Where have all the eggs gone?

Pick the eejit

The eggs have disappeared from the cafes and bars of France. I know this because whereas on a previous bike ride across France some 20 years ago most bars and cafes had a bowl of hard boiled eggs to hand, on a 5 day jaunt I’ve just completed through the Ardéche I didn’t see a single egg. Odd.

Man-sized hairpin

But this is not a blog about eggs, fascinating as such a thing would doubtless be. It’s about 5 days hauling my sorry 47 year old behind up and down the gorges of the Ardéche (pull back a bit on the map, and you'll see where the Ardéche is in relation to Grenoble) on a bike with a tent and sundry other comforts lumped on the back. The short story, should you wish to look it up on Google earth, is that I rode from Grenoble, across the the Rhone Valley to Tournon-sur-Rhone, down through the heart of the Ardéche to Val-les-Bains and le Pont d'Arc, then back up through Privas to Valence. I did the sums: 40 hours in the saddle, and just on 400 or so kms. The stats, as ever, tell you very little. I hope the following bits and pieces will (and if you've really got nothing better to do, there are more photos here).

Why I do this kind of thing

The Ardéche is an old, gnarly part of France in which the cutesy little villages, rolling meadows and fields of sunflowers associated with much of the rest of the country have no place. Instead, it’s dry, knotty and often inhospitable countryside for the most part, full of fields of thyme and lavender, and high hills and steep gorges – meaning the entire ride seemed to comprise long, slow climbs (20kms from Tournon-sur-Rhone to Lamastre on day 2) and long, rapid descents. The exception to the latter was the 23 km descent from Mezilhac to Val les Bains on day 3, which took well over an hour to complete, in part because of the 10 minutes stop to admire the perched (on the side of the gorge) village of Antraigues sur Volanes, but mostly because the stretches between hairpin corners seemed never to be longer than 30 or 40 metres or so. So, brake, release, brake, release was the order of the day. Killer on the wrists and fingers. (On the other hand, the 2 km descent from St Julien Labrousse, which I cleverly took in order to carve a few kms off the ride, was so steep I could not actually stop the bicycle at all on the descent, no matter how hard I weighed on the anchors.)

And another ....

And this is ancient country: so much so that in parts the bones of the earth seem to be showing through. There were stretches on which I felt utterly alone in the world. Parts of New Zealand have that primeval feel; in the Ardéche it’s even older and more spectral and malevolent. You feel you have to watch your step. This is old Roman country, and there are places in which I did not wish to loiter, and certainly would not wish to spend a night in a tent. Old, forgotten churches and seemingly abandoned villages - like Gras (look at how many other villages are on the map, then click on the wikipedia link in the 'traffic' box for good measure) - which feel like a cross between Transylvania and a particularly good Sergio Leone Western. Strange things crop up from time to time; wild (and exceptionally large) goats grazing loose in the Ardéche gorges, and even wilder (but somewhat smaller) old women, sometimes almost indistinguishable from their charges, minding small herd of goats grazing at the side of the road and staring right through you as you ride past. In short, make sure you’ve gone to confession before you venture down here.

Les gorges de l'Ardéche

The people are another matter entirely. They are Ardéchois first and French some distance behind that. Except for Josianne and Phillip, who run a chamber d’hote in Mezilhac, a col at the top of a 1,100 m climb, who are Marseillais first, second and third. This means that they pronounce the French ‘un’ with an ‘ing’ sound, so that ‘pain’ becomes ‘peng’, ‘vin’ becomes ‘veng’, and ‘fin’ becomes ‘feng’. It’s indecipherable, even to other French. Funny accents (listen carefully ...) they may have, but even though they were full for the night, they invited me to put my tent up in their paddock when I arrived late in the day, gave me a cold beer, and fed me dinner and breakfast the next morning – and just as I was leaving, Josianne handed me some morning tea in a small plastic bag (for the record: an orange, 2 biscuits, 4 pieces of Ardéche nougat and 2 slices of pain d’epices). I have long since stopped listening to stories about impolite French people – the place is full of people like Josianne and Phillip ...

Le Pont d'Arc

There were two especially memorable meals. The first was at the end of day 1 when, in Tournon-sur-Rhone, I had the best steak and chips I have ever had. ‘Steak and chips’ sounds a bit greasy spoon, which this most certainly was not. The steak was entrécote, covered half the plate and was beautifully cooked, and the frites were mouth-watering and arranged in a pile about 10 cms high. In our family we call this sort of fare ‘man-sized’ ... The second was with Josianne and Phillip at Mezilhac, and included an entrée of potato and chestnut soup; a main of aubergine fritters and shepherd’s pie made with veal; a crème brulee with tilleul; and two local cheeses – one of which had been made from 1 of the 2 cows in next door’s paddock. And everywhere, fruit: apples, peaches and melons from producers along the way; grapes growing along the side of the road (some cultivated; some from vines growing wild along the verges of the road).

From the top

France  is an extended exercise in (a) how to build roads and (b) how to drive when you’re around cyclists. The roads have shoulders as wide as those on Ruth Richardson’s suits in the 1980s (that clip will give you nightmares, and if it doesn't there's something seriously wrong with your politics). Even in the most God-forsaken places, there is plenty of rooms for bikes. And French drivers may have a congenital tendency to tailgate and not to indicate, but they are unfailingly courteous to cyclists – none of the bullshit you routinely put up with on New Zealand roads.

Which does not make the riding any less physically demanding. There were the inevitable sore wrists, Achilles, neck and arse, although in the main this stuff is offset by the glorious countryside: the Pont d’Arc, and the walled villages of Lagorce and Gras; the fields of lavendar and the rows and rows of vines; the statue of the Virgin perched on a high rock high above Sceautres ... Only on the final day on the run in to Valence (3 or 4 hours into a hot headwind) did it all get a bit tedious. Extraordinary dry heat which seems to suck the fluid out of you: I drank up to 5 litres a day while on the bike, and then another one or two over a meal (the latter invariably tasting better and more grapey or hoppy than the former) ...

Sceautres

As those of you who have done any cycle touring will know, when you are on a bike for 8 or so hours a day time becomes very elastic. You have so much more time to see, smell (grapes; thyme; lavender; yourself …) and hear things. In a car stuff blurs by, even when you’re driving slowly. On a bike, you have enough time to see insects moving on the side of the road. Often, especially if you’re riding into the wind, you disturb animals going about their business: lizards sunning themselves on the shoulders of the road; birds feeding; livestock grazing – none of them see or hear you coming until you’re more or less upon them, at which point they tear off into the nearest undergrowth. You (or at least I) think of food and drink a lot (‘just another few kms and I can have another glass of beer tonight …’). You become expert at reading the contours of the road. And rather than thinking several hours or even 15 minutes ahead, you become very good at taking the next several seconds as they come, and using them to find that elusive rhythm between road, bike and body that enables you to go on and on for hours without tiring too much or too quickly.  

The Mines of Moria

This is an indispensible skill when you are faced with regular climbs of 15 or 20 kms or so. The thing about climbing on a bike is that the climb becomes a quest for the Shangri La that exists around the next corner. The climb up to the col at Mezilhac late on day 2 was just such. It wouldn’t do, under these circumstances, to jump out of your saddle and try and tear up the side of the mountain. Instead, the thing is to drop into a slow, regular tempo that lets you chug slowly (sometimes almost unnoticeably, which is a good thing when you come across the scary goat women) up the hill. The Mezilhac climb it took well over 2 hours, grew progressively steeper as it went on, became more and more isolated, solitary and more than a little sinister, and then suddenly ended on top of a hill: the Shangri La from which it was possible to see Mont Blanc several hundred kms away in the Alps. And just in time for the sun to set, and for Josianne and Phillip to hand out a cold beer.

Return of the eejit

So, there you have it. A brief account of a week on a bike in the Ardéche. Writing this 10 days or so after the event (and following a week in Berlin, which will be the subject of the next set of rantings in due course), I am able to report on some of the consequences of several days riding up and down long stretches of picturesque French roads. The bruising on the nether regions has largely gone away, but an ongoing niggle in the Achilles is preventing me from returning to the gym for more 'Pompeeeee!', and the wrists and fingers remain on the tender side. I should really be able to do the split-finger 'V is for Vulcan' sign thing on both hands, but while the right hand is doing what it is told, the left is behaving like a Klingon. All worth it, though, even if the Klingons are a reminder  that, at 47, the recovery period is a wee bit longer than it was at 27 ...