October 1, 2013
Day 75: Rochefort to La Rochelle
The hotel put forward a very creditable buffet breakfast, with fruit, yogurt, cheese, ham. croissants, homemade toast and jam, orange juice squeezer, etc. They even filled my coffee thermos (completely!). It's a husband and wife operation, and they went out of their way for us, even putting our shorts liners and socks in the hotel dryer.
Rochefort is a town of the "white stone" type, and retains a very old look. In fact it easily recalled for me the days of French colonial maritime power, and the establishment of New France (Lower Canada). A market near the centre of town had colourful fruits and vegetables, but did not overwhelm by having a lot of unique local stuff.
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We found the bike path with a mixture of common sense and the Android program Locus. Locus has the advantage that it supports Open Street Maps (OSM) and OSM knows Eurovelo 1 by name. Oh, it also helped that the path goes right by the train station!
Now our strategIc planning department noticed that to the west of our route lay the town of Fouras, and from Fouras a ferry goes to Ile d'Aix, and from Ile d'Aix a ferry goes to La Rochelle, and maybe north of that, to Les Sables d'Olennes. Les Sables d'Olennes!, why that's beyond the advertised area where the bike path is wrecked. Jackpot! Surprisingly, for the folks who scoffed all the way in to and out of Los Vegas in a previous year, we invested our time and kms in this dream.
It fell apart pretty quickly. Though a gaggle of municipal workers in St. Laurent thought the plan was good, at Point la Fumee, where our first ferry would go to the island, they could not guarantee we would ever get off the island. So we went back to Tourist Information in Fouras, and they said any onward ferries did not take bikes. Ok, ok we said, still in the dream, how about ferry from La Rochelle north. Maybe, they said, check under the clock tower in La Rochelle.
So the slightly disheveled but still hopeful dreamers cranked their way back to square one, and again headed for La Rochelle. It had not been a total loss, though. We came to appreciate the military history of Rochefort more, by seeing the offshore Fort Bruard, and the fortifications at Fouras.
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Half way up the coast on the way to La Rochelle, though, we had our own military encounter. What we take to be an aggressive Gamba jumped in front of Dodie in the path and threatened her with upraised pincers. She deftly swerved around this attempted holdup, but I stopped and whipped out my camera (not to hand it over but to record the scene). Things deteriorated from there, and a stick fight ensued between Dodie and the googly eyed aggressor. It all changed when a car came along. A truce was declared, while we made sure the car did not smoosh Dodie and the Gamba both. After that demonstration of common interest, peace was declared and we all went on our separate ways.
Our separate way led through Chatelaillon Plage, where again we had a beach community, with many little cabins in places, and many elegant houses in others. Overall, it was not too exciting.
If you want to call this excitement, though, we can report another flat in Dodie's Decathlon rear tire. Both yesterday's and today's had the same culprit, a white tooth shaped tiny pebble, that easily pushed through the BMX tread. Maybe Schwalbe is not so bad after all. One interim solution we are thinking about is to install a liner. That, of course, would mean taking everything apart one more time. Maybe we will wait for the next flat to do it. We will also need a bike shop in which to buy a liner. Meanwhile, I have firmly instructed Dodie not to ride over any further tooth shaped pebbles.
Exciting scenes did begin to mount, though, as we approached La Rochelle. We passed through a massive marina with hundreds or thousands of moored boats and lots of onshore boat services. Then we came to the La Rochelle inner harbour.
The harbour is guarded by one stand alone tower, and then a pair that straddle the entrance. A chain used to be stretched from one to the other to close the entrance.
The inner harbour has various slips and channels, making a varied environment for the tourists, cyclists, and motorists to circulate around. The harbour is also lined with interesting old buildings and in turn with cafes and hotels. It all made for a fascinating experience.
We did find the clock tower, and near it all the boats we did not get on from Isle d'Aix. They looked like they could carry bikes if they wanted to (I.e. they were big enough), but it did not look like they actually did do any bike transport. We investigated the possibility of a ferry from here north as well. We found that there is such a ferry, but it only runs in the season, which this is not. So that means we are back to finding roads north, and our dreams of a ferry way out are totally smashed. Sniff.
Naturally, with such a beautiful town, there were swarms of tourists all around. Since we are tourists too, we are fairly patient with people getting in our way, blocking our photos, etc. However something was subtly, or not so subtly, different here. The tourists were more cow like, wandering aimlessly into and out of the bike lanes, blocking up the passerelles, banging into our flags, or tripping over our bike stands. All we can think of is that the season ended yesterday and what we have left is those still trying to find the exits.
The ended season also meant that the municipal camping of La Rochelle had closed. However in very nearby Port Neuve it was still open. So our day ended essentially at La Rochelle. Finding and possibly fighting the D105 etc. will have to wait for morning.
Today's ride: 66 km (41 miles)
Total: 5,055 km (3,139 miles)
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