September 4, 2011
The Changing light.
Yesterday evening's cloud and fresh wind heralded a change from the warm weather of late. I saw foreboding cloud move in across the maize field, the edge of which I'd camped upon, before retiring to the tent at an early five o'clock. I was tired because I hadn't slept much the previous night. I woke-up this morning to the steady drumming of rain on the fly sheet. The rain always sounds much worse undercover than it really is. It was soon to fizzle out though, and was reduced to one solitary tap dripping from a tree.
The morning was grey and subdued. It rained again but petered out on reaching the first village of the day. Here there was an Alimention open on a Sunday morning. I bough ham and biscuits for lunch, and at a bolougere two doors along, I bough bread and a ham quiche. The quiche I ate outside sat on the church steps while watching the traders in the square set out their stalls with fruit, cheese and sausages for the Sunday market.
Today, as well as being cool after the rain, the terrain is hilly. The hills are typically ten per cent gradient and very manageable with my thirty-two by twenty-one single speed. The descents last a kilometre or more and so I swish down excitingly fast, such a change from constant rapid pedaling and the laboriously slow pace endured nevertheless further north.
The road was a quiet, traffic free country road. A departmento road, D923 until I reached "Vailly Sur Sandre" around noon, where I turned right in the town centre and rode uphill, leaving town toward Sancerre on D923 too.
The church bell clanged half past twelve in the sleepy hamlet of Thon. Is glad to see a picnic table alongside the church. I filled my water bottles at the water tap meant for watering flowers sat on graves, then sat down to eat a ham sandwich.
Fortunately the rain had stayed away and it was a drying day. It remained overcast but with breaks of sunshine invigorating the spirit with sudden changing light. What a grind it would've been if the rain had persisted. I wouldn't be sitting happily enjoying my sandwich.
While refilling the water bottle at the tap before leaving, a man from a house opposite the church came over with peaches from his garden. He was clutching three in each hand and put them on the table in front of me. A gift. He smiled warmly and said something in a friendly tone of voice before turning back to his garden. Awe, the kindness of the French. I spent a little longer at the table eating the nicely ripe delicious peaches for desert.
The road continued it's gentle up and down nature, curving around brown cultivated land and pasture where fawn coloured cows raised their heads to stare at me passing. I passed farmyards with old brick barns, where tractors attached to ploughs stood still in Sunday observance. There were nice old country houses, which had well tended vegetable gardens, with rows of leeks, carrots, beans, heads of green cabbage and big orange pumpkins. The road eventually surface out upon a treeless plateau with rough furrowed ploughed land and red poppies in the verge. The view opened wide across the Loire Valley here, to a distant grey horizon on the hills opposite. In the middle distance by the river, a nuclear power station was running flat out, funneling out two great columns of steam up to the clouds from it's fat imposing cooling towers.
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I took some photos and marveled at the surroundings. Here was a bleak landscape with neither hedgerow nor but a few trees. Looking onwards, across the ploughed furrows, cars could be seen moving along the horizon as if in slow-motion, toward a curve in the road just ahead. Cycling on around the curve, I continued at a right angle to the road hitherto and before long, cresting the horizon, I saw vineyard clad hillsides, among which was the town of Sancerre perched on a hilltop. I stopped at a crossroads there, drawn by the sight of abseiling off the hillside. I took photos then set off again. A long descend before a steep climb up to the town centre.
Sat outside on the pavement seating of a hotel bar, I ordered a presson grand, which is a large tankard of draft beer. It was five Euros. Beer from a supermarche costs a quarter as much and tastes much the same, but, at lease here was a great ambiance, sitting watching people while away Sunday afternoon, perhaps spending two hours on a drink. Not for me, I drank up as it had already gone five o'clock and soon I would have to find a place to camp.
There were only rows and rows of vines on the way back downhill from town. At the bottom however, the road onwards followed alongside the Loire Canal, so I rode on the towpath, reckoning I'd come upon a quiet place.
I had only gone a kilometre when I came to a wide grassy picnic area. Timely, as the beer had turned my legs to jelly even though I'd only drank a half litre. It was good to sit down and be cycling no more today. The intention was to eat, read and write in that order until dark, then put the tent up. Just then, a car turned off the road and approached slowly. It stopped across from me by the canal edge and an old man got out. He stood there looking into the canal in contemplation then came over and began talking at me. I did my best to follow. He by degrees slowed down and spoke a mix of French and broken English. I told him Is from Ireland and he told me he'd been on a fishing holiday in Ireland. "Beaucoup pub et dancers" he chuckled. He said that he has fished here for years, that the fish used to be big and plentiful, but not any more, they're all gone. They are no bigger than this, he indicated with outstretched hands with forefingers about eight inches apart. He then laid his head against upheld joined hands in imitation of sleep and bid me bonsoir.
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