August 1, 2013
Date with the pros: La Ronde - Les Essarts
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I KNEW there was a reason Les Essarts sounded familiar. It was a connection with cycling that I couldn't place but which was strengthened by a wall painting that celebrated the Tour de France.
And then it came to me when we stopped at a small shop full of the usual things that small shops stock - but also posters of the Europcar professional team. Because that was why it was familiar: Europcar and the sponsors that preceded it has its headquarters in a manor house on the edge of what must once have been its stately grounds.
"They're not often there," said the shopkeeper, a dark-haired man of perhaps 35. "But when they are, I always go round there for some autographs and they've always been very friendly."
He offered us a wide photo of the team, lined up as on an old-fashioned school picture. We declined, wondering how we'd keep it safe in our panniers. He put it to one side and produced a box of individual portraits, the whole team wrapped in transparent plastic. And that we accepted.
Europcar isn't one of the great teams in the peloton but it has a special place for Frenchmen because of the boyish charm of its manager, Jean-René Bernaudeau, who as much as he can keeps the team all French. His simple philosophy, that it is better to race honestly than to win, that much money doesn't often produce much happiness, has produced an unusual loyalty. His star rider, Thomas Voeckler, could earn much more elsewhere but not only stays with Bernaudeau but joins him in seeking new sponsors.
Les Essarts was the end of our journey, of course. It started with our leaving early enough that the only walking body on our campsite was a woman in a dressing gown who was checking the cleanliness of the showers. We nodded a bonjour, slid open the judas door in the black metal gate, and embarked on the world.
Soft light slanting over the trees warmed us and the dozens of shallow ponds and lakes the constitute this part of the Vendée. It was a gentle countryside, perfect for a summer morning, and too early for those in more hurry to get somewhere. Water birds flapped and splashed and rustling in the undergrowth betrayed unseen creatures going about their nosy business.
We detoured to visit a château endowed with three stars by our Michelin map and paid the price of our early-morning enthusiasm. It was closed. So instead we rode on, past creek-end boats tied up for later visitors, then on into more rolling countryside and a stretch of busier road before arriving at Les Essarts.
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The town is peaceful now, except for when the Tour de France gets there and the pleasant but not enormous municipal campground on the edge of town fills with more campers than it has ever known. But once this was a bloody region, a place of independent minds determined to put up with no outside interference.
The talkative woman in charge of the site pushed tourist brochures across her table to us and said: "They tried to impose a civil service clergy on us. The government wanted to insist we accept their religious leaders while we had got on forb centuries quite happily with our own." She introduced herself as Patricia, pronounced Pat-tree-see-uh, a cuddly, warm woman who'd arrived too late to let us into the site formally but didn't mind that we had skirted her barrier and left two carloads of tired families stuck on the outside.
Being bossed about by Paris set the locals to arms and a battle followed. Not the first and not the last, either, but this one cost a quarter of a million lives before it ended. Extraordinary, isn't it, how so huge a battle and so vast the bloodshed can be unknown these days even in France, let alone abroad.
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