April 7, 2015
Into the wind: Parthenay to Poitiers
TRAINS don't run from Parthenay any more. I know that because I woke up feeling grumpy and hard done-by and I wondered about riding round the corner to the station, in hope. So I did, pondering the idea of a train to save chewing the handlebar tape all day into a headwind. But for all that Parthenay is handsomely equipped with the appropriate building, it's buses rather than trains that run from there these days.
Well, what the heck? We weren't put on this earth to enjoy ourselves. And so off I set into the rising wind.
Was is it as bad as I thought it would be? No, of course it wasn't. As my mother used to say as she dragged me round to a dentist who declined to use anaesthetic: "Anticipation is worse than participation." She was wrong, by the way. And take away clichés and aphorisms and I doubt she'd ever have spoken at all.
It's not glorious country round here. There were stiff little hills in the chilly air of the first hour but then the scenery grew tired and lay down for a nap and all was flat and snoringly dull. I could have been riding across an ancient sea bed. Or an experimental area for establishing prairies. Open and as windy as heck, of course, but I'd had a tailwind for four days so I was in no position to complain.
I paused to look at memorials to Resistance fighters and sometimes ordinary people who'd been slaughtered by the Germans. I stood outside a junior château and wondered where they kept their bikes.
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And in time I skirted the research-and-entertainment extravaganza of Futuroscope, ran back into low hills, walked up the last, turned left down a long unmade road and bumped back to my bed-and-breakfast.
I'd have liked to make the last day sound so much more exciting. Yes, it was enjoyable, because few bike rides aren't. But exciting? Well, you can only work with the material you have, can't you?
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