"the journey" Continues to Brittany.

August 24, 2011

I met Ian from Durham aboard the ferry. He was cycling to a friend's house a day's ride from Roscoff. He had the face of someone that had lived a hard life and at dinner when I sat with a can of beer before me said he never touches the stuff nowadays. He told me that before he gave-up, he'd get stupidly drunk most days, but now he's reformed his life. He rode a cheap mountainbike and carried his belongings in a rucksack. He had his route plotted out in a booklet of pages downloaded from Google maps with descriptions written underneath.

Tall and bony with long straggly hair, he looked not unlike Keith Richards, though he wasn't much over forty years old. He said that he had waisted many years of his life through mindless drinking in which he lost his girlfriend and his son. But he put drinking behind him and feels happier everyday now that he has. He had a good mind, and a good heart and talked nonstop. We talked much about the global environmental crisis. He pointed out that, Britain with a population approaching seventy-million is the fifth most densely populated country in the world yet barely has capacity to grow enough food to feed twenty-million inhabitants which is the main unsustainability scenario, too many of us humans. He didn't quite say how he supported himself apart from alleging that his money was invested in a safe place. He then got on to talking about the friend whom the purpose of his visit to Brittany is. He thought that maybe he would like to move over to France too as he preferred the lifestyle.

The ferry docked in the port of Rosscoff before we knew it and drivers were returning to the car-deck where disembarkation was already underway as we relaxed over a continental breakfast, Ian making "yum" sounds in appreciation as he ate a chocolate croissant while I ate a delicious pastry thing called "au raisen". A little later we entered the noise of the big hollow car-deck below where all the cars had driven off but there was still the echoing din of trucks lurching forward down the ramp and coming back, the whining din of the returning dock truck to hitch-up and draw off another trailer.

I cycled out and down the ramp into the open air catching and passing the tail-end of the slow line of cars; and continue along the white line to the gate where a policeman held up his hand in a stop-signal and says "bonjour", and says something which I just about get the meaning, "passport". I hand it over and he glances at it, smiles and hands it back biding me Bon Voyage. Ian had already past and was out of sight, keen to get going early. A look at the watch showed eight instead of seven thought it only looked to be seven o'clock as low rays of early sunlight escaped between cloud bank and the grey hinterland.

Don't know what to make of this, though, it perhaps conjures up English stereotypes of Frenchmen as the sign could be for the benefit of English motorists coming off the cross channel ferry. Really I don't Know and I could be making a fool of myself too.

I followed Ian's route, the D769 which avoided going into the city of Rosscoff, instead it turned inland toward the faint sun, rolling up and down past muddy fields of cabbages and treeless plough-land. I was cycling on the right-hand side of the road again and measuring distance in kilometres instead of miles. It was twenty kilometres to the town of Morlaix and although the traffic was heavy, cars and even white van-drivers all slowed and past giving me lots of space.

Reaching the edge of town, I past lots of shinny steel train tracks splaying out wide and entering a railway station just before I begin to descend down a steep street, but then brake, as I'm instantly drawn by the smell of freshly baked bread coming from a bolangere on the left. The woman stopped from cleaning the window and looked on bemused as I slowed to a halt and continued to watch with interest until I came forward to enter the shop. When she stepped behind the counter and said Bonjour, Is instantly smitten by her young woman charm. She smiled as I grappled with limited french words and blushed and smiled even more looking at me with brown eyes which dazzled as I make the extra effort.

Outside, I sat on next door's doorstep pulling off pieces of delicious smelling baguette, putting it into my mouth and shewing while looking around the empty street in morning shade. It brought back memories of my first day on my very first cycle-tour (in France too) twenty-three years earlier. The shutters began to open on the windows of the house and it would only be a short time until the door was opened by the owner on whose doorstep I sat.

I freewheeled down the steep hill into the centre of town where I marvel up at the railway viaduct high above the pavement cafes. I lingered on in Morlaix awhile before setting off for a serious day's ride, first on a quiet D road passing through natural forest and then in the afternoon Is in a town again where I met two German cyclists sitting outside a cafe. They spoke passable French as was demonstrated everytime the waiter came out, but in anycase they told me about the Nantes canal which they were cycling and which past nearby, so I finished the day on the canal towpath and then wrote many pages about my first day in France much of it not interesting enough to make anything of for this journal.

The viaduct above the street in Morlaix.

A sweeping bend with a quintessential French Auberge of yesteryear.

A deserted village between noon and two o'clock.

A colourful and interesting sculpture. In France but especially in Brittany, people are passionate about the bicycle.

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