April 12, 2018
Monsters and moats
L'Isle Jourdain, St-Martin-l'Ars, Payroux, Charroux, Malpierres, Civray, Champagne-le-Sec, Chaunay, Vanzay, Messé, Rom, St-Sauvant
I CALL them Smug Routes. You'll know what I mean. They're the little cut-through roads, even bike paths that don't follow roads - all those little ways you can take on a bike but which are denied to those in cars.
Today's ride started with a Smug Route. Our lively 87-year-old and his wife, an artist of some ability, were keen to chat as we ate breakfast. L'Isle Jourdain, they told us, got its name from a family supposed to have built a place of some standing on an island in the river beside the town. The river, of course, meant a valley. And on a bike that meant a rush to its bottom and then a grovel with cold legs out of it.
"But,"said our solicitous friend, "there's a better way. You leave town on that road there..." - he waved through the window and across the square where the rain debated whether to speed up - "...and then you take the turning to the old station and then you'll see the viaduct that trains used to take. There's a path across it that you can take on a bike but not by car."
And so, on a morning as grey as all the others, that's what we did. And what a pleasure, not just knowing we had defied the hill that was waiting for us - well, OK, we did have to ride the gentlest bit right at the top - but having views over the town that only train passengers before us had enjoyed.
That was our first brush with the past. After that, the canvas filled as colourfully as it did with the artist wife back at our chambre d'hôtes.
Take St-Martin-l'Ars, for instance. That wasn't a lot of laughs in the past. Misbehave there and monsters would eat you alive. How do I know that? Because it says so beside the door to the church, or more precisely it's sculpted into the door frame. People couldn't read back then and they lived in what we now decry - a comic book culture. If they were told of monsters, they needed a monster to look at. The same with Samson and his haircut. The greatest religious paintings and even the Bayeux tapestry are simply comic strips from the past.
People needed to be scared into behaving themselves. How many actually were scared, and how many did behave, I don't know. It's all very well being compelled by law to go to church but any number of lawyers can't convince you to believe.
History and horror took a more practical turn on the other side of the road. There's a château there, or what remains of it. And round it, still with a dribble of water, is a moat. It takes a long time and a lot of effort to dig a ditch that long and deep. It's not the sort of thing you did if you weren't concerned about jealous and murderous neighbours. Wondering whether you heard a burglar in the darkness is nothing compared to the fears that people had back then.
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There were more châteaux as we dropped through damp and small-prairie countryside into the Charente valley. Up on a hill you had less to worry about. At least your attackers would be puffed out from climbing up there to get at you, especially if they had to drag siege engines (whatever they were) and cannon up there with them. Down in a valley, things were touchier; your enemies had only to sail downstream and set about stealing your womenfolk and murdering your vassals.
Not much of that goes on nowadays. But there's an invasion of another sort. One of the bars that face each other beside the tower at Civray advertises a curry and quiz night - in English. The other, the one at which we stopped, had a table of local yokels and two others taken by invaders with braying Home Counties accents.
"Oh right!" one woman kept saying, in a voice that said "I'm intelligent, I'm interested but I'm not quick-witted enough to add anything." On another table, beside the door, were two men, one with a long beard and the other more anonymous, who might just as well have had Trying To Be French stencilled on their heads. Except that they wore trainers, which is a giveaway in France unless you're stumped for cash. They sat with glasses of mid-morning wine and ostentatiously worked at scratch cards - an obsession with locals and therefore a badge of Having Integrated - while keeping their voices down to hide that they were talking English.
And then Mrs O'Right gave them away.
"Oh Giles," she said as she passed. Well, actually, she may have said another name but, had it been Giles, she'd have pronounced it Jales. Giles, or Jim, or Dave got up sheepishly and kissed her on both cheeks, forced to admit he wasn't quite so French after all. It was a pantomime of pretension.
We sat in the square at Civray, the next town, and ate sandwiches and wondered why the place didn't live up to its billing at the tourist office. And then, glory be, we turned with the wind and cleared the hills out of the valley and hummed our tyres further northwards than we'd expected. Tonight we are camping in a park beside the village hall. Outside the rain is falling hard. We have taken refuge in our tent and decided that getting wet while cooking is less appealing than staying in the warm and dry.
Today's ride: 80 km (50 miles)
Total: 251 km (156 miles)
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