Day 34: Poitiers to l'Isle Jourdain

September 29, 2023

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The Ibis had for some reason shifted us down to the street to the slightly more costly Best Western, while keeping our cost the same. We did have to pay more for the breakfast, which at 15 euros each was pricey. However, it was a multi jammer and probably worth it. Among the cheeses it included a full on, fill sized Ste Maure, which looked rather imposing in its coating of ashes. I must say this time around I found it too "goatey". Perhaps this one was not quite a fresh as the one yesterday. Well, I may be cured of goat cheese for a while now.

That's the Ste Maure at the bottom. Kinda scary.

We were back on the street quite quickly, though we had had to move our bikes and luggage to load far from the entrance, where the hotel staff were smoking up a storm outside the no smoking building.

Of course, Poiters was now familiar, and we retraced our way past things we had seen yesterday. (It's unnerving to think that in a day (or less) we will forget it all, and need this blog to recall. But if in 2 or 5 years we come back, we will be saying "Oh yeah, I remember this")

One of our first retraced spots was the giant empty square in front of the Hotel de Ville. It's part of the extensive central walking zone. That zone, by the way, is controlled by remotely operated bollards, that allow the few authorized vehicles to enter. It remains a pedestrian priority area nonetheless.

That's why we really jumped when, having stopped to get our bearings, a small truck snuck up behind us, and honked. Once we landed back on our feet, Dodie addressed an unkind word to the driver: "A$$hole!". A lady walking beside smirked and shook her head in sympathy. This must have been one English term she knew!

Despite that one driver, we have been fairly ok with the drivers we have encountered on the roads here. I have sort of figured that it's 1 in 500 that is any sort of problem. That one may pass too close, preferably at 3x the posted speed limit, or cut us off in a roundabout. My 1 in 500 figure, however, does not include those doing "suicide passing" on the narrow roads. That's where you pass without waiting for the opposite lane to really clear, and then tuck quickly back in, just avoiding the head on collision. This is so common, that tucking back in with fully 1 second to spare would be considered normal. You would have to cut it to 1/4 second or so to be unusually rather than routinely insane.

Car free in front of the Hotel de Ville, or is it?

Sadly, I will probably remember the location of La Mie Caline better than other stuff.

Once a bit out of town, we were floating along enjoying our very small road track through the outlying bits of Poitiers. We ran into one spot really covered with cyclamen, something we really do not see back home.

Our early complacency then came to literal halt as our track turned to dirt. Dodie did some quick rethinking, and we took to the slightly busy but still ok D roads.

Low numbered D roads have a fair chance of being ok.

The D12 did take us by the Abbey of Nouille. It looks so ... medieval, and that figures since it was started in the 7th century.

From a nearby sign we learned that The Abbey fell on hard times in the 14th century. It was a time of depopulation, and the 100 years war. As part of that war, in 1356, the king John the Good was captured by the "Black Prince", the son of Edward III of England. This caused the abbey, in the next century, to more strongly fortify itself.

In case you think this is all forgotten ancient history, look at the nearby tobacco/news shop:

We often pass pleasant gardens along the way. Most notable, but not in this shot, are tomatoes, which right now seem very big and extremely red.

The town of l'Espoir is much like the many that we pass through daily. Except that while many have no commercial component at all, this one has a bakery. We paused for a peek at the church and found from a sign in front that this is the "new" church. That is, it was finished in 1885. The townsfolk built this thing, looking for something "vast and elegant", compared to their former presumably dinky church. The initial cost was going to be 53,000 francs. They raised 25,000 francs in donations for it, slapped on a 12,000 franc tax and got a grant of 16,000 from the state. But, surprise, there were cost overruns and they had to go back to the state for help. It took about 5 years to finally get the thing done.

The "new church" turned out to be pretty basic, I'm afraid. There were a few statues around, but they gave the impression of having been bought at a church supply sale.

But the rose window had an interesting fillgree.

Most churches in the region have this handout poster. A Bernadette musical? I guess so.

We came upon what seemed like a small installation of wind turbines, which we could see in the distance before we drew up to them. It set me to just thinking about magnetism, and electricity, sort of wondering that you can not send magnetism down a wire, much less gravity. Physics is so confusing!

Beneath one of the turbines there were posters mainly outlining the benefits of the installation. This included the claim that turbines produce 40 to 85 times the energy needed to manufacture and recycle them. In some other towns we noticed anti-turbine posters, so the companies must feel a need to defend.

This simple diagram does not explain much. But it does mention the brake (frein). Without that you could really imagine the thing tearing itself to pieces in a high wind. Dodie also surmised that it could be turned sideways to a wind. Yes, that's the "nacelle orientation system".

By the way, the French for a wind turbine is the much more elegant term eolienne. It comes from Aeolus in Greek mythology - ruler of the winds.

Here now was another of those hay carts. Seeing it changed my thinking about the earlier one - it's not a one off, but a standard item that you culd maybe buy at the hardware store. We then passed a gite, that gave us the name of the thing , or maybe of the operator- a roulier.

Our destination for the day was l'Isle Jourdain. Since there is "island" in the name, we were speculating about whether we would be on an island, and if so, in what body of water. On approach to the area, we first saw a large viaduct, crossing a river. This turned out to be the Vienne, which we have been flirting with for some days.

This is picturesque, but not at all Roman. It was built in 1884.

The island in the name of this place comes from a small island in the river (very small island) on which someone called Jourdain built a fort, later to be a mill.

The bridge over the river, by the fort, makes a pleasant scene.

The guy down there is Saint Sylvain, after whom the bridge is named. You can read his story in the next photo.

We shortly rolled up to our place for the night, which turned out to be a BnB in a miniature chateau. It was 2:30 and check in was quoted as 4:00. Oh well, we rang the bell. A lady appeared, and explained that we were too early and the room was not ready. That was ok, because we have been looking for a slice of time in which to change out our brake pads. We negotiated a place inside the gate and in the shade, in which to wait and also do the brake job. That was fine, although the lady just didn't seem overly eager to accommodate. And yes, the conversation then shifted into less comfortable territory: We should not plan to charge our batteries inside the house, and we should not plan to leave them on charge, wherever they would be, overnight. Reason: too dangerous.

We have used our high quality Bosch batteries and chargers for literally hundreds of uneventful nights, but there was no arguing with the lady (who has since, so far, turned out to be fairly sweet). She directed us to a garage building, where she said we could (temporarily) be plugging in our suspicious equipment.

The lady, I hesitate to mention, was British, and the conversation was in King's English. We just got the impression that we were not the type of folks that she commonly would welcome at her mini chateau.

Here is the Chateau, from our proper position - outside the gate?

In the garage, we brought our unsafe equipment up to the proposed connection, which you can see below. Do you share our sense of unfairness?

The safety oriented garage also featured this fall hazard. Just sayin'

At least we did get that slice of time needed for the brakes. As you see from the photo, the service was definitely past due. Also the brake pad had been misaligned by a mm, allowing one to see just how much wear there had been on the part of the pad properly in contact with the rim.

We have not yet collected any biographical info from our hosts, except that they have been in this place seven years. I seems it will be a Peter Mayle type story - British retiring to a French chateau. And it certainly is charming. The grounds are well groomed and the building super solid.

Behind the house. There is a pool and quite extensive lawns out here.

Villandry style gravel path, and is that boxwood?

The furniture in our room is undoubtedly some known style. Look how Steve carelessly threw down his bag!

Today's ride: 59 km (37 miles)
Total: 1,864 km (1,158 miles)

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Betsy EvansInteresting about the e-bike charging situation. There have been lots of battery-caused fires recently, and more landlords are starting to ban bikes from being stored indoors. Yes, the fires are probably mostly from crappy batteries and/or 'universal' chargers. The Atlantic had an interesting take on it: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/07/e-bike-battery-lithium-ion-fire/674622/
Numerous fires and deaths in New York City this year have raised awareness - this article may be behind a paywall, but googling will find others: https://www.nytimes.com/article/ebike-laws-nyc.html
I don't have an e-bike, but I have lithium ion batteries for some yard equipment, and I don't leave them on the charger overnight.
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1 year ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Betsy EvansHi Betsy, we have not yet looked at your references, but we will. However in general we think that it is not wise to live based either on general fear or especially media reports that can be sensationalist. The number of lithium battery fires needs to be weighed against the billions currently in use, not only for bikes but for phones, drills, mowers, etc. The National Fire Protection Association (https://www.nfpa.org/Public-Education/Fire-causes-and-risks/Top-fire-causes/Electrical) certainly does mention a growing incidence of ebike fires, with growing ebike use, but the top causes of house fires remain cooking, heating, bad wiring, smoking, and candles. That's why, as the conflict with our hosts "heated up" I stressed to the lady that if she wanted to be paranoid about fire safety she should first get a fire extinguisher for beside her stove, rather than harrassing cyclist customers with $1000 each Bosch batteries quietly sleeping (and not charging) in a bag. Read tomorrow's entry for the gory details.
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1 year ago