Day 74: Point de Grave to Rochefort

September 30, 2013

No tourists came to our WC to disturb us in the night. In fact it was dead quiet, the area deserted. There was one noise though, and it took half the night for my sleeping brain to figure it out and rest easy. The noise sounded like thunder, which is disturbing because of its affinity to rain. In fact, it was the ocean, the surf! Duh. Dodie admits the same dumb process was going on in her head during the night as well.

When the alarm went at 6, there was no hitting of snooze, because the ferry departure time was 7:15. It turned out that without any breakfast cooking we can go from fast asleep to rolling away in 40 minutes, in the dark. Not bad.

Early morning ferry ride across the Gironde

The ferry cost about €10 for both of us and the bikes, and landed us in dim and foggy Royon. Despite the low visibility we could see that again our environment had changed. Most buildings were no longer two toned but were now all white. (To be fair, a certain number of two toned ones did appear, and these, like in Soulac, each had their "names" on a tile just under the roof peak.

As we passed out of town we entered a sort of upscale beach playland, with many fancy houses. Then, around, La Palmyre a further playland with golf course, zoo, kids' playland, marina, etc. The area is criss crossed with bike trails, making it a logical choice for Velodysee planners. However, after showing us the upscale beach scenes, the path wnadered off cross country, for 15-20 km of nothing but forest. During this time, the on and off rain that had had us crazily putting our rain gear on and off, decided to be a continuous downpour.

Someone has played with the word amende. Merde is shit.

Atlanti beach. There are dozens of named beaches along here.

The climate zone here is a bit of a mystery to us. How about these sort of succulents?

Downpour in a forest can be ok, because you can just plod along inside your rain gear, thinking of other things. But too much downpour in a forest can make you cold, wet, and despondent. We were cold, wet, and despondent when we finally burst out of the forest, but where? Well for one thing, where was right in front of a restaurant. Our baguette and cheese lunch plan got thrown out as we dove in to the shelter of the restaurant.

In the restaurant were some local workmen, and it had a plat du jour. So (according to Peter Mayle) these are the conditions for a fine lunch. Our lunch was ok, but it seems no matter what, at heart it always turns out to be poulet et frites. In this case, even though rice and vegetables were nominally on the daily sheet, the waiter asserted that salad and frites was what it came with. Actually to be fair it was not poulet frites but steak frites, and even though the steak was listed as hache, it was a thin but whole steak.

Though it was still raining and our stuff was wet, we suited up and set off again. It turned out we were just over a rather big bridge from Marennes. We followed our bike route signage toward Marennes. We could see the very tall church of the town off to our right, but the route seemed to want to bypass it. Then we came to a big sign identifying the start of a provisional route.

Oh,oh, we we keenly aware of problems with the route north of La Rochelle, but no one had mentioned this. The provisional signage was good, so off we went. We got to visit Hier-Brouage and faithfully followed the signs until they dumped us pretty much in front of the church in Marennes and disappeared. Actually they disappeared more like in front of the Tourist Information, and we temporarily gloried in the idea of going in and asking them what the hell! They saw us coming, though, and were closed for all day.

We were standing in front of the Information stewing about this when a lady approached me, having seen the Canadian flags. She started babbling about Samuel de Champlain and Quebec. Champlain founded Quebec City, of course. She said Champlain was born in Marennes no actually in Brouage. I checked Wikipedia later. There has been a debate about La Rochelle vs Brouage for some years. No matter, due to the benificense of the Velodysee people, we will have been to any and all places mentioned before they are done!

Nearing Marennes, possible swarms of aggressive "gambas". what are gambas?

And then we are dumped back in downtown Marennes. I asked Dodie to look peevish.

Since we had been dumped at the church, we had a look at it. It has a very tall tower. A passing lady told us this is because it served as a marker so ships could find their way in to the harbour. She also suggested we could head straight to Rochefort by D road. Is it safe, I asked. Sure, she replied. So off we went.

The D road quickly morphed into a high speed highway. The rain continued. Grrr. Now one of the reasons we pay so much attention and money on the subject of good tires, is we hate the idea of a flat in the rain on a high speed highway. So this is where Dodie's Decathlon tire chose to succumb to a sharp pebble and go flat. We walked the bike onto the grass of a roundabout, and began the process of unpacking and then pulling the wheel. The rain intensified. Nearby a man in a car had a flat too. But a tow truck came and rescued him. Theoretically we have a similar coverage, that applies to bikes. I laughingly suggested we call our automobile association. In fact, we relied on staying focussed, and the fact that we can do this in our sleep anyway. Soon enough, we were on our way.

Our way carried on with the no shoulder road, though. So we stayed focussed, riding the white line very straight. That is, until a huge bridge hove into sight. It had blasting traffic and was steep and tall. I said, look, we survived this far, let's try it. We cycled up to the bridge approaches and were surprised to find that it had a narrow cycle lane. We walked up this, still making sure to follow a straight line. The vehicle lanes were narrow and bike lane or not it was very scary.

So we arrrived in Rochefort late, wet, and pretty shaky. Clearly a hotel would be a good idea. The first one we found looked very dodgy, but at the second the proprietor came out as we were parking the bikes and discussed a room with us on the street. He turned out to be a cyclist too, and his friendly wife set us up with the bikes in a garage and the tent spread out to dry too.

Our socks and stuff are still wet, by by tomorrow we should be back in shape and ready to tackle the obstruction described by Trish and by Joanne in their blogs. We have a rather complicated roster of probably deadly D roads planned. Like Luke's ill fated comrade in the attack on the Death Star in Star Wars, we will go through it, chanting all the while Stay on target

A flat in the rain on a tough road. We hate that! And the truck in the background is not for us.

Today's ride: 76 km (47 miles)
Total: 4,989 km (3,098 miles)

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