Obsessed With Food
Day 6: 17th May, to Mûr de Bretagne 52 miles, Total 222 miles.
Right now, it’s cold. I put on my down jacket and mosey on over to the camp shop to buy breakfast. The delightful receptionist was, “Désolé” to tell me that we should have ordered croissants and baguettes last night. Disappointed, I return to the tent with only a pot of strawberry jam. Imaginatively, we combine this with other simple ingredients such as boiled sweets, tea, and crisps, to provide some sort of sugary fuel for our engine rooms. With our bodies complaining that what we have eaten is nothing like breakfast, we leave Silver River Campsite in glorious sunshine, wiser but peckish.
After 12 miles, and feeling more hollow than peckish, we arrive in Carhaix and screech to a halt outside their wonderful Lidl. 15 mins later we are gorging ourselves on huge croissants dunked in our pot of jam. Bread, cheese and toms are bought for lunch and the three of us head off, fuelled up again.
Not sure how to pronounce Carhaix; ‘Carhey’? ‘Carraay’? turns out to be something like “Carhix”. Nice town, with cute, life-sized wire sculptures of racing cyclists climbing around an uphill street corner. We pose and take a selfie of us amongst them for the family chat. A charming French gentleman, about our age, approaches and offers to take a better photo of us and the wiry cyclists; he takes his time arranging us and to be fair his effort is better than mine.
He is fascinated by both Edith and our trip down through his beloved France. Now that we are 200 miles or so from home, and in a foreign country, the people we meet are starting to think of our adventure as impressive. A subtle shift seems to be occurring the further we go. Once we’ve done a thousand miles, we could say we are heading for Johannesburg, and maybe people would think it’s perfectly reasonable. Maybe we are becoming more confident, and that is coming across in the way we tell our story. What is certain is that the French are just passionate about cycling and will always shout, “Courage,” “Chapeau,” or “Bonne route,” rather than just, “Oi mate, she’s not pedalling!”
I am beginning to enjoy France and their appreciation of all things cycling. The ‘Oi mate she’s not pedalling’ comments in the UK wear a bit thin when I have just pedalled my heart out up some Devonian hill. I usually manage some sort of smile through gritted teeth, without commenting that their joke is as old as the hill I’ve just ridden up. Inside my head there is a different conversation happening. I feel like screaming sarcastically ‘Oh you are sooooo funny- never heard that before!’ But here in France…. So, refreshing, nothing but compliments… Chapeau indeed.
This charming Frenchman asks if we are about to head along the Nantes-Brest Canal? I’ve no idea, I’m not involved in route planning, doesn’t he know I’m only responsible for maintenance, steering, and wine tasting? Turns out that we are literally half a mile from something akin to one of the seven wonders of the world, and we’ll be on it for the next 5 days.
In Napoleon’s Day the French merchant ships were getting duffed up by the British Navy. The canny French cleverly connected the rivers and lakes between Nantes and Brest with an astounding 239-mile, 107-lock canal, to take their ships inland and avoid more costly losses. It is truly amazing, a beautiful, serene, tree lined liquid avenue, that just goes on and on. And on again. The canal is wide and so are the tow paths, considerately surfaced for cyclists with crushed white stone or smooth tarmac. Bizarrely, it is also practically empty, just like the cycle tracks yesterday; no other cyclists, walkers, or even joggers for the first 10 miles or so. We have the whole place to ourselves.
Nice work Napoleon
The reflections of trees in the mirror like canal provide a perfect arena for our conversations. The cycling is easy; we are not overly exerting ourselves, and the view is to live for. We feel very fortunate to be here. The end of the trip is so far off, that our new existence of leaving, pedalling, and arriving, is beginning to give us time for our own reflections.
As a couple we’ve had our share of ups and downs. On a good day we recognise each other’s strengths, on a bad day we’ve learned to try and keep our mouths shut. On balance we are not a bad team. Maybe Edith will make us a better one?
We are not the same people we married - partly because we have changed each other. Why plan, if she does it? Why write a diary, if he’ll do it? Are we just two random jigsaw pieces, which if you push them together for long enough, will eventually fit?
Even though we have recently bought food for lunch in Carhaix, and we’re not in any danger of going hungry, we get those English mid-morning cravings for a cup of tea and a slice of cake. But with the canal being empty except for us two Brits, who in their right mind is going to set up a tea shop? Around every bend we hope against hope that we might see some colourful umbrellas and picnic tables outside a canal side café, but for well over an hour there is, ‘rien’.
Finally, we ride into some sort of canal activity centre that has a café attached, and of course, the only customers there, are another English couple. She is a retired teacher; he isn’t, but is keen to tell us that he is in his 80’s. We of course reply that he doesn’t look it, which from the look on his face is the answer he wants. They tell us that the crêpes are very good, so we order a couple of mugs of tea and an apricot crêpe, as there is no cake available. We feel we must buy something, to keep the place open for the next Brits desperate for sustenance.
Fortified, we rejoin the tow path and rumble on until we’ve got 36 miles under our belts. A quick conflab confirms that, incredibly, we are both peckish again! We pull to a gravelly halt and rest Edith against one of the thousands of beautifully spaced willows on the canal side. Nicky retrieves the camembert, tomato, and baguette from the day bag, while I lay out Big Blue in the sun to catch a few more photons.
Making lunch involves folding the baguette in two, to ensure equal portions, and ripping it on the fold. Each half is sliced with Nicky’s Swiss Army knife, opened flat and placed on our lap. The big beef tom’ is chopped on the camembert box lid and stuffed into the demi-baguettes. Chopping board duties over, the box can now be opened, and the pungent, unctuous cheese is cut into “Dairylea” style chunks, then smeared onto the bread. Sit back, fill face, and look at the view. Can’t believe how obsessed we are with food.
Getting started again after lunch is never easy. We’ve cooled off, stiffened up a tad and we are both heading for a food coma. To delay the inevitable pedalling, we agree that what we really need before kick-off is a mini pack of peanut M&Ms each. Turbocharged by artificial flavourings, we set off on the last 16 miles to Mûr de Bretagne. Tonight’s campsite has a decent looking website, so we are hoping for good things.
Komoot tells us we need to leave the canal, so we wobble our way off the tow path and up the side of the valley, following directions to a supermarket. Here we load up with food for two days. Tomorrow is Ascension Day and that means bad news on the groceries front. Everything will be shut. Edith is now seriously heavy, with food shoved under bungees and bottles of Rosé and bags of crisps bulging out of our panniers. Our cycle shirt pockets are filled with Bonne Maman jam, and cheap rubbery croissants, in case we can’t get the real deal at the campsite.
We make it to “La Pointe de Vue” campsite in one piece, and Nicky does her thing at reception while I try and hold Edith upright.
Doing my thing should be straight forward. I find myself rehearsing a phrase in my halting French, before taking a deep breath and stepping into reception. The anxiety I associated as a child with stepping into the headteachers office is there in the pit of my stomach. I try and remind myself, “that was then and this is now,’ low and behold the receptionist smiles, and of course proceeds to be very helpful.
Nicky comes back with a photocopied site plan with our pitch marked X just like a treasure map. Best news is that we have ordered fresh croissants for the morning, hooray! We head off to our pitch through tall, elegant pine trees, and mentally note that the shower block looks good as we pass. We find our plot, dump the panniers on the ground and park Edith against a fence.
Can I just interject? At this point in the trip the Wrinklies are still eating for the family of 6 they abandoned in Blighty. So, in a nutshell, we were effin’ heavy after that pre-bank holiday shopping spree. Hopefully things will get a bit better when they have lost half a stone each. Right now, if we meet a similar unit coming the other way on a blind bend, it will be like an experiment at that Large Hadron Collider. There will be Higgs Bosons, covered in Bonne Maman jam, everywhere!
The showers are great, they’ve got a normal tap and they’re hot. Perfect! We eat tabouleh, salmon, and remoulade from our collapsible silicon bowls, using our plastic weight saving spoons. As we are eating, a couple about our age arrive on their individual bikes, we had overtaken them earlier in the day and they are camping near us. We say hi as they push their bikes past us. They look as if they have had enough for one day too.
We finish the day with a lakeside walk and sit on a rocky outcrop glugging vino and munching crisps. Using our binos’ we examine the hydroelectric dam that created the lake and send our lovely friend Josie a pic. Josie heads up our spiritual welfare dept, she is travelling with us from her armchair and praying as we go. Josie examines the pic and asks if we can tell what the man is growing in his greenhouse. What? We can’t even see a greenhouse. She tells us where to zoom in, we agree that it is probably tomatoes. I bet she prayed for him too - his tomatoes will be massive. This 100ft wall is obviously the reason there are no boats cruising up and down the canal, and why it has been so quiet. For info, a sign says the dam is owned by EDF and generates 2.7GWH a year. Time for bed.
