturday. Nantes was pulsating with activity even as we sat here doing nothing! And tomorrow everything would be closed! Two whole days spent doing nothing! Well, I just couldn’t accept that! So I bundled myself up in a sweater and sweat pants and put on my rain pants and raincoat. Heather was going to wait back at the tent for me. She needed time to get well. Running around in the rain could do nothing good for her. It would be the first time that I would head out and see something on this trip without her. I promised to bike out of my way and see only the things that together we would skip. She didn’t seem too happy about it but didn’t say anything. So off I went into a curtain of rain so thick it was almost blinding.

I followed our original route into town, along the tram paths. The streets were mostly deserted and the people on them looked at me as thought was insane. I could hardly argue with them. Water was already seeping into my jacket from somewhere, soaking the sleeves of my shirt and I was sweating so much that my legs were soaked as well.

But Nantes was very beautiful in the rain. The pavement of the streets shone like an obsidian mirror while the cobblestones that lined the route glistened like polished marble. I followed the quay into town them biked along the road of the Fifty Hostages. The rain let up for a while and the neon signs flashed, reflected from every glittering surface. In the distance I saw the bell-tower of the church of the holy cross, Ste-Croix, and I pedaled towards it, up the long narrow streets that made up the historical heart of Nantes, the Bouffay Quarter. Somehow I kept missing the church, though I could always see its tip peering out over nearby buildings. The bell tower of the church of Sainte-Croix was one the most unique I had ever seen. It’s flat topped cylindrical shape was gilded in gold or bronze and from it’s peak a bevy of angels leaned out, sounding trumpets. I would have like to have found it, but it always seemed to pass me by, hidden from view long enough to suddenly appear behind me.

I pelted through the damp streets of Nantes and I couldn’t help noticing that most of the shops were closed. Strange for a Saturday, I thought… Suddenly red banners blazed out over a building ahead of me. The Galeries LaFayette, a place that had been advertising an "haut couture" show all over the city. I knew that Heather would like to see the show so I pulled my bike into the entrance way to check prices. It was closed. Well, it was noon and things in France close around noon. I looked at the times so I would know when to come back. “Open 10 until 8 every day except Sunday” said the sign. Oh!

Things began to click.

The closed shops, the deserted streets...

It was Sunday.

Here I was, getting soaked to the skin, racing around Nantes, trying to see everything, on a day everything was closed! As if some malicious god was laughing at me the rain began to increase at that moment. Suddenly I was trapped downtown, in the centre of the city, with no shelter. Oh well, I was wet already. I headed off for home in rain that would make Noah hesitate.

I found the St. Peter and St. Paul cathedral but, mindful of my promise to Heather, I didn’t go in. The city was in the process of cleaning off the pollution that had built up and restoring the façade so the church had a very strange look to it. One half was covered in a black patina of age and grime. The other side was cleaner than new stone. A gray so perfect it looked as though it had been painted on. While the work was to beautify the place the intermediate stage, with it’s mottled patchwork of colours, was very ugly indeed.

From the church I turned right and suddenly, without plan or warning, found myself biking past Le Chateau des Ducs de Bretagne, the Castle of the Dukes of Brittany. It was an imposing sight, gray and black in the rain. Its green algae filled moat bubbling in the rain as gargoyles vomited water from above. People huddled in the protective shelter of the gatehouse and waited for the rain to pass. They had a long wait ahead of them. I cycled past and found myself in the Place de la Duchess Ann. Ann, Duchess of Brittany, had married Louis XII of France. Their heir, Francois I King of France had brought the independent nation of Brittany in to union with France in 1532. The city of Nantes seems to virtually worship Ann and you can find her name, or her symbols, almost everywhere. Nantes seems to be very much, almost five hundred years after her death, to be Ann’s city.

From the Chateau I biked up the street under which the Erdre River had been buried and found myself in the Place Marachal Foch, a square with a towering statue of King Louis XVI in the centre. To my left were the cathedral and the St. Peter gate, the last remnant of the old city walls. Somehow I was biking in circles! But I knew the way from here. I biked, rather disrespectfully, down the war memorial and headed for home. By now the rain had, if possible, become even heavier and I was biking in rivers of water.

I found the people of Nantes to be very nice with regards to my plight. Cars calmly let me cut them off and even gestured for me to pull in front of them as I pelted for home. I eventually reached the campground and cycled up to our tent to find Heather smiling sardonically up at me. After I had gone she had checked my figures once more and discovered what had taken me an hour and a soaking. Today was not a day to be biking in Nantes. I climbed into the tent, stripped off my wet clothes and huddled under my sleeping bag seeking forgotten warmth. And the rain stopped! Is there really any wonder that Heather and I have become highly superstitious? Surely the chaos of random events could not be so malicious. If only we could find the sacrifice that would propitiate the god of the rains. But I think he finds his greatest pleasure in tormenting mere mortals such as we and no sacrifice would be enough to deter him from his sport.

That afternoon we called home to check in on my mother, as my father was away in Halifax taking pictures like the mad photographer that he is. Mom was doing well but had bought a new TV and a new DVD player to sooth her loneliness. This to compliment their new internet access! We leave and they buy all the things we were deprived of as children. Typical.

We also phoned my sister. A former student of hers had died and Andrew was away in Manitoba. Talking to people, even family was awkward at first. I have lost what few social skills I had before beginning this adventure. By the time we return to a “civilized” lifestyle we will not be able to fit in. We will probably pitch a tent in a living room somewhere and disappear for weeks at a time. I can understand why the Earl of Greystoke longed for the Jungle.

Next Entry: Day 70. Nantes
Previous Entry: Letter From Nantes

Letter From Nantes

2011-10-13T17:00:00.000-07:00

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!!

Next Entry: Day 69. Nantes
Previous Entry: Day 68. Nantes

Day 68. Nantes. Oct 13 2001.

2011-10-13T07:00:00.000-07:00

Today we followed the Erdre River into le Pays De La Loire.

We woke early, to fog once more. We got together our gear in a ritual that happens almost by rote now. Heather packs her panniers while still in the tent, getting everything ready before mounting it on its racks. I mount my panniers on the bike and stuff things into them as they surface. Heather, in frustration, has dubbed her bike Jinx, reflecting its cursed nature. Initially I dubbed my bike Herbert, but in view of his red coloring and the fact that he has never yet broken down, I renamed him Fidel.

In addition to being foggy this morning was also very hazy and a strong smell of smoke hung in the air. The French like to burn their garbage as they work and we frequently pass small pyres burning beside farms or on construction sites. It always casts a foul smell for kilometers and it makes it harder to breath.

The passage through the countryside was…typical. It doesn’t change all that much from day to day. We tried to follow the Erdre River but the road into Nantes was all over the place. We stopped for groceries at Suce sur Erdre and then something terrible happened. Heather saw a sign for McDonalds

McDonalds has come to symbolize all the food we are missing from home and I had promised to stop at the next one we saw. Chapelle sur Erdre (the town where the McDonalds actually was) was a beautiful town, despite hosting a fast food joint. We biked into town in search of The House of Grease and passed by their beautifully ornate church. A bride in white and her groom were parading down the street towards their vintage wedding car as we passed. Crowds of people had flooded into the street following the wedding and now stopped to chat and catch up with old friends and family heedless of the traffic trying to get by. I think all weddings most share that phenomenon in common. The bride looked radiantly happy but you could hardly see the groom, lost among the crowd. Another wedding phenomenon I suppose. I wonder if she was keeping her maiden name.

We passed through the entire town with no sign of our goal and I had given up when we saw it looming to our left. We quickly deviated from our course and were soon munching away happily. Such a treat did not come cheaply however, both in material and physical cost. One meal at McDonalds broke our budget for the day and my stomach was soon turning over. Fast Food is food one must build up immunity to.

We hurried on to Nantes. Nantes surprised us as we cycled in. It had a skyscraper. The first we had seen, outside of hideously ugly apartment blocks that were everywhere and equally ugly water towers. Based on the towering building and our newly revised formula for such things we determined Nantes' size to be pretty big. It was also nice, at least from our entry point. The tramways looked extensive and had either well maintained grass or cobblestones between the tracks. The trains themselves universally looked crisp and new.

We hurried on the campground where I was violently ill in the filthiest washrooms we had yet encountered, perhaps one of the low points of my life. The campground itself wasn’t too bad so we reluctantly decided to stay. We set up our tent and headed out to explore the town. We were also looking for an internet café to communicate with everyone back home. Nantes, like Rennes, has lanes set aside for cyclists so we cruised easily into downtown alongside the trams. We cycled along the boardwalk that parallels the river Erdre as it comes into the city. At first we had little appreciation for the city because we were trying, and failing, to find an internet café. But the boardwalk was beautiful. It was cobblestone, separated into lanes for pedestrians and cyclist by marble strips. There were stones inlaid with directional signs embedded in the boardwalk and boats were moored everywhere.

The Isle de Versailles was a lush island in the river, laid out in a Japanese style, with well cared for pines and oaks and a river running in a series of waterfalls down to the Erdre. Off in the distance we could just see the tip of the Cathedral of Nantes peering over the rooftops. Finally, close to where the Erdre disappeared into a tunnel beneath the streets of Nantes, we found our internet stop.

We wrote a long letter to our friends back home and read their messages avidly. Before we knew it two hours had passed and we had once again gone over budget. We left the café feeling very homesick and missing friends and family. It’s hard to hear about events back home because you want to be there to share in all the joys and sorrows. When they say that they miss you a feeling like you're being selfish washes over you. This trip is all about us, exclusively for us and it is hard to reconcile that with being a loving member of a community.

The walk home was very nice, we didn’t feel like biking, but we were both a little down and Heather was feeling more ill than yesterday.

We walked to the memorial at the head of the Road of the 50 Hostages.

These were among those executed in retaliation for the death of a Nazi officer on the streets of Nantes during World War II. The memorial was elegant and simple. Very evocative. I can understand how hard it must be to forget the atrocities the Germans committed in that war. The idea of the European community must be very difficult for many, especially the older generation. It would mean unifying with those who had been responsible for the worst war the world had seen, or at least their descendants. At home we don’t have to live with the consequences of wars. None of our cities have been devastated; few of our people have been executed. It would be nice if things stayed that way. Walking back on the far bank of the Erdre we passed a wall of names of those from Nantes who had died in conflict, “died for patriotism” as the wall itself said. Few things have killed as much as “patriotism.” But at least we get pretty statues out of it.

Returning we saw the Isles de Versailles from the other side. There is a beautiful and strange building on one corner, all square and tipped up on one corner, which we should investigate in the next few days. There is so much to see here! The river had massive boats on it, two stories of open glass dining rooms and observation decks. We had seen the brochure for them and I had assumed they would be like those I’d seen in Paris, small boat what ply the Seine with their cargo of tourists. But these dwarf my memories.

Back at camp French students were taking advantage of the weekend to party, banging drums and singing loudly. I’m glad it’s the off season.

Next Entry: Letter from Nantes
Previous Entry: Day 67. Nort Sur Erdre

Day 67. Nort Sur Erdre. Oct 12 2001.

2011-10-12T07:00:00.000-07:00

We woke early and headed out quickly. When we flung back the flaps of the tent we were very shocked…no fog. It had been a while since we had seen such a morning. We packed and discovered that no fog did not mean no dew. The tent was soaked and everything was just a touch damp.

We cycled into town and performed a daily routine. Heather went to the shops to buy breakfast and I guarded the bikes. I sat in the square in front of the church and nearly died when the bell rang for 9:30. No wonder you can hear the bells clear across the countryside. Deafness must be a major occupational hazard for priest and bell ringers alike.

Our ride today was more leisurely. There was an open campground not too far away and we had the chance to absorb the French countryside. When you emerge from trees and cycle along an open field, or when you crest a hill, you can see for miles. France is very liberally coated with churches and when your view opens up you can see the sharp points of spires clear to the horizon. Everywhere we go we find crosses at every corner and all along the roadside. A million effigies of Jesus suffering on the cross litter the country until they become just another part of the scenery. The cult of the Virgin Mary is strong here too and she appears almost as much as her son. You can see why. The image of Christ suffering on the cross for the sake of humanity is very powerful and inspirational but it offers little in the way of warmth. Mary is portrayed as the image of compassion embodied and all her icons gaze down benevolently. She is far more approachable than a suffering god who only looks skyward. No graveyard is without her and many buildings have small votive statues in their front yards. One farmhouse we passed had a niche hollowed out high in their wall with a tiny statue secreted within. At first we wanted to stop at every church we passed by but they have begun to blur a little and so we pass many by. Heather jokes that every hill we hit is penance for a skipped church.

Today we began to pass fields of sunflowers, though they looked decidedly unsunny. They had faded to brown and drooped like flowers depressed. There were heavy with seeds and looked like about it was about time to be harvested. Every once in a while they were still brilliantly yellow so the fields made a strange patch work of vibrant and dead. It was hard to tell if it was beautiful or ugly and eventually the whole mix dissolved in my minds eye into one massive Van Gogh painting. Nort Sur Erdre was a nice enough town, though their church steeple was very ugly. I couldn’t tell from the brochure whether it had been bombed or struck by lightning but I know that it didn’t always look that way. The municipal campground was a little off from the town centre, set in a beautiful park that had once been the private lands of a nearby chateau. Apparently we were now entering Chateau territory and could expect to see them more and more often. The Erdre is a tributary of the Loire and the Loire is famous for its wealthy estates. The Erdre was perhaps a hundred meters behind our campsite and we watched every kind of boat from yachts to a giant red inflatable row boat ply the waters.

We took advantage of the day of sunshine that lay before us and did our laundry. Yes we are that exciting, but you live with the smell of mold for a few weeks! Heather struck up a merry conversation with the groundskeeper about his tracheotomy, I don’t know how with her French, and he lent us a bucket for our hot water and a scrubbing board. Strange to tell, but doing the laundry was almost fun, with Heather washing and me wringing. It really is amazing how much water a piece of clothing can hold. The end result of our efforts was a long line of underwear and socks strung from a tree to a bench all way across our site.

We spent the rest of the day lounging and catching up on writing. Both of us are feeling a little ill right now. Our throats are sore and we are coughing a lot so there is little desire to explore. Instead we want to sit around and drink hot substances all day.

We are having an interesting time trying to adjust to this trip. Wrapping our minds around the idea that this is not a vacation but a way of life for the foreseeable future is hard. We have to get used to the idea that living in a tent and biking is what we do, is who we are. A difficult transition since the longest either of us has ever been away from family is a month at a time. Slowly, a little bit every day, we become more adjusted to this life and think a little less of “When we go home” and more of “When we are in…”

We have noticed a lot of shooting on the far bank of the Erdre. The French seems to love hunting very much. Every day we have seen men head out in their hunting outfits, double barreled shotguns cradles in their arms. It can be very distracting to be biking along and hear shots fired. You are never entirely sure that they aren’t shooting at you. What exactly they are hunting I don’t know but a lot of birds fly up with every shot so I am guessing some kind of fowl.

The shooting has grown in intensity as the day has passed. It sounds almost as if there is a gun battle being fought in town. Wouldn’t that be lovely! Perhaps there is a shooting range nearby.

As the sun passes down among the trees to the west the air becomes very still and quiet. The only sounds we hear are those of nuts dropping to the ground and distant shots and except for the gunfire and the fact that the nuts are acorns it seems as though we could be in any campground at home. I must add, however, that I find the fire extinguisher bolted to every tenth tree delightful.

Who would have thought that such a tranquil place by day could become so noisy by night? The gunfire is almost constant and punctuated by the beat from a dance club hidden somewhere in the trees. Sleeping in the noise will be an interesting challenge. I find that when I am sick I feel terrible in the morning, fine at noon and terrible when night falls again so I am becoming a little miserable once more. I don’t think we will be getting up too early tomorrow.

Next Entry: Day 68. Nantes
Previous Entry: Day 66. Le Meillerage De Bretagne

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

2011-10-11T07:00:00.000-07:00

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Next Entry: Day 67. Nort Sur Erdre
Previous Entry: Day 65. Marcille Robert

Day 65. Marcille-Robert. Oct 10 2001.

2011-10-10T07:00:00.000-07:00

Fog and Spiders.

We woke to a fog so thick we could scarcely see the edges of our tent's vestibule, little more than a foot away. You could step out into the whiteness that surrounded you and believe that the world had fallen away into chaos and the tiny island on which you sat was all that remained. You could taste the fog on your lips and feel it roll across your skin and seep into everything. It was worse than rain because from rain you can seek shelter while this rolled into everything and soaked everything.

We sat and stared in wonder at the vanished world. We decided to stay the day and enjoy the lakeside and hope that things would dry out. We waited for the fog to lift and we waited and we waited. Finally around 11 o’clock the mist lightened enough that we could emerge from our tent and enjoy. Now it shrouded the world only so much that you could not see the far bank of the lake and the grey of the water matched the grey of the air so that it seemed as though the ducks sped from the shores and drifted skyward to vanish in the heavens.

Great swirls of mist formed in the air in front of us , like a vortex sucking some of our atmosphere into a strange world. Around us were a million million spider webs, bejeweled with dew drops until they glistened like necklaces wrapped carefully around delicate flowers.
One flower was so entwined that it seemed to be imprisoned in a cage of delicate silk. Strands of spider silk hung like gossamer curtains from every tree until walking seemed to be impossible for fear of destroying their beauty. Spider webs can be such things of wonder and delight in sunshine and dew.

Most of our day we spent down by the lake shore watching the dew slowly evaporate and the spider webs vanish in the glare of the day. When we returned an hour later to the flower that had been previously encased it was now almost impossible to tell that a spider had ever touched it.

Brian and Margaret had left early that day so we had the campground to ourselves. Tomorrow we plan a big push towards Nantes, hoping to hit the campgrounds that were open, so we were reluctant to head out and explore the area around us today. So we plunked down at a picnic table and finished off the adventures of Bilbo Baggins.

J.R.R. Tolkien truly had a gift for the written word but he seems to have enjoyed ending his stories on a down note that is a little depressing. Especially for us. It does us no good to hear how at the end the Tookish side gave out and the Baggins won so he returned home and spent the rest of his life curled in front of his fireplace. Very cheery for us in France with a good six months or so traveling in front of us.

We are slowly entering the lands in which Guy Gavriel Kay sets most of his novels so it will be interesting to see familiar names suddenly popping up at us from inns and small towns. If we want to fit in properly, however, I’m afraid we will have to start drinking more wine. Last night we had three cups each and could hardly make it back to our tent. The only worry about drinking the wine is that it could triple the distance we travel in France, without once taking us off course.

We had, I am forced to admit, originally seen France as merely a country we had to pass through to get to Italy. But the more we travel the more we find things we want to see. We had expected to see nothing in Rennes but walked to exhaustion without seeing half of what interested us. If the rest of France proves as interesting we might never want to leave. I only hope the weather holds up. Today, once the fog had cleared, was one of the most beautiful days we have seen so far, with nary a cloud to be seen and no wind at all. Typical, actually, because we weren’t on our bikes.

I am getting a little anxious to send messages home, they have not heard from us in at least 20 days and our email accounts shut down if not used every thirty days. I would like to get the news as well. We will be heading, eventually, in the direction of Toulouse, and last we heard they were still trying to figure out if the blast there had any terrorist links.

It is pretty obvious that from my writing, I think, that today is another shut in day, My thoughts are all over the place and as there are no events to record I record my thoughts instead. If we have too many more days like this I shall run out of thoughts and be forced to fill the pages with doodles instead. Ahh, just like university.

Next Entry: Day 66. Le Meillerage De Bretagne
Previous Entry: Day 64. Marcille Robert

Day 64. Marcille-Robert. Oct 9 2001.

2011-10-09T07:00:00.000-07:00

Now that we are heading south once more a new challenge, separate from the weather, arises before us. No longer can we assume that campgrounds will present themselves before our weary eyes. Instead we have to plan our route to take us to the scattered few places that remain open into the beginning months of winter. The further we travel, the greater this difficulty will become. So today, instead of traveling south to our next destination town of Nantes, we were forced instead to do a southeastern jaunt across country.

We woke up late and took a long time to pack up. We are like water when we stop, filling up every nook and cranny and spreading out until we encounter an obstacle. We biked across the city, discovering that it spreads out far further south than we had realized. At home we judge the size of a city by the height of it’s skyline. The higher and more numerous the buildings, the bigger we expect the city to be. Here that system does not serve us well. Skylines tend to be low to the ground, no more than five stories, but cities sprawls across a great area.

The trip out of town was mostly pleasant and the weather was cooperative, giving us blue skies to bike under. Heather’s bike, however, was less cooperative and by the time we reached the town of Chateau Giron she had to stop and fix her panniers yet again. It was fine however, as it gave me a chance to explore the castle from which the town derived its name.

The castle was an intricate structure made up from towers and churches and residential blocks and none of it was open to the public. The towers and the chapel were sealed off completely while the central residence played host to the administration of the city. A residential bloc projecting westward off the castle provided tenement housing. Actually that’s just conjecture on my part. It may have been more administration, if stacks of mailboxes means administration and the city workers like to pee in the stairwells. There seems to be a very laissez faire attitude towards urination in France.

The castle was, however, very beautiful, towering above a tiny town that was coated in a blanket of flowers. There was an ancient mill nearby and a long park leading into the town. After a brief walk around the castle Heather had her bike back in riding fashion and off we went again.

The rest of the trip was, fortunately enough, mostly uneventful. The countryside we were passing through was interesting though, for here had passed the adventures of Asterix and his menhir delivering friend Obelix. We looked for menhirs but none immediately presented themselves.

Finally we arrived, or thought we did, at our destination. We followed the signs that said “Camping” happily. But when we hit a T intersection, the signs disapeared. I wanted to go left but Heather needed to go right, to go into town and get some groceries. Lo and behold, there in town were the signs for camping once more. Which just goes to show you, put food before path finding.

The campground was very nice but our initial moments were very frustrating. We had gone out of our way to ensure that we had an open campground in which to spend the night. But we discovered to our horror that the warden’s hut was closed and the bathrooms firmly shuttered. I was…well, the word livid comes to mind. But we soon found out that the handicapped stall of the washroom was open and we settled in for the night. It turned out later that the warden only comes around as dusk and opens the washrooms if there is anyone to use them, but how was I supposed to know?

The campground was a series of terraces going down a hillside to the edge of a lake. We had a beautiful view. The lake extended north and south beyond the limits of vision and was overhung with trees. On the far bank was an ancient stone wall with mossy stairs leading down to the water, a thoroughly enchanting setting. We sat down on the lakeshore to enjoy our dinner and to read a little of the Hobbit.

Here Heather’s unique charm worked its magic once more and an elderly gentleman crossed the grass and began to relate his life story. He and his wife were vacationing from the channel island of Guernsey and he was delighted to discover we spoke English. When he found out what we were having for dinner, sandwiches, he was horrified and insisted that we join his party for dinner. I would have demurred but Heather was excited to be included in a social atmosphere again and agreed. I think that Heather is missing social interaction more than I am and she is feeling pretty isolated with her limited command of the French language.

So, we dolled ourselves up in our best outfits, which is to say that we tried to find something not sweet stained, and we cleaned ourselves up as best as we could mange. We headed over to their small camper van and had dinner. It was almost a strange sensation to be surrounded by four unmoving walls and to be eating at a table with a roof over our heads. If the small amenities of civilization are so alien to us now, after only a few weeks, what savages will we be when we return?

Dinner was steak, a sausage and shrimp with wine and cheese and Brian and Margaret proved to be most gracious hosts. Margaret had been a yoga instructor in her prime and Brian made violins in his retirement. We both nodded appreciatively when he pulled out his latest creation and handed it to us for inspection, like we know anything about violins. Heather was very keen to discuss yoga with Margaret as we were trying to learn some on this trip. But learning from a book is never the same as from a real person and we could have used a few pointers. Brian, however, turned out to be the vocal one and if Margaret said more than twenty words the entire night I would have been surprised. Included with dinner were local mushrooms that Brian had picked himself. We aren’t dead so they must have been alright, proving that you can live off the land. Perhaps if we fall to raiding farmer’s fields and a little old fashioned cattle rustling we can stay in France indefinitely.

Next Entry: Day 65. Marcille Robert
Previous Entry: Day 63. Rennes

Day 63. Rennes.Oct 8 2001

2011-10-08T07:00:00.000-07:00

Influenced by the beauty we had seen yesterday and not at all by our tired muscles, we decided to spend another day in Rennes. The city is, if anything, even more beautiful when everything in open.

The day dawned strangely calm and clear in spite of yesterday's storminess and we decided to give the local public transit system a try. We didn’t want to worry about our bikes once we got downtown but the walk in was daunting. Busing was interesting, however, as school had just been let out for lunch and the bus was packed to the gills. Fortunately we got on first.

As we drove towards the downtown area it began to rain again, hard, and we despaired of seeing Rennes in any other fashion. The bus dropped us off in front of city hall and we looked around for some shelters. Hidden at the far end of the Rue Brilhac and wedged tightly in among other buildings, was the façade of a church. We hurried towards it and disappeared into the darkness of its arches.

Inside we discovered the most amazing thing. Notre Dame des Miracles. We had thought to seek shelter in a small chapel but here instead was a giant edifice, dark and secretive, like a hidden grotto between the buildings of Rennes. It was so large that it was almost impossible to believe that it could possibly fit behind the small façade we had seen from the street. It had been built to commemorate the preservation of this part of the city during Rennes's great fire and a large painting depicting the Virgin Mary’s role in that preservation hung over the entrance way. To our right was a huge shrine to Mary, set back into the wall with arches overhanging everything, as if Mary was hidden in a cave. The carving and stonework had been done with great skill and reverence and the hundreds of flickering candles cast an ethereal atmosphere over everything. The walls, all the way to the ceiling, were plated with small marble strips, given in thanks for the Mother of Christ’s intervention in some individual matter. Most said merely “Merci.” The altar of the church rose from the centre and was sheltered by four Corinthian columns capped in gold supporting an arch. In the centre of the arch, overshadowing the congregation, was a bronze depiction of Heaven, a vast swirling cloud frozen in metal, with the faces of angels looking down benevolently. We found the atmosphere almost overpowering, as if the designers had wanted to show the weight of God’s omnipotence. Stepping out into the street was almost like emerging from beneath a great load.

From the church we went across to the bookstores and tried to find a replacement for the Hobbit when we finished it. You would think that finding an English book in a French bookstore would be a challenge but they proved to be exactly like English stores, the challenge wasn’t finding the book; it was finding the first book in a series. After an hour or so browsing the stores I came to the conclusion that perhaps France is not best experienced by looking for English books, so we left the store and found ourselves another church. We returned to the chopped up church of the day before. The church looked as though it had been a full cross sometime in the past but something had sliced it and left it merely and X. The church was St. Aubins and the interior soared above our heads. Where the last church had been heavy this was lofty and light poured in from the vast stained glass windows. The altar here was almost a replica of a cathedral and single gothic spire rose from it halfway to the roof.

We left there all churched out and we wandered instead through the medieval streets searching for food, but could find no fast food places. We were forced, eventually and against our will, to eat real food. It could not have done our bodies any good.

Finally we went to out main goal for the day, the Musee Des Beaux Art de Rennes.

After a brief tussle with the desk clerk, who seemed very angry that we had difficulty understanding his French, we entered the Musee.

First, as part of a museum series profiling Breton artists, we toured the exhibition of Ernest Guerin, an Art Neauveau painter and illuminator. His early work was marvelous, fragile and vibrantly colorful depictions of medieval scenes with a deep attention to detail. His series depicting the life and canonization of Joan of Arc was beautiful. His later works became very chaotic images of storms.

From his exhibit we went upstairs and entered a world of beauty. So many beautiful pieces gathered together in a small area until there was almost an overload. The first piece that really struck us was “Après Le Bain” a sculpture by Louis Henri Nicot, a voyeuristic statue of a woman tending her hair after a bath. The detail was uncanny and even the lines on her feet were incredibly well executed.

After the statue we entered the hall of the twentieth century art and modern art. Here we had the opportunity to compare an early Picasso with a later one. The early works proved that Picasso was a highly skilled artist. It is understandable that he wanted to explore new directions in his art but in comparison to his early work a painting like “Baigneuse,” a painting of a woman wholly distorted on a background consisting of a few lines, seemed almost a waste.

My favorite painting was “Tanneguy Du Chastel Sauvant Le Dauphin" by Charles August Cantes, depicting a knight in obviously ceremonial armor carrying the heir to France’s throne to safety as a mob breaks into the palace. The expressions and the clothing clearly convey the haste and surprise of the moment while the detail is amazing. The are so many more to mention, to describe them would be to write a catalog.

Here I saw my first genuine examples of Athenina red figure and black figure pottery

and Roman remains from when Rennes was the Roman city of Condate. Even Egyption antiquities graced the museum and the mummified baby crocodile, with it's sarcophagus for a lizard no bigger than my thumb, must rank among some of the weirdest examples of human eccentricity.

I regret that I can not pour out all that is in my memory onto the page but any description would be inadequate. How different to see paintings in a book and in life, where the cracks show and the texture of the artist’s strokes are as important as the image itself. We left feeling strangely full, as though we had gorged ourselves to sickness at a huge banquet.

We made but one more stop, like a drink to help us digest. We toured the gardens at Le Thabor in the centre of the city.

Previously the property of Benedicting monks and graciously opened to the public by them in the 18th century, it was a perfect example of a manicured garden. From the cascading fountains on the Rue de Paris to the artifical “Caves of Hell” and the botanical gardens created during the Revolution the garden was a history of Rennes in grass and trees and it provided a nice tranquil end to a full day.

From there we walked home again, stopping to pick up food and examine a French video rental store where you inserted your credit card and typed in your selection on a keypad and waited for your video to come to you. Altogether it had been a very busy day, especially when we had expected to do very little in Rennes. The museum already ranks as a highlight of the trip. It was very exciting to see pieces we had both studied in school hanging live in front of us. The real article is as different from a picture as the sea from a lake. Rennes, as a city, has much to be proud of.

Next Entry: Day 64. Marcille Robert
Previous Entry: Day 62. Rennes

Day 62. Rennes. Oct 7 2001.

2011-10-07T07:00:00.000-07:00

Woke up this morning, got my gear together and went to brush my teeth and have my typical morning shower. Oh, wait! There was no shower, no water even. What a dismal way to wake up. Although without a shower you don’t feel so bizarre pulling on yesterdays sticky bike shirt.

Today we encountered some of that enemy of which I wrote yesterday. The wind today was like a hurricane and though on the map the distance seemed short, in actuality it felt like a hundred kilometers.

It began rather nicely I must admit, with a long bike in a sheltered hollow between a hillside and a forest. An enormous bird, perhaps an owl of some sort, swooped low down over my head and disappeared into the forest. Soon we came to a place where the road cut through the heart of a hill and as we pass through the hill the wind began to pick up and it never slackened the rest of the day.

By the time we reached the outskirts of Rennes we were beat and were dreading the search we have in every city, the search for our camping spaces. Happily Rennes seemed to think it was a bit of tourist town and the way to the campground was very well marked, and much nearer than we had expected, though as exhausted as we were, we still complained. The campground was set in the Parc des Gayeulles, a vast parkland in the northeastern corner of the city. The parc had a pool at the entrance, a model farm for school children, two lakes, one for model boats, a skating rink, soc…sorry…football fields, a campground and an acre of forested land crisscrossed by walking paths. It was a beautiful complex to have in the heart of a city. All right, not in the heart, perhaps the upper left shoulder blade.

We found a spot for our tent well sheltered in a hollow created by some trees. Heather found to her dismay that night that she had placed her sleeping bag directly over a rabbit hole, making it difficult to sleep. Her dismay was nothing compared to the rabbit's.

We took a short break and listened to the wind howl in and the rain come down in torrents. More through luck than anything else winds that had been hurricane force outside our hollow were merely gentle breezes for us and the rain only spasmodic drops.

After our break we hit the tourist trail and marched into town so bundled in our raingear that only tips of our noses emerged to prove that we were human and not escaped storm troopers from Star Wars.

Rennes proved to be, despite the awful weather, a truly delightful city, though it was Sunday and most everything was closed or being used for a church service. Rennes seemed to epitomize a French city. We walked down tiny medieval streets with half-timbered houses towering in crooked fashion above us and a truly medieval river of water running down the centre gutter of cobblestones.

We walked through wide boulevards sealed off to traffic with haute couture shops displaying the latest fashions on either side. There was so much to see that we came nowhere close to seeing it all. We walked through the square that housed the city hall and opera, looking as though they were parts of the same building split apart, city hall in a crescent, the opera in a half circle, as though to let the public through.

Rennes had been a relatively important city even in the era of Roman domination and would become the official seat of the Parliament of Brittany in 1562, giving the area the ability to remonstrate against the king. But it was virtually destroyed in a massive fire in 1720. It was very charming, though all the construction detracted a little. The Hall of Commerce was an enormous building that we first mistook for a railway station. The women’s abbey for Benedictine nuns was a strange building with the letters

MAGDATATNEDLFAYETTE

written across the front, making no sense at all to us plebs and since it wasn’t open we never found out what it meant. The pool, however, was very obviously the public pool and it was stunningly beautiful. The front sported the face of Neptune

and ceramic mosaics of running water cascaded down virtually every wall. With the amount of rain that was pouring down it was hard to believe the mosaics weren’t real.

In fact it was raining so hard that our feet were soaked through and water was even making its way through the waterproof fabric of our rain jackets. After checking in on one cathedral that, for some reason, seemed to be chopped in half, and finding it full of a congregation at mass,

we decided to begin the long walk home.

And long it seemed. We were wet and very miserable. The rain was coming down like someone had left on a faucet. But Rennes was well worth the walk. Heather in particular enjoyed looking through the windows of the very expensive shops downtown and perusing their collections of Venus Flytraps and carnivorous Pitcher Plants. She also enjoyed looking at the prominent displays of high fashion lingerie adorning certain shops. I can’t say I hurried her along.

I enjoyed the overall feeling of the city. The architecture seemed to convey the atmosphere of so many times, from the cramped spaces of the middle ages to the wide open avenues of the republic. It was great to walk down streets with names like Rue Victor Hugo and to have street signs with little blurbs identifying the person and the reason they deserved to have a street named after them, It is really hard to convey Rennes in words because it was more the atmosphere of the city that made it so distinct and yet so French and even if I describe every building and every sculpture it would still be lacking the feel.

Finally we got back to the campground and found it in shambles. A virtual gale had had blown through and destroyed some of the more permanent sites, those with a trailer and a tent attached. Although it does beg the question of why anyone would put a fridge, a stove, a sink and an entire kitchen cabinet set, not to mention wooden floors, in a structure as flimsy as a tent. We hurried through the campground to check on our tent and found it, to our surprise, as well as relief, to be perfectly fine, completely sheltered in it’s little hollow.

People here often live in trailers all year round or set them up as summer residences so that every campground we go to is half filled with trailers even though the place is completely deserted.

On our way out (a little backtracking) we had explored the park a little. The goats in the model farm ran over to us excitedly as we passed and they bit at the fence angrily when we didn’t feed them or provide them with shelter. The poor creatures were soaked even worse than we.

We also stopped at the little animal enclosure to watch the animals. We couldn’t identify the species exactly but the closest thing at home would be antelope. The males of this species had far bigger horns, however, a rack that reminded us of miniature deer. They were very fleet and graceful and didn’t seem to mind the rain one bit. They did keep looking at all the people standing forlornly in the rain, watching us as if we might not be all that right in the head. I think they may have been right.

That night we had the worst windstorm yet, and I hope ever. We watched a little, stunned, from the shelter of our hollow where we felt only the smallest of breezes, as the trees bent before wind that sounded like a train, as tent fabric tore and things went flying across the campground.

Fortunately we had learned from the last windstorm and we plugged our ears up tight with earplugs and slept like…well, people exhausted from a really long day of doing touristy things. I don’t know for certain but I think even the rabbit under Heather was grateful for the tent that night.

Next Entry: Day 63. Rennes
Previous Entry: Sens De Bretagne

Day 61. Sens De Bretagne. Oct 6 2001.

2011-10-06T07:00:00.000-07:00

Today we left Le Mont St. Michel region and headed south, out of Normandy and into Brittany. We are trying, though not particularly succeeding, to leave with some speed. We are flying from an enemy whose face, or true strength, we don’t really know. We are fleeing the French Winter.

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.

Next Entry: Day 62. Rennes
Previous Entry: Day 60. Le Mont St. Michel