Camping in America
| Heart | 1 | Comment | 0 | Link |
Happy memories that evening. I wasn't sure how far to ride and freewheeling through Castelnau and seeing a sign for a camp site persuaded me that was far enough. I turned left, freewheeled a hundred metres, then looped through a narrow park that led to a swimming pool.
No sign of a camp site, except an oval of unpaved road to accommodate camping-cars and caravans. And nobody except a woman who sat outside the swimming pool like a tricoteuse.
"The Syndicat is shut," she said, referring to the combination of tourist office and chamber of trade that operates in many towns. I raised an eyebrow, taking it as bad news. The syndicat would be in charge of the camp site, if only in its spare time.
"You can stay, though. Nobody's going to come round for money tonight. If they don't come round in the morning, then tant pis... too bad."
I put up my tent in the shade of a tree and a shoulder-height hedge and beneath the embankment of the road that I'd ridden to find the swimming pool. Beside me, two wooden chalets optimistically installed for those most determined to stay in the village, and opposite them a shower block with hot showers. The grass, even in a drought, was green and lush. For nothing, it was the perfect deal.
And why the memories? Because it took me back to cycling across America. This had the air of camping in a city park, which in effect is what it was, something that doesn't happen in those parts of Europe I know best. Parks are for sniffing flowers, feeding ducks, watching girls. They are not places to stick a tent and string up dripping Lycra. I was back in the American Midwest.
I rode here through Montréal, which only coincidentally shares a name with its Canadian cousin. There's no doubt which was named first: the Gers town dates from the 13th century and even then it was built on the site of a Roman settlement created when years had only two numbers. It's a busy place now, a wiggle of roads to get over the river. The back streets are interesting but even the tourist office acknowledges the town is "a little chaotic" in the way it looks after its heritage.
Just west, up a hill, is a village too small to be chaotic. Larressingle is where abbots and bishops made their home. It's a
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
tourist haunt in summer, the local industry being relieving visitors of the weight of their wallets, but it's worth the trip to ride through the big stone archway into the narrow streets.
Otherwise, the second half of today represented most of my adieu to the hilly Gers. I'd recovered enough from my eye-swivelling ride to Mourenx to enjoy today even though my computer showed it was twice as hilly and my face showed it had been in the sun and against the wind. I cooked spaghetti and sauce on a table in front of one of those wooden chalets, padlocked my bike to a tree, arranged a screen of wet laundry in front of it and went off for a drink. I found a bar beside the town hall, across the square from the yellow and blue of the post office and down the road from a small honey-coloured church with its large, square tower capped by a tilted cone and a clock which overlapped the belfry window. Jesus stood beside it on his crucifix, a pot of flowers below his feet. He leaned 15 degrees to the left, looking to see if the post office had reopened.
I downed a beer, looked at my maps and went back to camping in America.
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 0 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |