Je t'aime moi non plus

Labastide, or the next village beyond it, marks the move into the forest of the Landes. The word means "bogs" or "moors", from the days when there was little there except peat and dark, brackish water. There's still a lot of both now and the water is never far beneath the soil. But the area has been grown into a huge, triangular pine forest, one side being the Atlantic and another the Gironde and Garonne rivers running down to Bordeaux.

Someone told me it was the largest man-made forest in Europe, or perhaps

The Landes, usually flat but not always, usually quiet but troubled by logging trucks. A love-hate affair.

the largest man-made pine forest. It's been there since the 18th century, when the trees were planted to stop France vanishing into the sea and blowing away into the air.

You can have a love-hate affair with the Landes: Je t'aime moi non plus as French puts it. It has a charm and the timbered houses in unfenced clearings are glorious. But it is in the end a commercial area. The trees are grown for profit, planted in lines to grow to the same height. The roads have been developed from logging trails and the loggers, while courteous, see the area as theirs and drive accordingly.

The loggers are an angry bunch at the moment. A year back, a hurricane swept the area and blew down huge tracts of their trees. The roots go only so far into the light soil and a third to half the forest came down. The devastation was enough that it

took four days to get through to the last cut-off houses and weeks longer to reconnect their electricity. As the blow swept inland it lifted roofs off buildings, threw over walls and trees, swept cars off the road. Here, and across the border in Spain, around a dozen people died.

The capricious nature of the wind could clear an area large enough for a small nation state but, in the middle, leave a copse untouched. Elsewhere, a single house provided enough shelter to leave a line of trees standing while those all around were flattened.

All this had happened a decade earlier and the trees had only just regrown. The foresters, who couldn't or wouldn't get insurance, were ruined. The president declared it a national disaster but the extent or the alleged tardiness of the response is shown in the ad hoc signs reading "Our misery ignored" and "The state ignores our distress" and "Replant the forest? Why bother?"

Cut up, hauled away and stacked: piles of wood stand beside the road.

I laid off unprecedented kilometres in this green but undemanding countryside in which there was little for which to stop. The accent changed slowly to Basque, a Spanish-like drawl that hung to words like a mist to a cobweb. The wind, such as there was in the trees, pushed me gently. But, above, the sky turned from uneven blue to a steady grey.

I looked for somewhere to camp. Forests usually offer so many places to hide a tent and yet remain close to the road. But the ground was brackish and scattered with branches from fallen trees sawn into the logs heaped beside the road, their worth cut off at the stump by the surfeit of supply. More, signs reminded me of the dry summer and ordered me not to strike a match. No food, no washing, no coffee... No thanks.

I rode into Rion-des-Landes, a village beaming in star-rays from a big white church at its centre. Villages always tell you,

We here at the Overhead Power Lines Appreciation Society would like you to know that this style of pylon is known as "the cat".

thanks to small pointers, what they offer by way of commerce or amusement. There would be a sign for a camp site if there were one. But there wasn't. Nor, so far as I could see, a hotel. But up a side road a sign pointed me to a chambre d'hôtes - a bed-and-breakfast - and I gave it a try.

The dogs took more notice of the bell than the owner. I was just leaving when a balding, comfortable-looking man in cardigan and slippers came round the side of the house with an air that suggested "Why are you here? Nobody comes here."

He was Married Man. He was allowed to see who was at the door - eventually - but not to take decisions on bed and breakfast. That was his wife's domain. And she said it wasn't possible, with many apologies and I hope it doesn't spoil your journey on such a fine bicycle but what a lot of luggage you have and mustn't that be hard going up hills, but she... By then I'd lost interest in why I couldn't stay. Her nervousness in telling me she hadn't washed the sheets or that she had taken a colony of Afghans or that a wild dog had taken possession of the house just had to run its course.

When she had emptied her soul, she said a woman on the other side of the village also ran a bed-and-breakfast and that she'd give her a call. In her distant lair, the other woman, I could make out, said she could put me up but that there was some problem I couldn't discern. Nervous Woman returned to the door, her husband standing in the retreat of the hallway to observe how these things should be done if only men would leave women to get on with things.

"She says she will be delighted to see you. But she says would you leave it a few minutes? She has just coloured her hair and she says if you turn up now you'll get the fright of your life!"

We all laughed, genuinely, and I set off to take my time riding to the address she gave me. But it turned out to be out of the village, far from anywhere to eat. More, it was on the other side of what looked like an inexpensive, unassuming hotel with a restaurant and a bar. I never did get to see the woman with her coloured hair, nor suffer the fright.

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