June 19, 2015
Orleans, France: The tale of the French punk
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
THINGS get worse after Berry. Going north, anyway. Because the next stage is the Paris wheat basin. And if anywhere makes you lose the will to live, that's it. Especially too far north and too far west.
I wasn't going to do that. I had more tedium than any normal man might want - and more headwind - when I rode this way last spring. So my mind is made up: I will ride to Orléans and take a train to Paris. That skips the prairie and gets me painlessly through Paris suburbs. Job done.
It's been a long day. In distance, anyway, especially with a headwind and a lack of mental stimulation. Things used to be more exciting. This was the border between the area of France occupied by the Germans and, south of it, the country nominally self-governing.
In reality things were different, of course, and in time the Germans just came south without invitation when the Allies took northern Africa and threatened to invade from the Mediterranean. Which eventually they did, in landings long overshadowed by those in Normandy.
While the Germans stayed in the north, things looked better in the south. It's where many wanted to be, the political emigrants of their time. They needed a passport, though. And the Germans weren't quick to hand them out. Those crossing the line without papers were shot as readily as those who later slipped over the Berlin wall.
A shadowy army built up, men - they were almost all men - called passeurs. They escorted escapers across fields and through woods and rowed across the river at the few points and times it was invisible to the guards.
Some passeurs, secret at the time, became celebrated when peace returned. Many lost their life before that happened.
That came back to me when I chanced on a grave of one of these men. It was beside the road, well cared for. It marked the life of Maurice Dupuis, a farmer who needed to carry animals and feed across the water on a low boat. Escaped soldiers, political prisoners and sometimes the anonymous with reason to travel were hidden under food and ferried across.
A Russian soldier promised that if he got to freedom he'd send a sack of Russian potatoes. He had nothing else to send. And send them he did.
I love stories like that.
The roads grew busier as I started to skirt Orléans and I was wondering what to do next. Wild camping looked out of the question and, if there were hotels, they'd be in the centre and not out here on the edges.
And then, where smart new trams completed their run out to the suburbs, I saw a sign for a camping municipal. I thought perhaps a few hundred metres. Instead, I got a tour of modern housing, industrial areas and shopping stains until I was allowed to dive down a steep and leafy lane to a generous campground at the bottom.
The sign said "complet" but I wasn't going to give up.
"We never turn away a cyclist," said the smiling and comfortable woman of about 40 who ran it. "We can always find space for a cyclist, but we can't stack caravans and camper vans on top of each other and for them, we're full. Not for you, though."
Her assistant was a Hungarian student. She came from Budapest and liked speaking English "because it's easier than French. In French you learn the rules and then you find there are exceptions. And when you learn the exceptions, you find there are exceptions even to them."
"And Hungarian has none of that?" I asked, remembering the impossible signs I'd seen all the way from Slovakia to Romania. Hungarian is no language for the nervous.
"No. Hungarian is easy. I could speak it even before I went to school."
The older woman joined me for a beer, along with a young French cyclist on his first tour, who explained he was married to a Brazilian and that, at the wedding ceremony, he relied on a friend to nudge him at the right moments to "Say si."
The woman took a sip and said: "The French, of course, they speak French. And Dutch and Belgian people do. But the English never speak anything but English, and I beg them to slow down and not to swallow their words. I like English people but Americans are easier to understand.
"Most people are fine... but Russians never are. They're cold and they're arrogant. Nouveaux riches, I think. Because they're paying, they think they own you. They've got money but they still stay on campgrounds."
She learned some of her English on a school exchange trip, to Stowmarket, in Suffolk.
"We got to the school there and the parents were lined up to meet us. And there was an old hippie van with anti-nuclear signs on it, and 'love and peace', and I was sure that was for me. And, sure enough, the man who collected me had long hair and tattoos everywhere and a ponytail.
"It was the punk era. We didn't have that in France. I was open-mouthed when I saw all these punks parading around. I thought it was wonderful.
"I had long hair down to my waist then. It must have taken years to grow, I don't remember. But I had it all cut off, into a punk cut, and then when I got home my parents didn't recognise me as I got off the bus and I don't think they ever forgave me."
There are other cyclists here tonight: a German couple following the Loire and two tents of French cyclists I've yet to see. They are all on conventional sites. But tonight, my new friend and I are on an idyllic peninsula inaccessible to drivers.
Paradise disturbed only by the occasional rowers and canoes.
Today's ride: 114 km (71 miles)
Total: 621 km (386 miles)
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 2 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |