Day 79. Marans. Oct 24 2001.

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 76. Talmont St. Hilaire. Oct 21 2001.

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

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

We agreed to stay.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 72. Nantes Oct 17 2001.

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