Bad news from America: Poitiers to Avon-les-Roches

March 17, 2015

Who wouldn't want to live in a place called Wettened Water?

WELL, this is no good. The wheel has yet to make its first turn but Andrea has raised the first objection. There are American saints, she insists on the guestbook. More than a dozen of them. So, for all the influence I have in the world of the good or the great, I'm not going to make Bud the first saint between Mexico and Canada.

In my defence, I must insist that it has always been Americans themselves who've told me that they've produced no holy ones. Altogether better at sinning, they reckoned, than saintliness. And taking the evidence at face value, I was inclined to agree.

So, either Andrea must use her papal influence and have all these supposed American holies de-beatified, which she seems prepared not to do, or I have to put the bad news to Bud when I see him. Maybe a mark of saintliness is coping with personal frustration.

And personal frustration I had this morning. I have always convinced myself that the end of March and the start of April marked the beginnings of good weather. Not summer itself, maybe, but a promise of lambs in fields and of birdsong making itself heard over the gentle rustling of leaves.

Instead, this morning I set off in a land of whiteness, a coating of frost, and a headwind that gnawed at my cheeks. The world can be a cruel and uncaring place.

The Poitevin, as the area around Poitiers is called, has never ranked highly in guide books to the scenic roads of France. It is competent country, never flamboyant yet never disappointing. It's a land of rolling lanes and pale magnolia bungalows and of empty fields and trees grown as crops. Skylark country, with hourless possibilities of looking into the sky for the lark ascending.

And yet a land of sudden surprises. I rounded a bend and drifted rather than pedalled into the small town of Dissay to find the sort of moated château that I'd always fancied I could enjoy calling home. I don't know who actually does live there now - the post office here expects you to put your name on mail boxes but I saw neither box nor name.

The château at Dissay: perhaps not the cause of unalloyed joy when it was announced

There's a board outside, though, which says that it's been there since the 15th century, when the bishop of Poitiers decided it should be built. Usually, in those days, deciding that something had to be built didn't come as good news to the locals. It was they who were expected to build it, generally without pay and not always with wholesome meals. Places like this could take generations to put up, so that I've no idea whether Pierre d'Amboise, the man who decided on it, ever got to live there himself.

Maybe he knew something about the children's graves also advertised on the town notice board. I looked around for clues but saw nothing.

My day wound on, neither exciting nor dull, until I ended up on a narrow road, rather too busy for my mood or comfort, that I couldn't avoid. I'd had enough. Ninety kilometres against the wind is joy neither to body nor soul and the prospect of a gentle rise at which I'd have scoffed at the start of the day was enough to get me squeezing the brakes for a moment of relief.

It was then that I saw the sign. Camping in the next village. Camping à la ferme, in fact. But camping anywhere short of a bog would have done. Wheels were turned, as a long-gone British magazine would have said, and I was there.

It was shut.

Decorations like this were all the rage once. Considered quite cheerful, in fact

A woman and a yapping dog emerged on the top stone step of a stone farmhouse edged by unwound hoses and discarded wellington boots.

"It's not open, I'm afraid," she said. "The season hasn't started yet."

I put on my best Unfortunate Orphan expression. I'd already seen that the supposed camping was little more than an area of grass, fenced from the farmyard and the road but only as closed as any patch of grass could be. The toilets and showers weren't working but there's worse in life than that.

"Couldn't I just put my tent there for just a night?", the Unfortunate Orphan asked. He'd have limped and sobbed and looked wounded by life if the need had arisen. "I'm very tired."

And so it was that I slept on an opened unopened campground, cold and hungry but happy to get into my bag and sleep until dawn.

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