Broke But Not Broken

After a week on the road it seemed like a good idea to take a rest day — restock, clean up, let the legs recover from the initial push. The trouble was Grandpré, the town we’d camped in, was tiny, with few amenities and nothing much to recommend a day off. The situation was complicated further by our first proper bout of rain, heavy rain, with no sign of easing. We packed sopping wet tents away in it, getting thoroughly drenched ourselves in the process, and decided instead to ride the twenty-seven miles to Sainte-Menehould, a bigger town with a few hotels. It rained sideways with a strong headwind the entire way. Some rest day.

My crib.

On arrival we wolfed down a pâté poulet, then went scouting for a hotel — there seemed to be just the two. The first was closed, so we headed for the other, Le Cheval Rouge, which looked far too classy for the state we were in, a restaurant occupying the entire ground floor with no obvious way through to reception. Looking every bit the wet dog, I parted my hair to one side and strolled in past sharp linen-clothed tables full of patrons enjoying their Sunday dinner. Thankfully the bar doubled as reception, and the man behind it clocked me straight away, found us a room for fifty-five euros, and even opened the kitchen door round the back so we could store the bikes. Up in the room we used the bathtub to do our laundry and caught, quite by accident, the Queen’s Jubilee flotilla making its way down the Thames in the pouring rain.

Clean jerseys, if still-damp socks, we packed up and left the next morning — no rain this time, but the same bad headwinds, and we both still felt a little cheated out of our rest day. That evening’s campsite was probably our worst yet, thick with bugs, the shower and toilet block uncleaned. Some men were painting the fences around reception; it clearly wasn’t quite holiday season in France, which might explain the state of the place, seemingly untouched since the previous September. We’d unintentionally enjoyed a drink every night of the trip so far, and that looked set to end until we decided to ride back a couple of miles to a shop in the last town for a bottle of wine to share. So it continued.

For any cyclist reading this and weighing up a tour of France, here are the phrases I leaned on most: “Parlez-vous anglais?” — a total cop-out, but one that resolves the situation about three-quarters of the time, since their English is usually better than my French. “Bonsoir! Vous avez une chambre, ou camping, pour deux personnes?” for the evenings. And, most important of all, the breakfast order at any pâtisserie, my favourite being “Une pain au chocolat et une pain aux raisins, s’il vous plaît” — and never forget your merci.

I’d grown a little embarrassed by my poor French, and resolved, as a three-year project, to bring three languages up to a reasonable standard — starting with the easiest, brushing up my German, before turning to French and then Spanish.

Feeling leggy over the following days, we rolled on to Langres for a four-star camping experience, followed by a blistering hot sweat-fest into Besançon. Every town in this part of France seemed perched atop the steepest available hill, dotted with the forts of settlements hundreds of years old, which made for an agonising climb at the end of each ride, right when we were at our weakest, lactic acid screaming in our thighs. It was a strange contrast to the USA — when I’d rolled west there, following the same settlement pattern, each town sat squarely in the flattest part of the valley, built for farming. It made sense, once I thought about it.

We arrived in Besançon right at rush hour, with little idea quite how big the city was. Traffic made it impossible to navigate toward the centre; we were overheating, exhausted, and out of battery on the Garmin, stranded in the middle of a commercial district. The first motel-looking place we found claimed to be full, though the car park sat empty. The second looked full too but gave us a room despite some visible reluctance — understandably, since they clearly didn’t relish two homeless, stinking cyclists wandering through a complex full of business men attending some function. Eal had managed to lose a glove somewhere, and I’d led us on a few wrong turns earlier in the day. No rest days was starting to catch up with us; we were both making mistakes and nursing tired legs. A shower, some food, a beer in hand and a proper bed soon brightened things, though. It’s all character-building, I told myself. Some people have to work for a living.

In need of hugs…

You probably don’t want us at your hotel.

Post-ride refreshment.