Day 89: Nantes (St Luce) to Suce-sur-Erdre (and back)

October 18, 2015

A variety of emotions are washing (gently) over us in these final days before we fly to Montreal. We had our fling in the fabulous and exciting city of Paris, and now we are back in restful Nantes. On the other hand, we are looking ahead to Canada, making it a bit surreal to actually be in France. But we are still in France, and so are desperately clinging to the great things here, like baguettes and small town markets, cycle ways everywhere, and Michel and all his friends. We also notice that it is a great deal warmer here than in Montreal right now!

Today we packed in all the elements mentioned above, except for Paris! We set off on 40 km of purely wonderful cycle ways, with Michel and his friends, to a market in the small țown of La Chapelle sur Erdre. And by the end of the day, we could take off almost all our layers of warm clothes!

We began by meeting up with Jean Claude, a friend of Michel's who had also gone with him on the Funf Flusse Radweg in Germany. Jean Claude is riding a trike, and readily admits that it was Michel that influenced him to switch to a recumbent. Though made in Germany like Michel's Scorpion, Jean Claude's Gekko has a large rear wheel (of 26"), and two 20" front ones. Also different from Michel, Jean Claude has a three speed rear hub coupled with a 9 speed freewheel. Michel uses a 14 speed Rohlhoff hub and two front chain rings.

Jean Claude and Michel take off on their trikes

Whatever the configurations, it felt like a great procession heading off with these two special bikes. We followed what is becoming a familiar route along the Loire, sticking to the North shore, and arrived shortly in downtown Nante's Place Royale. Here we joined up with several more friends. All of these are members of the local group "Place au Velo". This was originally formed to ensure that there would be place for bikes on a new bridge being built over the Loire. As it happened, they failed. But the group carried on, promoting cycling in the region, and it has perhaps 1000 members at present.

Now numbering nine riders, we headed off up the Erdre River. The Erdre is that stream that comes out of the north east of Nantes, and enters the Loire after actually passing underground beside the cathedral and chateau. The stream of course did not voluntarily or spontaneously dive underground, but ended up that way as part of the redirection of the Loire itself and the filling in of the water passage that had existed between the little offshore island and the "mainland".

The Erdre, which disappears before entering the Loire at Nantes

The green line shows our route today, from the blue dot at St Luce into Nantes, up past La Chapelle and Suce, and back.

Our first destination up the Erdre was the little town of La Chapelle sur Erdre. Though very close to Nantes, this remains a classic town, with church, square, and bakery, plus today as a special bonus, a market just to one side. The market too was small but perfectly formed, with a BBQ chicken truck, cheese truck, seafood truck, and produce truck. as a special bonus, there was also a man making crepes.

I gravitated to the crepes man, even though Michel pointed out that he had invited his daughter Delphine over to make crepes at home this evening. The posted price was 60 centimes. I asked for one "sucrée". In a spontaneous language lesson, the man pointed out that the batter was already "sucrée" i.e. sugar in the batter, but that I could ask for a crepe "sucre", a designation that could otherwise have been "chocolat" or "Nutella" or other form of topping. "Ok, fine, I'm choosing sucre then", I replied. For my trouble I paid 1 euro - meaning that one half tsp of sugar sprinkled on top cost 40 centimes. It's not just that I am a dumb tourist, getting caught in this semantic ripoff, for Jacques (one of our companions) paid the same (and was also miffed).

Maybe our last BBQ chicken truck for this trip - at the market in La Chapelle

Michel fields UQs about his bike. The people asked if it goes fast. He answered that if he wants to go fast, he takes the car.

As we continued north, we intersected a very special route - the Velodyssey - which is Eurovelo 1. This is the route that runs from Roscoff, on the coast north of Brest down to the Pyrenees and Spain. That makes it both the "Atlantic Route" and arguably the most direct and logical way to Santiago de Compostella from England. I have read some comments from experienced cyclists sort of decrying the almost mythical status accorded to the major cycling routes, and advocating instead forging one's own way across countries. We might very well do that in France next year, but in general we love these routes. We love them enough that we will take pictures of their route signs as if they were famous monuments:

The Velodyssee (Eurovelo 1). This could be one route to St Jacques Compostelle.

Our group arrives at a good picnic spot along the Edre

As we cycled along we naturally chatted as much as possible with the other riders. Dodie seems a lot better than I at picking up what people are saying. I am always curious to see if I will actually understand what people say to me. Naturally, it's a lot easier if I already know what they are going to say. For example, in the grocery store you know they may say "Do you want a bag", so it's easy to catch on when you pick up key words like "bag"! So it came to pass that one of the riders, Francoise, asked me if my buttons were sewn on up and down or crosswise. Say what? "Buttons, how sewn?!" She tried repeating this a few times and a few ways in case I might catch on.

Now lookit, I have no idea about buttons, in any language. What's more, I don't even use buttons. Honestly, my stuff is tee shirts and zippered things. So I had to call in the cavalry, which is Dodie. Dodie not only can pick out more French, but she knows buttons! This is the deal: Buttons have four holes and you can sew them on three different ways. You can go up and down, or side to side, or X wise. Apparently, in France it's up and down and in England it's X. I asked if people knew what it would be with stuff from China, and they said no issue, since they would probably fall off right away anyway!

To illustrate, Jacques started to take off his clothes, to get to something with buttons. This way the second time in our last week in France that someone was volunteering to open their front for a quick peek!

One other comment on this. Quite unlike the crazy lycra racers who stop for nothing and nobody, our group was very happy to stand by the trailside and discuss this important point, for 30 minutes! These are our kind of folks.

Michel had cleverly engineered the route to pass by home in St Luce so we could quit before getting too tired. The group dropped us off and continued. Not before, of course, stopping for a group photo. As it happens, the photo also records our favourite supermarket chain: Super U!

As promised, Michel's daughter Delphine, with husband Gwenael and their 2 1/2 year old Elias, came over to make crepes. We are of course in Bretonne and if someone from here is making crepes, they are by definition genuine Crepes Bretonnes. So I got under Delphine's feet, trying to detect her secrets.

Secret number one seemed to be a family cookbook, where the crepes page was so worn out that the ingredients had to be rewritten in pen. Members of our own family, maybe every family, will recognize this book - the one that always gets used even if there are dozens of other fancy ones on the shelf.

The cooking bible in this household. The key pages inside are worn out.

Delphine gets ready to mix up the crepes

Some of the other things I noticed were the addition of vanilla flavoured sugar, and the use of an electric mixer to really beat the batter, while still keeping it quite thin. One troubling part was that Delphine departed radically from the book, adding milk in quantity until she was satisfied with the consistency of the batter. That is troubling because, as usual, you may only be able to duplicate the product by importing the actual person.

At the table, there was other stuff that would not be easy to find at home. This included salted caramel syrup, bubbly local apple cider, and chocolate powder that included sugar, to which one added melted butter to produce a chocolate sauce on top of one's crepe.

Some items that would be hard to find back home.

We also had entertainment during the meal, provided by Elias, who did nothing more than be a really lovely 2 1/2 year old. Later Dodie gave him some Canada flag stickers, which were a big hit. Elias had a good time we think, what with his "Popi" there and the "Grampies" to boot.

Elias checks out his profile photo on Crazyguy

Epilog on Buttons

Since Michel's wife Jeannette is both American and an expert quilter, we organized a raid of her quilting room looking for installed buttons. Amazingly we found on the wall a sort of button quilt. So here is the proof - Americans (and presumably British and Canadians) do sew their buttons on differetly from French.

Today's ride: 45 km (28 miles)
Total: 4,115 km (2,555 miles)

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