August 31, 2011
Tout Direction. (The way onward from Rennes.)
The hostel breakfast is a buffet of bread, jams, yogurts and two types of cereal. This my final morning I tried the Coco Pops for a change. I like chocolate and I like a little sugar but Coco Pops tastes as though the sugar has spilled over into the cereal bowl. I am sticking to Cornflakes in future sparingly sprinkled with sugar.
The breakfast room is a glasshouse, an observatory as it's called, it looks out upon the garden and in big letters across a number of glass sections someone from South America has stenciled on "Quando Necesamos Luz de Pachamama".
Staying in the hostel while looking for accommodation are quite a lot of students beginning the new semester at the University of Rennes. One such student is a young man from Italy that says it's not easy as there aren't that many apartments suitable for students and everything is just so expensive here in Rennes. I told him about my cycle-tour of course, he saw me arrive and showed such an eagerness to know. I got the feeling that he wanted to do the same as me. He said my bike looks like a space-ship, supposedly as it's all silver, or maybe because it's a means to fulfillment of a dream. Later he waved goodbye from an upstairs window as I pushed the bike with all I process across the courtyard and out the gate, he remaining in the mundane life of looking out the window wondering, while I continued in search of the dream but really just living and riding the bike.
I cycled away from the hostel on the cycle path alongside the canal to the main avenue and cycled alongside it to a roundabout where I took the turning "TOUT DIRECTION" shown on the bright green sign. The roundabouts came regularly then and I kept following the road indicated as Tout Direction until a roundabout thereon the bright green sign were LE MAN, ANGERS, two cities, the former to the east and the later south, either direction would have done then to escape the urban spread of big roads until I would reach countryside.
Weak sunshine earlier, now gone, murky and dull skies as rain moved in on the divided highway ahead. The last three days could not have been finer and now my first day back on the bike Is about to get soaked, my very thoughts as big drops of rain pelted the road while I pushed in under pine trees on the sloped embankment to put on my rain jacket. I rode on alongside the sloshing hiss of vehicles wheels and spray expecting a miserable day ahead but then the rain slackened and soon ceased altogether. The cloud just as quickly started thinning and steam could be seen rising from the road as sunshine brightened the way ahead.
The road had a shoulder so far which was as well given the weight of traffic, but, soon I came onto a roundabout where the road became a autoroute with a cycling forbidden sign on the sliproad down. The alternative sliproad from the roundabout led to a narrow leafy lane but Is soon to realise it ran parallel with the road back toward Rennes. Back at the roundabout the only other way I could see was a single track through mature long grass which I rode along until it came out onto a tree-lined lane way. This went roughly in the way I wanted. It led to a crossroads where I turned onto a quiet country road which meandered onwards around the edge of fields wherein black and white cows raised their heads to gaze as I passed. I climbed a gentle hill where the road swung round and I could look back at the white high rise skyline of the city peeping up behind gentle hills. Most of the time the hum of the autoroute wasn't far off which was a guild as I still didn't have much of an idea of where I was.
I reached the village of Saint Ameri where I came to a halt outside a Tobac (a tobacconist and bar). I needed to buy a lighter as the one I'd got didn't work the last day I tried to light my camping stove. Two men stood at the bar paused and glanced around at me when I entered the Tobac then continued a mute conversation. I said bonjour to the woman behind the the counter and knowing a word for lighter but not knowing how to ask, I just say briquet. She looked aghast, then confused. Trying again using my hand, I mime someone lighting a cigarette.
I rode over a level-crossing and the church bells rang out twelve midday as I paused in sunshine in the village centre; here, I saw a green route sign for a place called "Chateaugiron" which was on my map so I set off that way. The green route signs just about pointed me in a different direction at every crossroads I came to. I cycled along leafy country roads, reaching Chateaugiron and then cycling onwards I saw a sign for a place called Janze which on looking at my map, saw that it was back by the autoroute south, my point of reference.
Approaching Janze feeling famish shortly after one o'clock, then seeing a restaurant on the way into town I gave in to my prudent nature with money and stop, lean the bike against the window outside and go in.
The waitress showed me three choices of fare from which I chose boeuf. I paid eleven Euros at the bar and took a seat at a table. The restaurant had a plain interior with full shop window front. The few other occupied tables sat clients both in suits and casuals, most lifted their eyes from plates smeared with sauce and what remained of meat, scrutinizing sweaty me where I sat in tattered cycling cloths. The plate came with a steak the width and thickness of my fist in a puddle of brown sauce and with a garish of chips to one side. The sauce tasted of blue cheese which I like and the meat once I sliced into it was pink and juicy and tasted delicious.
Riding forth after lunch, traffic was backed up in the town centre. A lot of people in black had congregated outside the church, then looking through the forest of black figures, I saw police outriders and a cortege slowly coming up the street on that side. I got past and out of town where I stopped at a big supermarche of the "SUPER U" chain which I'm convinced really means Super Me. Flattering myself, super me, I buy what's needed for the evening, not much after such a lunch, pasta sauce and those delicious chocolate "Au Beurre" biscuits.
The large supermarche car park fronted the road I rode into town on and at a roundabout up by the corner began the road I would ride out; it led to another bigger roundabout, above and over with slip roads down to the road I had planned on taking onwards. Cars and trucks swished by in both directions constantly and there was only a minimal half metre wide roughly surfaced shoulder. I only rode about two hundred metres feeling lucky to remain intact before carefully crossing over when a gap in the traffic allowed and rode back to the sliproad, back up to the roundabout. My only alternative was cycling back past the supermarche and riding five kilometre back the way I came before lunchtime. I kept on going through the afternoon along quiet country roads like before not having much of an idea of where I was though roughly in the right direction. By days end, I reckoned I had covered ninety kilometres but it was barely forty-five kilometres as the crow flys from Rennes where I camped in woodland.
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