Rome

If you want to read this story from the beginning go back to July 23rd.

Back to reality. Still 400 km to go. Having had my bout of feeling sorry for myself, I got back on the bike and was fine. I wanted to call this section “The Sprint to Rome” or “Go like Hell” but “The Slither to Rome” or, maybe, “The Slump to Rome” would be more accurate.

Essentially the first day was a straight run down the coast then a bit of left hand down a bit until I hit Pisa.

And so it was. There were a few small things worthy of note in the opinion of your (not so) humble storyteller.

The date was August 15th. Apparently this is some religious holiday associated with the not so virginal Mary. Actually religion is a real surprise here, nobody gives a toss. It is not just that they don’t know what is the excuse for a mid-summer holiday, there are very few churches so, most of the time, I am guessing the time. Everybody was out on the beach and I didn’t hear any church bells and certainly nobody off to church. Not so stupid, the Italians. (By the way, I have noticed in the last couple of weeks, when looking for a glance at somebody’s wristwatch that only about 20% of people in southern France and Italy where such devices. I have always assumed that it is pretty close to 100% of British adults but maybe I am wrong and lots of people rely on their phones for the time).

I also got my first really good example about Italian beach holidays. I was riding along 100 metres from the Med and barely saw it. It was fantastic. Between the road and the sea is (every twenty metres) a separate block which has, as you approach the sea, a car park, a building consisting of three parts – 1 A restaurant out off the sun; 2 A section which is small changing rooms, presumably hired out by the day; 3 A cafe facing the sea; and then there is the beach covered in sunshades and recliners in straight lines, of course, right down to the sea. The only variation is the roof, which might be covered or open, and the type and shade on the sunshades. If you cycle slowly you can just see the sea occasionally. If I said that this went on for a couple of kilometres, I would be lying, it went on for fifteen or twenty kilometres without a single break. There was a cycle track down parallel to the road for most of it. The trouble is that it is crap. 1. It is shared with pedestrians who wander everywhere, so you can never get up any speed, 2. It is rough, so you can never get up any speed and 3. It is crossed by roads every couple of hundred metres and you have to give way to them, so you can never get up any speed. I quickly changed back to the road and left the cycle track to the bike hire people it was intended for. (Unfortunately, this happens a lot on Italy and I will not repeat the incidents later, but it is a shame, there are many cyclists in Italy and good cycle tracks would be well used.)

It is notable that 99% of the cyclists in all the right gear, with the helmets, drop handlebars, flash clothing etc. are male. Even the casual cyclists, going to work or just out for a gentle plod, are 80% male. Sad.

It was quite a relief to come to something that resembles a proper town with a small harbour, except in the town there were a couple of km on the sort of esplanade where there were lots of people selling tourist shite – who buys this stuff?

Quite a pleasant little harbour and I am just on the way out of town when I get a thump in the back! After three weeks I am no longer a beginner but a competent and confident cyclist so I don’t fall off, just start to slow down when the cyclist in front of me suddenly is covered in water. It is the local kids on scooters throwing water-filled balloons at cyclists. Nobody seems to get upset about this so why should I. I imagine it is something to do with the mid-summer, not so virginal Mary holiday. Anyway, the next time one hits me, I realise that it hadn’t burst and stopped to pick it up and put it in my handle-bar bag. Sure enough moments later I saw a pedestrian this time get doused. Am I quick enough to extricate the balloon from my bag in time to hit the kids on the scoter? Stupid question. I dumped the water bomb about 15km later when I thought that you would all miss these pearls of wisdom if the little machine that I write them down on got drowned by the balloon exploding in the handle bar bag. See how selfless I am, I think of you all the time, dear reader.

Naturally, after all this I had to retrace my steps into town. The Italians are good at dead-ends. They mark “No through road” when there are no turnings off the aforementioned “No through road” but if there are other turnings why bother. The fact that they are all dead ends is hardly relevant, it seems. Perhaps that is not clear. If you go down a road that splits into five branches, none of which reaches another road, each branch when it splits off will have the appropriate marker (usually) but there will not be one at the original point to suggest that all options will reach dead ends. Not helpful and, of course, makes you think quite often “Is this a ******* dead end” when you make a choice. So I did an extra three km just for the fun of it. Of course, in the main part of the next town everything is equally well marked so I only wasted another twenty minutes there.

Despite my not-so-early start, I do some serious pedal pounding for the last 20km and reach Pisa at 4. Even with my navigation it was only an 80 or 85 km day.

Oh yes, I haven’t bored you with my early start theory have I. 1 ½ hours equals 25km. A fifteen minute break. This means that if you start at 8 you will have done 75 km by 1 and you can call it quits for the day if it is a nice place or you can have a long lunch, start again about 3.30 or 4 and you will have done 125 km by about 7; a very full day.

Never happened, the only starts before 9, at the earliest were ditch days or the odd scratched car. Lunch time and siesta time are the quietest times on the roads so you want to maximise distance between noon and five. If you are not plodding uphill there is a breeze to keep you cool, even if it is normally developed by my going at rather less a speed than Fabien Cancellara did in this year’s Individual Time Trial. He averaged, AVERAGED, 51 kilometres an hour for over an hour. If I ever reach 51 kms per hour it is downhill and it has to be a very, very smooth for me not to be braking; and that is what Cancellara averaged. Oh well, it was an interesting theory – the 75 km by lunch bit – based upon my knowledge of geography, confounded by the reality of French and Italian life. The thing with doing lots of distance in the heat of the afternoon is that, you may feel OK but you do dry out very quickly so you have to stop every hour or so to refill your water bottle and take on other liquids. How sad.

Pisa is splendid. There are huge numbers of tourists, of more nationalities than Avignon, but they don’t overwhelm the place. The main architecture is in marble and 12th-14th century when Pisa was a real power (before Florence bullied her into shape) but the rest of the place is pretty good too. Despite my antipathy to religion (and particularly the three evil Middle Eastern, monotheistic ones) I was impressed. There was an echo from Avignon in making comparisons to the Aghia Sophia in Instanbul, again. Not really up to the mark, but not bad. I was impressed by the cemetery (this is a building) and the leaning tower is white. I didn’t go up it. I wasn’t prepared to pay 15€. When you have been up three of the four largest TV towers in the world, you don’t really expect a fifteen metre tower to be worth the bother. Nice place though, well worth a visit if you haven’t been. Nice hotel too (Hotel Roma) just outside the tourist stuff – decent room but it was the good staff that I liked.

One small incident. Somebody commented that my beer was big enough. I explained that 200 ml cost 4€, 400 ml cost 6€ and a litre cost 8 ½€ so there was no real choice. That was my first conversation with a native English speaker since Bart left. But then I am a cantankerous fart who doesn’t waste his breath on many people.



To give myself an easy ride into Rome my objective the following day was do 100km so that I would only about 240 out. Well I did my 100, in fact I did at least 150 but only ended 120 nearer to Rome and where did I spend the night? Yes, you guessed.

I supposed I should have guessed at the start of the day. Livorno seems to be the right road so off I go. Troubles are: 1. It is due west, I want to go south-east; 2. There is an airport and a railway line running parallel south of the road so there are no turnings; 3. There is a headwind of 20-30 kph so I am down about four gears and working hard; 4. When the wind starts blowing pine cones off and they smash apart on the road in front of me, I do begin to wonder whether my head gear decision was soundly based, even if I could get my straw hat to stay on it would not have been a great deal of use. Thank god for the balloons yesterday, nothing that hits me will make me panic now.

Shortly before Livorno I was directed south, thank goodness. As one does, I noticed a rather attractive young lady sitting under a tree on her mobile and wondered what was she doing there. On this sort of trip one wonders many things. I had bought a device to tell me current speed, trip distance, average speed etc. to counteract such issues but it had never worked, Bart had failed to get the instructions and there are only two buttons to press. It was useless from the start. It did occasionally show current speed, normally 32 something when the bike was stationary, It did for a couple of days after Bart had left show English time but didn’t like that so stopped, it sometimes shows lap time of 54 minutes odd and, more recently it started showing 199.1 and has now crept up to 234.3. Trip distance perhaps?

Anyway I digress. A couple of km later there is another girl, and then another. They must be working girls. It is noon on a Monday morning. These girls must be desperate. How do the punters know to come down this particular road (Livorno is a port) and who is looking for a quickie at noon on a Monday morning? The world is still a mysterious place to me. I could have sworn that the last one I saw said “Habari garni” to me but I must have been imaging it. “Habari garni” is “How are you” in Swahili.

Nice road though and I am now definitely good at pounding those pedals. Colourful flowers but it is difficult to see anything special about Tuscany – I clearly lack St Tony’s perspective. Get back towards the coast. Life is pretty good. The only problem is those dead ends. I had two during the normal day, mainly due to do with my favourite road, the SS1, now having motorway restrictions.

But the country has changed. Previously I had seen little actual agriculture, except the odd ploughed up wheat field, since La Spezia. Most of the land was left fallow – EU subsidies? How would I know. Now the olive groves started to appear, there were still some very tired sunflowers, there was even the odd vine grove as well as a bit of maize and the aforementioned ex-wheat fields. Obviously the vine groves are unusual because a very large percentage of Italian wine is industrially produced and has little to do with grapes. I should know, I have been drinking sugary water (sorry dry white wine) for a few days now.

So by the time I reached this seaside town about 5.30 I have done my 100 but, because of doubling back, I am still 250 from Rome. I felt OK and decided to do the extra 20 and I flew. Oh dear, Oh fucking dear. There are ten hotels in the desired town and after six had said “completo” I got the idea.

It was gone 7 by then and the sun was going down. Another 10 km retreat off the peninsular so I am still not plus 100kms for the day and head south through this industrial stuff; and I mean industrial. There was nothing growing and all I could see were industrial complexes on the coast two or three km away.

This is getting irritating. I had done the distance, not wasted time and it was going dark in the middle of nowhere. Pound those pedals; something will happen.

Well it does, of course. Lesson number two about Italian beach holidays. Everyone camps and I mean everyone. Well clearly not quite everyone, those bastards in my hotel room for starters. Now I know where all those people hiring changing cabins for the day came from, they are often in plastic wooden huts but they are on camp sites. I stop at a couple. The huts are full and so are the camp grounds. The camp ground is not full but I do not have a tent. I don’t need a tent, I have a survival bag and sleeping bag liner; that is enough. No tent, no stopping. I didn’t actually need a campsite but a shower, a meal (these campsites are large) and a few snifters to put me to sleep seemed quite sensible and I would have happily handed over ten or fifteen euros for the privelidge. Perhaps the campsite staff were concerned about their other guests and had heard about my night noises!

By now it is getting seriously dark. My back light is flashing happily but front lights on bikes are, how canI put this, a complete waste of time outside cities; they Illuminate an area of about one square metre, which is fine if you are standing still but when you are doing 15-20kph they are useless. Apart from that, mine only points upwards over my handle-bar bag! Anyway, who needs to see where they are going except when there is competition. I manage another ten km or so like this and just before a town see a restaurant. This is, essentially, a truckers’ pit stop but it will do me. I ate quite a lot (a long time since breakfast) and drank some wine but ten was chucking out time. I may have been quite tired but I am not Bart, who can sleep at all and any time, midnight has become my ridiculously early bedtime on this trip and that is in a bed so, no way can I find a ditch there and then and “settle in” for the night.

The town 2 kms up the road is absolutely heaving with life. I try a few places but the local hucksters are out and I get offered places at 120 and 100. I decline, retire to the internet cafe and cram some alcohol down me. Service was slow (as in everybody else was drinking soft drinks, nothing or sipping something disgusting) so not enough of the desired sleeping material was ingested – well maybe it was, my cycling was less than perfect afterwards. My battery was running out for writing this drivel so I had to leave.

Ride about 3 or 4 km out of town and wobble off the bike in a layby. I know that the sea is just over a sand dune somewhere but in my search for it won’t leave the bike to climb the necessary lump because I doubt that I will find it again, it was that dark (or I was that ??) Bad decision, bad night’s kip all of five metres from the dual carriageway. I thought I was up with the lark but no, there were some people who had earlier stopped in the layby who were just back from their early morning tomfoolery on the beach. Who makes these people? Don’t they have a life? Surely they should be lying in bed with a hangover. Worst breakfast yet, water and BP pills.

What else to do but pound those pedals. I am getting really good at this; I easily do 20kph on the flat and can even rush a ten metre climb without breaking rhythm or changing down. Well OK, 5 metres.

Anyway, I do lots of km including on a good cycle track for a dozen kilometres but then have to get back on the main road. What happens next, and this is becoming routine, I hit the delightful Autostrada. I have no idea where to go; I want to go the Autostrada direction. Fart about and choose the smallest road that looks like it is going south thinking “Oh God, Oh Jesus, Oh Someone” don’t make me have to turn back again. This definitely looks like a dead end, I have done 3 kms; this looks like a dead end, I have done 7 kms; this looks like a dead end, I have done 10 kms; this looks like a T-junction with lines down the middle of the road, it can’t be a dead end. I start to climb; it can’t be a dead end, I continue to climb – 4 km, 5 km, 6km; it can’t be a dead end. 7 km, 8, 9, and no, it is not a dead end, it is a Tuscan hill top town.

The problem is that Italy does not have many roads. It is not heavily populated (50 million or something) but is quite large. No problem so far. However, there aren’t many villages, just towns, so there are ten or fifteen km between each town and not much call for extra roads, unlike a country with lots of villages or hamlets.

Apart from the paucity of roads for your Derbyshire Oik to wander down, it does tend to mean that what roads there are, they are busy. This had been my problem all through Italy, it is just that I am a slow learner.

Mine host at an aubergo pointed out the best cycling route. I did manage to get to the next hill top town and then lost the route and ended up on a blisteringly hot straight road going ?? Even finding a bit of shade to stop for a drink was getting hard. Besides I had done my 100 since the ditch and I didn’t care where I was going. I had begun to see the attraction of Tuscany though – the fotified hill top towns: the disadvantage of these for cyclists is in the name! Staggered into some other town on a peninsular (sound familiar) and “completo” is normal even at 1.30 p.m. I did not think anything horrible about Italian holidays - honest. The fifth place said “yes” and did I care? There was no shower – hence the availability and it was a mere 35€. After two days without a shower people didn’t seem excessively sociable, can’t think why.

In the morning the only road is my friend the SS1. It is not motorway because it is the only north-south road along the coastal strip so all traffic has to be allowed on it. It doesn’t mean that the traffic is any slower so I go as fast as I can. Sometimes there is hard shoulder, sometimes not. When two heavy trucks are side by side and there is no hard shoulder, it gives you some very nasty feelings. I was glad I had broken my mirror, if I had seen them coming I would have dived off the road. At the first drink stop after 45 or 50 minutes I have done 10% of the remaining distance to Rome. I could get there today. Ho ho ho. I wasn’t going to live to see Rome if I stayed on this road so I got off it as soon as I could. Nice but slow. Back on to the SS1, still horrible and I turn off on to a medium sized road with only a vehicle every minute or so and then on to an even more minor road. There is nothing for 6 or 7 km, I mean neither people nor cars but quite a lot of shade. There even more suicidal lizards than on the main roads; I assume that the heat of the tarmac warms them up quickly and they can hear (or feel) a vehicle coming. If I am in the right gear and the road is smooth my bike runs pretty close to silently so the lizards are a bit shocked when this lumbering mass of sweat is suddenly centimetres from them; it is like playing dodgems at times. Apart from the dodgems it is great, rolling country, no traffic, chance to look around at the fields and woods; in fact, rather sadly perhaps, my most relaxed cycling in Italy and I am only 100 km from Rome. Then there is a tractor then 5 vehicles inside 5 km - horrendous. None of it going my way for the whole 12 km till I rolled in (I should say up) to this hilltop town. The only things that had been going my way were the flies – they know a man who has cycled 300 km without a shower when they smell one. The first hotel has rooms, I accept; I am too old for ditches even if it means 100 km tomorrow, allowing for my navigational expertise.

I begin to see the interest in Tuscany; these hilltop, fortified towns are really rather pleasant. I knew it was touristy though; for the first time since Pisa I heard a language other than Italian (except when people were speaking to me, of course).

In the morning I elect not to go for the SS1. I decide to go to down an unmarked side road. This seems to be heading inexorably towards this massive chimney in the distance. I take the only left turn available. Makes no difference. Then I am the “t” in a T junction. Right for Chimney, left for SS1. This morning at my first drink stop I am 7% closer to Rome. I stick to the SS1 after that and, inevitably 10 km later, go right past the aforementioned chimney.

Most of the traffic has disappeared on the motorway and I am going along quite happily beginning to congratulate myself on my achievement. Stop for a coffee, have an uphill start and the chain comes off! Careful Ed, concentrate, you are not there yet.

I also saw a couple of male cycle-tourists who each two panniers back and front plus handlebar bags and rack bags – six bags each in total. It all looked brand new too. Somebody saw them coming, I have one pannier and a handlebar bag. The amount of stuff they had is inappropriate for any cycle ride beyond doing the monthly supermarket run.

All the towns were off to the side of the road for a while so I decided to have a beer at a petrol station! On the whole trip I had not stopped at any service station (if you exclude the truckers’ stop a couple of nights earlier), I had always stopped in bars and cafes in the towns and villages but had seen these service stations advertising that they had a bar so I decided to try one. It is true, whilst driving in Italy, you can easily pull in for a few snifters!

I stopped for a quick water stop and ate my last two bananas, thinking I won’t be eating any of them again for a while. Don’t get me wrong, I like bananas but you can have too much of a good thing. Just as I was starting off a whole group of cyclists came passed saying “Bonjourno” and I thought it would be safer to keep up with them. I tried, but no chance. When they stopped up the road I saw that they Berlin-Roma on their support cars so I stopped. They had cycled from Berlin in two weeks – put me to shame. One of them asked where my stuff was. I think he was impressed when I pointed to my one pannier. They insisted on filling my bottle with tea and, despite my protests, giving me four bananas!

On August 19th, the twenty-eighth day of my trip, I (having gone the wrong way, of course) rolled into St Peter’s Square at 2.20 in the afternoon.

A little tired maybe?

It had obviously been a quiet night for the cops in Monaco and they had quickly dealt with all the crooks on their megaboats in the harbour and had time for me. They had demanded my ID whilst I was waking up, I didn’t have the presence of mind to return the compliment or there would be three Monaco pigs ID card numbers for you to view. It would have been great if I had been awake and sober enough to give them a hard time.

They asked me where I was going. “Italy”, I didn’t even have the brain power to add “a civilized country” I was so knackered. I do not class walking out of Monaco as walking for bike riding purposes. After that, I dragged myself on to the bike and plodded along for an hour or so before turning up a hill, as it just began getting light, because it had an Italian sounding name on the signpost. About 3 km up the road there are horrible clashing sounding noises coming from the back end. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! I am in no fit state to deal with this. I fart around with the gearing sufficiently to make the bike rideable and roll back into the town I have just left.

At the local cafe/boulangerie they tell me there is a bike shop in town that will open at 9. It is 6.45. I settle down to wait. After mucking about on the internet, drinking coffee, eating croissants, falling asleep etc. I wander off and find the shop at 9.15. Nothing. Kip for a while. Eventually get up and start fiddling with the gears myself. Man turns up. No he does not have spokes, offers to sell me a wheel for 100 euros. I decline. He suggests that I can get a cheap wheel in Monaco. I leave. 3 hours wasted when I could have been pedalling or asleep in a ditch. As Bart would say the ******* French.

Over the border into Italy and an instant lesson. The Italians do tunnels, the French do not. Talk about nervous, I had no idea. Put the back light on (for the first two, after that it was too much hassle – note to Dyson, new handlebars include switch for back light) and go like the light brigade. That was stressful. Then there is another, this time uphill – Jesus, is every Italian cyclist supposed to be a Pantani? (For those who don’t know Pantani was a great climber and the last Italian winner of the Tour de France but it was the year of the Great, or perhaps I should say, Greatest Drug Scandal on The Tour and his achievement was overlooked.)

Soon realise I am completely beyond anything. This seemed to include finding a hotel in the little town I landed in, I walked round the place three times before I succeeded. Eventually I did find a place and slept for four hours – unheard of in the day for me. Came to in time to realise that there would be a bike shop in town. Found one, bike left overnight.

This is when Italy really kicks in. It was some day of the week (I am guessing at Tuesday) and this little town has a free public show going on. Being Italy, there are two talking heads who can talk forever, a troop of flag throwers but, and this I liked, you could have a potshot at the town hall with a crossbow! A correct level of respect for the civic dignitories don’t you feel? Naturally I arrived too late to have a go.

Italian roads are not great, they are narrow so you have to steer a steady line despite all the potholes, humps, repairs, distortions etc. It can be quite hard work a lot of the time. Italian drivers, however, are not bad, not as good as the French but better than the English. The worst problem is the motor scooters. In France they appear to let any young tosspot aged about thirteen out on a twenty five cc motorbike with no exhaust. Of course, these do not go very fast but do smell horrible and make lots of noise. Italy has produced the two greatest exponents of motor bike racing ever to sling a leg over a machine yet still they prefer their scooters (about 90% of motorised two wheel vehicles in Italy are scooters.) I passed my test on a scooter (at the second attempt) in 1969. I have not driven one since 1970. They (motor scooters) are much more difficult to control than motor bikes. I can understand women wanting to use them so that they can wear a skirt (and in Italy many women do ride scooters) but most scooters in Italy are ridden by men. Tossers.

Having retrieved the bike (on time) and paid the bill – the guys initial request was 80 euros, which I thought was a bit steep – he modified it to eighteen but, when I offered a twenty note , he gave me 12 in change - I set off along the coast with a few humps, bumps, climbs, narrow roads etc. that were to become normal.

And then?

The best cycle track I have ever been on. It was an old single track railway line that had been superbly relaid. 2/3rds (i.e. about 2 metres) had been allocated for a defined two way cycle route and the remaining metre for pedestrians. It was smooth, there were regular rest points on the way with water fountains, when you went through a (lighted, of course) tunnel there were SOS phones every 100 metres and, clearly marked at each phone point, was the distance to either end, presumably in case the lights failed (the tunnel was not straight) – how is that for treating cyclists (and possibly, pedestrians) with respect. For 25kms I was flying but then the bastards wanted to use the lines for trains again. Uncivilizied gits.




Back on the road again and I start to notice signs saying “SS1” and I am thinking “1” sounds important. It is not the motorway obviously and, if it wasn’t obvious before, perhaps it means something and then I saw a number with it - 649. Of course, you are ahead of me. All roads lead to Rome or that is what I hoped. By then I had done 1700 km so the last third should be a breeze! The French and the Italians are both excellent at road numbering and distances. There are markers every kilometre clearly stating the road number and a number of kilometres from the start point of the road. This is genuinely useful for me in Italy most of the time because nearly all roads lead to etc. But in France it was not a great deal of help as I had no idea where I was going to and where the distances were from anyway. They were OK for giving me some idea of the distance I had done in the day, if I could remember all the number changes of course.

Things were going well it was, or so it seemed, just lots of ups and downs on the sforementioned narrow bumpy roads. The Ligurian coast is not really part of the Mediterraean basin at all. It is the fag end of the Alps – which were caused by Italy launching an unprovoked attack on Switzerland and Austria in the first place. Hence the lack of anything bearing a resemblance to a nice, even coast road.

Progress is reasonable, you start to notice some different crops in Italy than France – green houses – and you are quite happy but the hills really do start to kick in. A quick fifty metre climb is OK and back down again in time for the next one. There are several of these until I went up a 150 metre climb (by the way I mean height gain here, not the length of the distance that you ride) and, when I stopped for a rest at the top, could just make out the cycle path on the coast below you.

A god day though, did lots of kms and enjoyed the odd stop to watch volleyball on the beach. This is not Brazilian women playing Beach-Volleyball (how can anybody call that a sport instead of a lusting opportunity?) but normal volleyball rules played on a beach. It is universal on Italian beaches and a damned good idea and not just because about 50% of the players are young women in bikinis, no, perish the thought. I stopped for the night at one of these rather insignificant tourist towns but it did take a few requests at hotels and phone calls from the tourist information office to find a hotel; this was the only time that I had to ask at more than two places. I did run away from a place to eat where somebody about my age was setting up to sing what I could only assume would have been “Hotel California”, “Yesterday”, “Sole Mio” and other such lift music.

Back on my trustee steed in the morning and the main event is fighting my way through Genoa (Genova). In theory I would have liked to have stopped. The Genoese were the Venetians great rivals in the fourteenth century and there must be lots to see (confirmed a couple of days later) but I just wanted to get out of there. The city; the having to steer in a straight line; ride the bumps; start uphill at every set of traffic lights – it was just too much.

Quick couple of reviving beers (I had missed lunch) did not satisfy and I stopped again five kilometres later. I was still too late for lunch but beers and spirits were readily available, as was mine host. He was good enough to tell me that, after the next village, there was a 5km climb but then I was OK for 40km. If I ever go near this area again I will kill the lying, villainous bastard.

He was right about the 5 km climb, it was a pig but I made it without resting or getting off and pushing. Part way down the other side I stopped because it was a nice view and then noticed the 500km to Rome sign. I really am going to make it. And the bike probably will too. Not sure about the hat. At this point I got accosted by a gent across the road watering his flowers who was very keen to tell me that his daughter had married a man from Thames Ditton. Naturally I was fascinated by this and even more fascinated when he reeled off the names of his four grandchildren. I really cannot think why I cannot remember them. Fortunately, this seemed to be the limit of his English so I could leave in reasonably good grace.

Oh yes, I haven’t told you about the hat. When deciding on appropriate equipment for this trip, I had rejected my conventional cycling hat for two reasons. 1. I think that they are pretty close to useless, just a contrick pulled by some bike accessory manufacturer. 2. I was more concerned about sunburn. So I took a straw hat. Not my best idea. Any sign of a downhill slopes blows it off, in fact even riding on the flat generates enough wind (and, no, I am not referring to the type of wind that blows me along) to blow it back off my head, even though it is tied tightly. In fact its main use has been to stop my neck getting sunburnt in the evening when heading east.

Rolled down the hill into this very pleasant little town. I had only done about 85 or 90km but thought why not, I am on holiday so I stopped. One of my better decisions.

The Italians do pedestrianised areas very well. Everywhere I have stayed in has quite a lot of streets closed to cars. Of course, there is a cultural thing here, bars and cafes encroach on pavements big time but there is a good mentality. France is not bad too. Unlike England. Bristol thinks it is great because Corn Street is closed off. London still allows buses and the taxi-pigs down Oxford Street for God’s sake. When will England catch up? Boris is a genuine cyclist, The Cam man pretends to be, but still nothing in the UK, cars can go where the **** they like. Of course, better than China where a pedestrian area is one where there are so many market stalls and people that a car cannot get through. Did I mention The States. Their idea of a pedestrian area (once they have looked the word up, of course) is a grass verge with no cars parked on it that day.

The best thing about the town though was the free live music. A five man band made up of a drummer, a keyboard player, a guitarist/violinist, a flute player and some sort of bagpipes, apparently with two oboes attached sounds like a recipe for Irish diddly-sqaut type shite doesn’t it? Actually I really liked them – the keyboard player seemed to fulfil the role of the base player in most bands in helping the drummer drive things along and the flautist was very good. I wonder what the CD will sound like in the cold light of day. This is the only non-consumable item I have bought on the trip so far and will probably remain so.

One thing that is surprising is that the days don’t seem to fade into each other, you would think after three weeks in the saddle that I wouldn’t be so clear cut. I suspect it is because of writing this rubbish.

A dull grey morning up a small hill then a proper climb (where was the easy stuff that the apparently nice guy yesterday had told me about?) as the drizzle starts to get serious. It looks like it could be a while so I am determined to find a cafe. Up I go, about 150 metres, eventually reaching a village – nothing. Although it wasn’t heavy rain, it had started to run down the road by then. I could see a town in the bottom but how do I keep my brakes dry? I am sure it took me longer to go down than it had to climb, but I am an old coward. I trust that the lady outside of the cafe enjoyed the sight of my flabby white gut as I changed my shirt.

It stopped after an hour and, to be fair, the next ten km were fairly flat. At this point it seemed that my trusty road, the SS1, left the coast so I went for the coast road option. After waiting before a tunnel for the green light for about eight or ten minutes we were off. The tunnel had various signs before it but nothing actually saying no bikes. It was only 100 metres so I flew threw it at the front of the queue, of course. However, almost immediately there was a second tunnel of 500 metres. I couldn’t keep ahead of all the cars through that and four or five edged past me with horns blowing. This was very stressful and the next tunnel was 1,500 metres. Oh, and clearly marked “No cyclists”. There was no alternative route and, after a few minutes dithering, I decided to return. I guessed that the light had gone red by then and, if I got on with it, I could be out again before the traffic came the other way. I don’t know whether the light had gone red or not but half way along there is a car coming straight for me at a good speed. I don’t know whether this is normal in tunnel construction, but about every twenty-five metres there was a bike and man sized alcove on the side to jump in whilst the competition went past. I exercised that option. When I got out of that tunnel, I could see that was a no-cyclist tunnel as well, so no surprise about the hooting. The hundred metre job was a piece of cake after that.

Back to my normal road and start to climb (from all of about 3 metres above sea level) and climb. Occasionally, actually too often, there are signs saying “bends for 3km” or “falling rocks for 500 metres” or “wild animals for two km”. There is writing on the road but it is only when I spot “Basso” on the road that I realise what I am doing. Ivan Basso won the Giro d’Italia this year (he also tried the Tour de France but he was poor this year, the two races are too close together and he is no Contador) and I am on the same climb that these guys did. I also began to fairly quickly realise that the “bends for” etc. were complete bollocks. You would be half way through a “bends for 3km” stretch when suddenly there would be a sign “bends for 4 km”. I got to the top and took a photo of the country with the motorway below me as usual and got back on the bike.

Oh! I started climbing again. Got to the top and took a photo of the village I had been trying to get through via the tunnels. I looked carefully but there was no sign of a road going east along the coast from the village. If I had got through the tunnels I would have had an even more horrible climb than I had done.




I get to a bar at the top that marks the end of Genoa province so I have finally made it and stop for a beer (well two actually). It is only having a little amble round with a beer in my hand that I notice a sign saying that the pass is open. Jesus, I am still not at the top.

Actually the pass, at 615 metres, was only about 50 metres higher. In Tour de France terms this is not quite the climb to Alp –du-Huez, which I am have done a couple of times (on a bus) or the Tourmalet, where Schleck made his final attempt to destroy Contador this year, but it ain’t far off.



As you can imagine, I was in peak physical condition at this stage. Fortunately the ride down was quite kind to me through some nice fresh forests and only a couple of climbs (both less than 100 metres) before I rolled into La Spezia. This is a place I had never heard of two days before and mine host did not exactly sing its praises. But, upon inspection, it was rather pleasant but nothing special. Good dinner with a German couple (well the cheese and grappas, anyway) and I was ready for the next challenge.

Wrong. When I got up in the morning I could not face the bike for a 80 km ride to Pisa. It was a dull horrible morning and I decided to have my rest day a day early. A good decision because it rained all day.

An even better decision because I think, for the first time in my life, I am suffering from exhaustion. This is a word that is badly misused: “It was exhausting listening to Mother talking rubbish for an hour” or “The walk up Snowdon was exhausting – it took us three hours”. As a word perhaps not as badly misused as “decimate” or “like”, expressions such as “know what I mean” (No, I don’t you buffoon but I can’t be arsed to talk to a moron like you) and, my favourite “like, know what I mean” which can be heard about every ten seconds on any British High Street.

I do go for four beers in the rain in the morning but cannot be bothered to go and get any more when they run out. That is a reasonable definition of exhaustion!

A new country

If you want to read this story from the beginning start withe entry for July 23rd/24th. This is episode four.


Why did I need a rest day?

Because my legs were, how can I put it, f***ed? No actually. They work fine. After a rest stop they can be a bit slow to get going but the pace gradually winds up.

My neck? Possibly. I get a headache every afternoon, it could be because the default riding position still pushes your head forwards so you have to crane it backwards to see in front of you. I have never understood how these drop handle bars are so popular. I think I will approach Dyson to get them to make something reasonable that ordinary people can feel comfortable on.

My fingers? It became increasingly difficult after the first couple of days to straighten my fingers. Arthritis? Something to look forward to, according to Bart. Actually I think it is the fact that you are constantly changing gears with twist grips in hilly country. At least I hope so. Does this matter? Well a bit. A single man travelling on his own has to be able to take a grip occasionally. For instance, of a pen or a fork. Actually eating has become something of a ??? Fill in the gap yourself. I have become an American in that I try and shovel everything in with a fork in my right hand; I have become a child in that I can exert no pressure with my index finger; I am an incompetent Chinese because I cannot use my thumb properly to grip chopsticks; I remain a pillock because I spill food down myself at every opportunity.

Because I was generally knackered after the days efforts? Mostly true, although I didn’t realise how knackered until a few days later.

Anyway Chalon is a nice civilized town, in fact a good place for a rest, an old pedestrianised bit that you can loaf around in, buy a few supplies, sit on your (recovering) arse in and I did enjoy the baths. But after a day off it was back on the road again. The navigational aid was working so I knew that I was going too far east but didn’t care, it was a lovely day, a nice road, the odd coffee stop. What could go wrong? The French, of course. It was Sunday and I had targeted this fairly large village for a spot of lunch out of the sun. It was, of course, closed. I carried on for a while but gave up and had a can of olives by the side of the road plus some of Bart’s remaining dried fruit. A light lunch had also meant no water refill so the olive water wasn’t too salty. 5km later there was, of course, a bar – naturally I was too late for lunch but did manage a couple of halves and a water refill before they kicked me out at 3. I headed back towards the river but a big black cloud appeared in front of me. As you know it never rains in France in summer – hence no waterproofs - so where had this thunderstorm come from? I waited it out in a boulangerie/cafe, that closed at 5, obviously, and I was on my way in light drizzle, which became not so light after another 5km so I went into another cafe. No hotel in this village, 5 km north. I ignored what they said and went looking for the road to Macon. 10 minutes later I was back in the bar confirming instructions and, after another wait, made it 5km north in a not too heavy a drizzle. I had done my 100km for the day but was only 45 from Chalon!

So next day it is? Raining. In a break I make it back to the bar for the third time but not before I had been completely cut up by a truck coming onto a roundabout. I presume that he hadn’t seen me, but it did make me write a note with some contact details and stick it in the back of my passport. In the cafe they were obviously used to me waiting around in the rain by then and treated me as a bit of a joke but it was the last time. In the next rain break (i.e. break from the rain) I made it 10km and the following one 20km. At 3.45 it cleared up and I got on with it to do my 100km. Naturally many of them were in the wrong direction but it was great. I was in the Beaujolais region and, to my surprise, it was the first area where grape vines predominated. I also hit the first moderately serious bike problem. Two links in the chain appeared to have locked. This means that you can still ride but, depending on the gear you are in, about every third time that your legs rotated you got a clunk and a missed drive moment. Not desirable. Anyway twenty minutes fiddling about and a liberal application of WD40 (thanks Bart) and I was on my way. Ten days and three bike shops later I can still feel the click sometimes but, when I turn the bike over, can I find the dodgy link?

It had been a lovely ride, the main problem was that after 8 1/2days in France I was still north of Lyon so the following day St Etienne is the target. Having done a spot of googling I soon lost my way but was making good progress going south, the main problem was that I should be going south west. A quick right turn up a valley and, after I have been going an hour and a half I see the sign saying Villefranche (where I had stayed the night before) 16 on the road that I should have been on. Never mind, I had gained some height and only lost half an hour against best time and then gained some more fairly quickly. This fairly quickly (as in height gain, not speed of advance) got thrown away, of course, and I started a new climb. After 4 km I stopped for a rest thinking I must be most of the way up, after 8 km I stop for another and it is only after 12 km that I reached the top. The angle wasn’t fierce, only 4 or 5 degrees I would think but it did mean that I had gained a good 500 metres and could see an open vista to the south. Good. Most of the way down I stopped for a couple of halves and did a bit of bike maintenance. The landlord gave me a beer on the house – whether it was because he believed that I had cycled from London or new what the 60km to St. Etienne were like will remain a mystery.

Yes, I made a wrong decision. I had three choices. Lyon – No. The tourist route to St Etienne and Clermont Ferrand – No. The middle choice did not go to Lyon and looked flatter. After 4 km I could see the top of the pass through a gap in the trees, after 8 km I could look down through a gap in the trees at said top. After 12 km I took a photo of the pass - 810 metres. During the day I had cycled up a greater height than Ben Nevis.



At the next decision point I chose Lyon and, in fact, stayed on the eighth floor of a hotel directly overlooking the Rhone 20 km south of Lyon. The hardest day so far. There were only a couple of downsides. The restaurant (not cheap) in the hotel turned out to be the best I could find, the rest of the town was characterless with the usual pizza and kebab shops. Bit of a bugger when a bit of tooth filling fell out in my dinner. Closely followed by a bit of the said tooth. I have remembered to chew on the left side of my mouth most of the time since but a cold drink (beer?) can cause a slight intake of breath. I will survive, I am a road warrior.

Flying down the Rhone for 150 km the next day was a piece of cake. Road quality in France varies considerably depending on the local area but that is true anywhere in the world; the real problem is that on main roads going through towns you cannot deviate off the line you are travelling; this may give some slight discomfort in a car with tyres at 30 psi, suspension and soft seats, a bit different on a bike with tyres at 60 psi, no suspension and what sort of a seat. For the benefit of the non-cyclists amongst you, tyre pressure on bikes are run about twice as high as cars. This is for two reasons at least, and I am sure that my proper cyclist friends will correct me. 1. You go quicker; there is less tyre in contact with the road and hence less friction. 2. You get less punctures. This may sound counter-intuitive but the less contact with the road, the less to cause you grief.

There was no uncut wheat left at all, in fact the land had been ploughed up in many cases. This rather surprised me – doesn’t the top-soil get blown away because it is so dry? Anyway I was into peddle-pounding and I am beginning to get rather good at it. A short rise means that you do not change down, you just attack the hill. In fact, this means that your average speed increases; you cruise downhill faster than normal, power your way up the incline so that you are still doing a reasonable speed at the crest and fly down the next slope. Impressed?

On to your next fantasy. Here are two things on this day that make me think that I am really making progress. The cicadas. You know that you are out of a cool temperate maritime climate when those little buggers start rubbing their legs together in earnest. The other was signs to Marseilles. They may have been over 300 km at the beginning of the day but that was not the point.

The guy at the Sphinx hotel in was very interested in what I was doing. I don’t think that he had noticed me scratch the car the previous night when I was putting my bike in the garage. It (the thought of the scratch and, more to the point, trying to explain that it was there before, honest guv) had got me up in the morning and it was the first time I had left any hotel on the trip at eight. Perhaps I should scratch a few more cars for motivation to get me up in the morning. Let’s face it, I don’t give a flying f**k about a scratch on a car (including all the one’s that I have owned) and anyone who does should get a life, because they haven’t got one now. The nice man asked me if I had had plenty of punctures and I assured him that my mechanical problems had been slight. Oh silly me.

Bombing along on the way to Avignon with the Mistral behind me was great until I heard a horrible noise. Get the baggage off, turn the bike over and the back wheel is not running freely. At this moment two real cyclists turned up with all the gear and tools. They adjusted both sets of brakes, told me that having one pannier was wrong, I should have the weight over the back wheel and, finally, noticed the broken spoke on the front wheel. That is what I had heard. The pannier advice was complete bollocks, putting it higher would have raised the centre of gravity and I liked a wide backend so people give me more room (I know, I have one anyway, I don’t need a pannier in the middle of the road with a red spot on it.) It is amazing how I have got through life so far when everybody else clearly knows more about how to do things properly than I do.

In to the next town and the tourist office tell me that there is no bike shop but give me a marked map, address etc. of the one in the next town. This is when I found out how strong the Mistral was (or even is) because I was going across it. Anyway, all was fine, spoke replaced, both wheels properly aligned, brakes adjusted properly (so they actually worked, the nice, helpful guys had put me in significant danger if I had had to brake on a steep hill) and bought a spare link, in fact nearly a service. I should have got the man to blow up the back tire though, I had put no air in either tire since the start of the trip and thought they were both hard but I then realised that the back one was not so hard.

So what did I do about the tyre problem? Have a coffee. Did a few kilometres out of town on the nasty big road, turned off and had a beer. In fact, what should have been a lazy day turned into a bit of a pig. I kept changing roads but always came back to something with big trucks on it. To try and escape I turned down a side road, seeing a couple of trucks coming the other way thinking that they were avoiding the height restriction on the other road at the junction. Blown along by the Mistral, just the odd TGV to keep me company, I was fine. (They, the TGVs – Train Grande Vitesse -, do not look fast but count the seconds that they take to pass and work out the length of the train then you will realise.) Carry on down the road, into a wood where I have to brake to avoid running over a lizard. Too perfect? Damn right. It was a dead end (un-signed, get used to it, it happens again later) with a big mining operation at the end. For some reason they did not offer to show me around. It was only about 5km back to where I had left the main road but this is where you felt the power of the Mistral; I was a good five gears down from going the other way (it was flat) and having to work damned hard at it.

Got back on a main road and stopped for lunch in a restaurant. Response “Go forth and multiply”. It was 1.30. I am coming round to Bart’s point of view concerning the French. On through Orange (yes such a place exists and it has rather a nice arch – I suppose that I had better describe it as Romanesque or I will get complaints) but all I can find is big roads to Avignon.
Solve the problem by turning off to Chateau-Neuf-du-Pap or similar, it seems to be Pape locally. I think of this as the most famous brand name in wine but, after struggling up some horrible hill, when I get there I have no idea what to do. I notice that there are many (and I mean about thirty) vineyards with showrooms for sampling and buying. I am not the sort of person who will just sample and leave – yes, I know that I need some education by Meady; the free samples are all built into the price. As I roll through I begin to think that CP/Joe would rather like some of this stuff. I can remember his old house and phone number quite clearly but he only goes there about once a month. I begin to think, yes, I do know the address in Harrogate but no I don’t know the post code or phone number. No, I haven’t taken any mobile numbers so I can’t phone him to find out what to buy at what price and, anyway, all I really want is a beer.

Back towards Avignon on the horrible roads and clearly they all think that they are English drivers so you have to concentrate all the time and stay in a straight line, absorbing all the bumps and potholes with your tyres at 60 psi and no suspension – you asshole cardrivers should try it and realise what it feels like on your arse and your machinery you selfish, planet-destroying ignoramuses. In France, you should, by law, give 1.5 metres space to a cyclist and normally you get at least a metre, which is OK. Clearly these tossers round Avignon had never heard of the rule or were so busy rushing to the back of the next queue, just like the English, that they did not realise that cyclists actually travel faster than cars in cities and, hence, there is little point in giving the cyclists a hard time. Just think though 1 ½ metres – five feet as near as damn it – imagine a London taxi pig giving a cyclist that much room.

Avignon is an amazing city. I have never seen wall-to-wall tourists in such profusion. The main square is ALL restaurants. I have never seen such a large ice-cream dispenser. It is just fantastic.

Why were they all there? Naively, I assumed it was for the bridge. Also, naively, I thought it was for the Roman bridge. Silly me.

I had decided against cycling to Nimes and the trains didn’t look frequent when I checked at the railway station. The following morning the tourist office was absolutely heaving, 50 or 70 people in it and three people answering questions. I don’t do queues so decided against Nimes. I have seen the aqueduct at Segovia three times and would like to compare it to Nimes sometime.

Anyway I didn’t so I was stuck with the tourists (no, silly people, I am not a tourist, I am a traveller and an observer, have we got that straight?) The tourists are mainly there for Popes. In the fourteenth century there was a bit of a bun fight in the Catholic Church (this is pre-protestantism) and one version of the Papacy moved to Avignon for seventy years before they patched it up and Luther did his stuff at Worms.

The Popes Palace had big queues and cost lots of money, the Little Palace (a museum) was closing for lunch – these people have no idea. So I actually went into the Cathedral. From the outside it is not impressive, just a massive horrible gold-painted statue of JC to make an impression. Inside, at first glance, was no better but then you start looking in the side chapels and they begin to impress. Not fantastic (remember I was in the Hagia Sophia in Instanbul a few months ago where they do side chapels on a truly grand scale) but worth a visit.

That left the gardens at the top of the hill. Avignon may (or may not) be so called because of some dodgy translation of the windy city. A bit before Chicago – how sad. One thing that I can say is that it is bleeding windy at the top of that hill. There is also a very commanding view for a good distance all round so you can see why the city really grew up.

And then there is the bridge. I was expecting some story about how the Romans built it and it had survived in various forms until they built newer better bridges recently. Oh no, the Romans barely get a mention. It is all about some religious nutter who persuaded the town to build a bridge in the twelfth century; they just happened to use the bits left by the Romans. Bloody Christians. I should have gone to Nimes.

Off to Aix-en-Provence in the morning down boring but quick roads. Aix is another great tourist town and a good place to watch people, street musicians, weddings in the town hall etc. But it is only 75kms from Avignon so I decided to do the bonus 25 because tomorrow should be a long day. After doing 20kms I was back on the same road back into Aix. There were no markers to say “No through road” anywhere on my route. I began to realise that it was trouble when there was no traffic, the road got bumpy and I had a railway line for company. There were a few signs saying “DFCI” which i realised later obviously stood for “Don’t Come In”. When I got to the gate blocking the road (and I mean blocking ; this was no barrier that a bike could get round) a lady in a car came the other way and assured me, yes, I had to go back. No wonder Bart hates the ####### French. And, yes, I did check on the way back; there were no “no through road” signs.

Trying again went uphill and it was hot. When I found out that there was a 640 metre pass to go over I was glad to find a hotel only a dozen km out of Aix. This had obviously been someone’s pride and joy when it was built thirty years ago but they had mistaken the market and it was seedy, run down and musty. I think there was one other couple staying there apart from me. I liked it, my own balcony, big room, foot bath (I think that is what they are called – a sit down shower really).

Get up dreading the climb and, instead of getting going, I piss about until 9.30 so it is warming up nicely. Anyway, I get off and walk upwards along the road, after a while, for 500 metres (the first time I had got off the bike whilst actually riding for two weeks) and did it again for 100 metres 3km later but I did cycle over the top. It was Sunday so there were ten or twenty times more cyclists than cars, all going the other way to begin with. Naturally they all had proper gear, bikes, helmets etc but many of them did give this sweating mass of decrepitude on an inappropriate bike with almost non-existent luggage and a very battered straw hat a wave or a “Bonjour”. It has become increasingly obvious that when, every couple of days, I tell someone what I am doing they look at me, look at the bike and think “That lying bastard has got the train most of the way”. It would have been a damn site easier and I could have made up the story. But you all know that is what I have done anyway!

Basically it was a nice quiet day poodling along, stopping for mushy fruit occasionally through some nice villages. It was getting a bit hot though and I started getting some cheers/jeers from the odd car or two in the middle of the day. A pleasant lunch is slightly discommoded by the discovery of a broken spoke on the back wheel this time when doing a routine check. A broken spoke does not make a bike unrideable but it tends to distort the wheel and should be fixed within a hundred kilometres or two. It had probably happened the previous day on the lovely bumpy road that took me out of Aix and back. It was Sunday when I noticed so no chance.

I had been pretty lucky so far with the winds. Either non-existent or the Mistral blowing me down the Rhone valley. Suddenly my luck changed and I was facing a severe head wind and decided to give up for the day. I had decided that it was a sea breeze and would be gone in the morning (Correct) and there was an F1 hotel to stay in. F1s are built on the Travelodge principal of no restaurant but somewhere close to eat. In Frejus the pizza place (inevitably) is next door but this is a Sunday so no chance again. A cycle ride (15 minutes) in to the next town reveals three takeaway pizza joints, one of which does kebabs. The national dish of France is either pizza or kebab but I don’t know which.

I am within spitting distance of the Med but decide against the coast road because the inland route is shorter and I will be seeing plenty of the sea. Google doesn’t bother to mention the 310 metre climb. Why should it? No bother in a car.

It is only after coming most of the way down that I catch sight of The Mediterranean, sixteen days after leaving Dieppe, fourteen of them cycling 100 km a day so about 70% must have been in the right direction. Cruise into Cannes and waste a good two hours mainly trying to find a place to fix the bike. The tourist office is, naturally, closed – who needs information on a Monday? Eventually find the main part of Cannes but it is not full of beautiful people, just tourists. Some of the tourists weren’t entirely ugly, it is true, but I decided to try Antibes. That was full of people who had once been beautiful but were now just hanging on to their dreams.

Nice was next. This was great, there was a cycle track all the way past it! That isn’t very flattering is it? There were hundreds of thousands of tourists on the shingle beach with a very wide promenade from 5 km south of the town to 5km north with part of it marked as a cycle track. Of course, pedestrians wander all over this but I am, by now, an expert cyclist and avoid them all. The reason why it was great was that I flew past it! Google maps says that if you want to avoid motorways the best way from southern France to Rome is the ferry from Nice so I had passed that, rather great, temptation.

Darkness is approaching but I don’t hurry. I had made a cursory check on accommodation in Monaco and it started at 200 euros a night. From Cannes, all the way along the coast it had stunk of money but Monte Carlo – Jesus. Even the cheap boats cost millions. I watched one big thing back into its berth. There were six men on the back of the boat just to watch it in. I asked if it was privately owned “Yes” Who by? “You must be joking”. I have thought for quite a long time that Dubai would be improved by a good cruise missile with rather a large warhead. Now I know of two such places.

I wandered around a bit, just gobsmacked but also trying to work out which boats were empty so i could get a bit of kip on one of them. (Pathetic, I know but I am a country counter and I have been to Monaco nearly forty years ago but can’t count it because I had not spent a night there. This I was going to correct). Unlike France, the bars showed few signs of closing and I wondered about pulling an all-nighter but by two I couldn’t stay awake and, after a bit of searching, I found a quiet place in a park for a kip.

I had been asleep about two hours before the cops woke me up and told me to leave.

A well deserved rest - or not.

If you want to read this story from the beginning start with the entry for July 23rd/24th. This is episode three.


Bart had gone so I was on my own. I had spent the previous few hours thinking “Why am I doing this? Is my ego so fragile that I have to prove to myself how tough I am? Why don’t I just go and hang around in Paris for a few days and get the train back to England?” etc.

Anyway time to buck myself up and get on with things. Easier said than done when, not more than ten minutes after we split up I get off the bike, climb over the barrier and walk back three hundred metres and climb (or is it fall) down a bank to get away from this horrible huge road that I had got on to.

The problem was the usual one, the absence of the navigational aid. The drizzle had stopped but the sun was not keen to impress. The solution was simple, keep Paris on my right hand side. Every time I hit a junction I would make sure that the Paris turning was too the right so I must be heading south. Piece of cake this navigation lark. In fact the sun came out about one and was dead in front of me. Time to look for a beer stop – one conveniently happened after I had been going the desired 1 ½ hours. Lunch was actually drawing to a close and I had only done about 25kms so no lunch. Next was a useful road that has count-down markers on it indicating that it ends in 25kms; just the job. Actually a lovely ride, open country mixed in with bits of woodland, fairly flat (sorry Bart), the odd village, a fairly tale house and not much traffic. At the end of the 25kms there is a nice town and...
Nothing. It is 3 p.m. it is hot and everything is closed – even the PMU. How can this country work?

A suitable bar does occur 5kms up the road and I stop for a rest and make a plan. The sun is now out so I can navigate by it and head for Fontainbleu. This plan comes about because I have the F1 Hotels handbook of all their hotels in France. When I look up the location of the Fontainbleu hotel it is ten kms from the town but, never the less the plan is formed and off I go. I made a bit of a pig’s ear of getting round Mellun, which necessitated an extra beer stop but riding up the side of the Seine for a few kms was great and I found a hotel OK. This is a tourist town so getting fed and watered was easy, quite pleasant in fact. The only real surprise was that some of the good-looking young women about town were English!

Up, packed and breakfasted (poorly but complete with Blood Pressure pills) in time for the opening of the Chateau at 9. Walking round the previous evening I had noticed it and decided that it was worth a delayed start for a bit of a look. Good decision. It is utterly spectacular. I walked in the gate and counted the windows in the wing to my right. The ground and first floors had forty-five windows in a row. These are not some little side window type things but full blown metre and a half wide windows and two plus metres high. Forty five in a row. Of course the second and third floors only had forty two. And in the forth floor (i.e. attic) there were only a couple of dozen. But those would be the servant’s quarters and obviously they don’t need light.
When I got to what I thought was the original part there was an arch through to another, much older, courtyard and then another, and another. The bit that I had been so impressed by was merely the last add-on! There was a sign saying that they planted 45,000 annual plants. When I got into the gardens, I did not believe them, it must be more.

I was only there an hour and did not actually go in any of the buildings and escaped without paying! Chatsworth and Blenheim are little outhouses in comparison to this place but I had distance to cover and I don’t like the inside of stately homes anyway so I was on the road by 10.15.

Usual problem, different solution. The early morning sun had disappeared but the nice guy in the hotel printed a map and a route for to Auxerre, 125kms distant. He gave me the choice of the Motorways, the D roads or walking routes. I opted for the middle choice but did wonder if I should have taken the walking route. France does not have a big system of public footpaths so it was probably the shortest road route. Anyway, the choice works well, rather big roads to begin with but I am flying along. As Bart had predicted, I would start feeling strong one day and today was obviously the day.
A standard coffee stop was followed after 40 km by turning down some smaller roads as I began to think about lunch. Does this village will have a cafe? No. The next one? Don’t be silly. 2 o’clock was rapidly approaching and then passed just before I rode into a rather nice little town. A bar there had all day sandwiches and all day beer. Just as well that I fuelled up and rested because there was nowhere else for fifty kms. As I left the town at 3 p.m. by the clock, not the sun, and I was beginning to gain some proper ground south I started to fry during those 50 km. Still it was a nice ride, France really does have varied countryside and, although the predominant crops are wheat, maize and cows so far there are “forested” areas – woods really and, of course some nice gardens, old houses, big churches and the odd chateau. After quite a slog I arrived in a little town after 5 so shops and bars had opened again.

There was a hotel and I was tempted, having done 100km already that day. I decided to do the last 25 into Auxerre. My new found fitness had expired and I wouldn’t have bothered if I had known the length of the hill out of the village.

Another good decision though, Auxerre is a nice place with quite a historic centre. It was good to see something where French people were enjoying themselves in a way that I expect. There was a free band playing in the town square. Naturally I had mistimed it and only heard the last song, which was sung in English by a lady who was taller than any other of the (male) band members; in fact her hair disappeared into the rafters above the stage. But what was typically French was lots of people in small groups sitting around chatting and (many) smoking but not drinking much alcohol.

Mine host is a little surprised when I say (in my immaculate Foreign) that I am heading for Chalon-sur-Soane that day. I offer Beaune, he agrees that is a bit nearer. On my trusty F1 map Dijon is just a spit from Auxerre and Beaune is west of Chalon and a bit nearer. 10 km out of town, up a hill, of course – there is always a hill first thing in the morning – there is a sign saying Chalon 159, it also says Dijon 142 so perhaps my trusty map is not so trusty. Anyway, I don’t like this road, and turn of right i.e. west of the road. This being my navigation technique of the day – stay west of this main road and I should end up near Beaune. I am flying and have done 30 km from Auxerre when I stop for the first coffee stop. I leave the road that I am on and after another hour round some real country roads that are good fun, come back to the road that I had left – Auxerre 38 km. My initial reaction was “Oh shit!” but it doesn’t matter; I am on holiday and what matters is seeing some nice country, getting the exercise and having a bit of an adventure. I had kept coming back to a railway line which I assumed was Auxerre – Beaune so it seemed to be OK. The village was pleasant, next to a canal – a town actually with a small market going on. I can happily say that there was absolutely nothing worth buying in the market, no wonder they were all packing up before twelve. I had kept seeing signs for Vazelay and, as it was now 15km away it seemed like a good spot for lunch. A long 15 km because of the hills but it is an old hilltop, walled town – a real tourist spot actually. It is the start of the pilgrim route to Santiago-de-Compostella, 1730kms away, or so I was informed by a gentleman in immaculate Foreign when I stopped under a tree for a light shower later in the day. It is one of the benefits of being English that Johny Foreigner can explain himself in his own lingo and we understand. Actually, in the town, I was a bit cold so had lunch and ran. A few kms out of town is a sign “Auxerre -48” This is getting irritating. Up another valley heading south and I do mean up, not fast but steadily. After about 8 km of this I pass another chateau in the middle of nowhere with a flower bedecked cemetery in the village nearby – a conundrum (is that tautology – can a conundrum not be odd) – old chateau but modern cemetery. Shortly after this I get the bad news. I am not entering the Soane valley but climbing a (small) pass to get into the Loire valley!

Now this may come as a surprise to you. You know that the Loire is France’s largest river and you know the wines from the area West-South-West of Paris, you know, or have heard of, some of the famous chateaux e.g. Chambord and you know that Le Mans (home of the famous race) is round there somewhere. What most of you don’t know is that the Loire rises in the Massif Central, in the middle of France. I did actually know the theory but it was not a lot of comfort to me at that particular moment.
I am a man, do I carry on? Of course, but only because there is little practical choice. I was not cheered by the shower but I was cheered by the aforementioned man who took the time to explain the link between Vazelay and Santiago. Why? He had no need to stop and talk to me. He was not put off by my being a stupid foreigner who did not speak good Foreign, Most importantly of all, he was cheerful. As Guido says, if you are not prepared to smile at people, you are not worth knowing.

I have started to notice the odd squirrel or two. I have only seen four or five on the trip but they are all red. Don’t they have grey squirrels in France? Weren’t the French supposed to be allies of the upstarts in the 1780’s so Cornwallis had to surrender at Yorktown? So why no grey squirrels? Not very good allies if they did not import each other’s vermin.

Another thing is the road kill; there is quite a lot of it and 70% is hedgehogs. Hedgehogs are not the world’s dumbest creatures so why hedgehogs? Not one dog or cat have I seen. Of course, I would be unhappy to see cats but a few dogs would not come amiss – shut the horrors up. Who is it that goes round training dogs to bark at all cyclists? A clear case for capital punishment – the trainer, not the dumber animals.
I am arrogant enough not to be frightened of any animal (OK, some humans like Martin Johnson down a dark alley) but a barking dog can take you by surprise and have you jumping out of your skin If this happens whilst one of the one percent of French drivers who drives like an Englishman is passing you it can make life very exciting.
Oh well, back to the story. Upwards, upwards I go. It is only an eight kilometre climb but I have already had a long day. I roll into a rather pleasant little town and realise that a) I am knackered, b) I am only about 75 kms from Auxerre but have certainly done at least my standard 100 kms and c) I am going to have to do a lot more tomorrow.

Locating the tourist office is easy (France is incredibly well provided with tourist offices and they are well signposted in every town) and I obtained a map, in fact the same map that I had seen on the way into the Province.

New day, usual problem. I did 40kms quickly along the Yonne valley (this is a tributary of the Loire and where I was, I had not sunk so low as to hit the Loire itself) but my trustee map had shown me the way and up I climbed for 8 kms. Steadily (but slowly, I know) and reached a village only having had two water stops (yes water stops, not beer stops). It wasn’t the edge of the province but it was a lot earlier than I expected. The sting in the tail, after 3 kms of steady drop, was another climb for a km or so but then I had definitely escaped the clutches of this foul province.
Now, it might seem greedy but what you want after a long climb is an even longer descent. Not some horrendous steep jobby when you have to use your brakes (remember that I am an old coward) means that the reward for all your hard work is very short lived. No prizes for guessing what I got.

An hour for a well deserved lunch meant that, when I had finished, I had left 5 ½ hours ago, done sixty-seven kilometres and was not half way to Chalon-sur-Soane. I actually thought (hoped?) I was half way but an hour and a half’s pedalling after lunch in the true heat of the day to be reassured that there was 60kms to go put paid to that idea.

Two tiny beers (these buffoons think a quarter of a litre is a beer) and on my way. Was he wrong? Yes, it was probably only 55kms with no real problem except a newly tarmaced road where I got stones thrown at me by all the passing cars and a 4km climb 20kms out – nothing really.

The country was changing, the wheat was being harvested in July, a month earlier than England. Winter wheat maybe. Maize (or corn to those what speak a funny version of English) was becoming more common with quite a lot of sunflower fields. Nobody seems to have told the sunflowers to hold their heads up to the sun – perhaps it has been a dry summer. There were not many of the big water spraying machines though, maybe there had been a ban. Saw a couple of hares, startled by my silent approach, and started to see some birds of prey (including a couple with white undersides to their wings).

I had been determined to make Chalon, because after eight days and 800 kms I wanted somewhere decent for a rest day. I seemed to have some vague idea it was a pretty nice place and I wasn’t disappointed. However, having done about 145kms that day I was knackered and checked into the first hotel I saw, a Best Western. At 85 euros a night (without breakfast) it is the most expensive hotel that I have ever paid for myself but I didn’t care, it had a bath!

The End of Bart

If you want to read this story from the beginning start with the entry for July 23rd/24th

I awoke bright and early to find myself the object of attention for about fifteen Charleroi bullocks. Fortunately there was about five metres and a fence between us, otherwise they would probably have licked me awake. It was as well that I was the one sleeping outside; Bart is afraid of all non-feline quadrupeds and would have jumped out of his skin if he had been the one laying in the grass all night. His aversion is both amusing and sad. He likes animals, especially dogs, but is frightened of about 70% of all dogs that he meets and anything that barks will have him running for cover i.e. behind me or any other large object.

Although a little cold at times I had slept a good five hours and Bart had been comforted by my night noises – at a suitable distance – they meant that I wasn’t dead according to the esteemed young man, I just think that he is a coward. He produced tea and sandwiches to go with my blood pressure pills – the best breakfast so far. All packed and ready for the off by 7.30 – this is what I had planned as a normal morning start for such a cycling trip. Planned? Aspired to, possibly, but detailed planning is not a concept I am familiar with on holiday. Just before we set off, Bart told me that he thought that he had been here (i.e. there) before. This was rather a surprise that he could possibly have kipped in a specific barn in the middle of nowhere in Normandy before. He assured me that it was typical of a CP camping trip. CP (more commonly known in the older generation as “Joe”) is Bart’s father. He is a typical Yorkshireman – wants value for money but is extremely generous.

It was cloudy (this was to become a regular event) but I knew that we had gone south out of Buchy so we continued in the same direction. This was fine; the most notable event of the first half hour was the number of deserted caravans in fields, perhaps we had chosen too hastily the night before. It, being Sunday, there was no-one about and we kept going in a direction, the only slight problem was which direction. We would consult each other at most junctions to guess which way was south or east or, at least, not north or west. There are not so many road junctions in France, several kilometres between each. In fact this became increasingly obvious; France is a big country. The USA & China are a lot bigger with some States/Provinces bigger than France with twenty or thirty miles/kilometres between road junctions but for us little Englanders it is big. The population of France is about 20% bigger than the population of England (not the UK) but is close to four times the area of England. There is no town every ten or fifteen kilometres, just lot of villages with nothing in them except a few houses - hamlets really.

So you amble along, noticing that there are signs saying children crossing outside individual farmhouses and villages with speed bump warnings but no speed bumps – clever or what? Drivers slow down expecting the speed bumps but the village has saved the cost and inconvenience of actually building them.

We get on to a scenic route with a special notice for cyclists. If you are not familiar with France they have water towers, lots of them. These are perfectly rational ways of collecting water with a tall tower at the top of the hill to provide water pressure. The top of the tower is spread out in a large circle to collect water from several times the area of the tower. This collection area is only 20 or 30 square metres but the towers are fifteen metres tall so there is enough water for the village below at all seasons. Note that they are at the top of a hill so when you see one on the other side of the valley you are not necessarily keen on passing it. Well I am not, I like gentle ups and downs, Bart thinks that steep climbs are fun. There lies a slight difference. His job involves lots of cycling and he thinks little of doing a hundred mile cycle ride in a day. My job involves sitting around answering phones and talking shite. I have never cycled ten miles two days in a row before in my life. And this is the third day of God knows how many kilometres.

Did I digress? Yes, we cross the valley and, yes, the scenic cycle route is up the hill to the water tower and, yes, I got off and walked for the second time. Do you think that I had any compunction in abandoning the aforementioned not-scenic and cycling routes? At 8.30 in the morning?

One of the things that had become more apparent as we went along was that the flat runs were at the top of the hills. I do not know, but I began to assume, that this was like the English drove roads. Until drainage was introduced in the valleys (in England) largely by the monasteries in later Medieval times all the lowlands were boggy and no good for moving animals about, so most roads were on the hilltops e.g along the West side of the Yorkshire Moors or The Ridgeway in the Chilterns. If you are out walking on the Downs, The Cotswolds or, even, The Lakes and wonder why you are on a bridle path on top of a hill, now you know why.

I was happy passing water towers with minor ups and downs for a while when we came to a junction with the “D1”. Bart recognised this as a road out of Dieppe that lead straight to Paris so we followed it for a few kilometres. (It was only later that I realised that the “D” stood for Departement i.e. State, Province or even County, depending on your country, and that D1 in one Departement could mean something different in another part of the country – it did explain the repletion of low “D” numbers in my travels).

This changed when we hit the Rouen-Beauvais road. As Bart knew that Beauvais was north of Paris we headed that way. Why? Because Bart had established that the first of two young women that he intended to visit in Paris was, at the time, in Massachusetts. Bart lived near Paris for a year in 2005 and decided that he wanted to visit these two young ladies as part of the trip, or, to put it another way, they were the reason for his trip . He just hadn’t bothered telling them. So when he found out that the first one was missing he decided to do a day more with me. I don’t like Paris so we were going round the North side to avoid it.
However, we did not want to go to Beauvais so, having stopped for a cup of coffee and established that it was 26 km to Beauvais we left the biggish D road that we were on seeking a more southerly route but staying well north of Paris. We could have got to Beauvais in an hour and a half maximum on the main road but it was too busy. So we got to Beauvais in three and a half hours.

This was because it was Sunday. Most of France is closed on a Sunday so we had decided that a town that sounded a reasonable size would have somewhere to get lunch. We deduce size by the distance away that a place is marked on the road signs – if it is 20 kms, it must be important. We had seen signs for Auneuil for more than twenty kilometres so it should be fine, right? Wrong. The only place open was a PMU. PMU’s are a bit like Spoons with betting and French beer and NO food. In fact not much like Spoons at all except the clientele. We stopped for a beer and they told us the nearest place for food was Beauvais! We flew into Beauvais at maximum speed conscious that most restaurants and cafes stop serving food at 2. This is utterly barmy. We were west of the Greenwich Meridian and it is summertime, Western European Time, so we were at GMT + 2, in other words lunchtime is officially over before noon sun time!

Although most of Spain is further West than most of France they are somewhat more sensible. Lunch does not start until 1.30 p.m. and goes on for two hours so it finishes around 1 to 1.30 sun time, so at least some of the heat of the day is avoided. Not so in France.

I do wander off the subject don’t I? We arrive in Beauvais just after two so what can we get to eat? Takeaway pizza, just what we came to France for. We had cycled for nearly six hours and we (well Bart) was starving so takeaway Pizza it is. I don’t seem to get hungry on this trip – just thirsty - but I did eat all my pizza and we were both glad of a rest.

We agreed on our target town for that night’s ditch but, with no sun, again, could not get our directions correct after going over loads of road junctions in escaping this horrible place. We sorted it out by spotting a sign on a motorway (we were not on it) that said Calais so that must be north! This caused us to reverse our direction as we had been heading west. The road to the town that we wanted was “No Cyclists” so we were forced ever further south towards a town called Mouy. Those twenty or so kilometres took forever as we were both tiring. Bart is a bit taller than me, 20 kilos lighter and 30 years younger so it is no surprise that he is faster uphill but I can keep up with him on the flat and, as most of you know, I may have never encumbered myself with sporting ability but I am long on stamina, determination and immunity to pain so I could do the 120 kms or whatever we had done that day as well as Bart.

In Mouy there was a PMU open, with some friendly people in it, with a kebab house next door and that was it. No hotel (closed a few years ago) but there was one about three kms outside town. So, after a couple of beers, we went to investigate. It was, of course, closed – no longer a hotel, just a restaurant and, being Sunday, it was a closed restaurant. So back into town for a few more beers and a kebab! I, of course, could only have a salad. If you plan on visiting France make sure that your holiday does not include a Sunday unless you are camping, staying in flash hotels, sitting on beaches – avoiding anything that involves you with what you expect from French culture.

On the way out of town at dusk, ditch hunting, there was a supermarket called “Ed”s (there is a chain) offering 100% discount. We did contemplate kipping behind it if only for the photo opportunity in the morning but decided against. Next was the local football stadium. Bart ”I have never slept in a football stadium”. Ed “Clearly you have not been to watch many football matches”.

Next up – a campsite. They won’t let us just lie on the ground in our plastic bags but will hire us a caravan for 32€. We accept but don’t sleep in the caravan (sorry – mobile home to those that do not speak the Queen’s English). Inside smells of mould so Bart sleeps in the tent type thing attached to the side on some of the seating stuff from inside the caravan. To look after his delicate hearing I do similarly in the next, similar, unoccupied structure. Neither of us slept brilliantly because, although warm enough, we kept falling between these seat things.
Bart prepares the usual sumptuous breakfast whilst the local cameraman takes interesting pictures. Well actually one rather dull one. This is not a campsite; it is a retirement site for old foggies in summer. Two-thirds of the locations have garden sheds! People have flower gardens. One of our near neighbours even has a garden gate and satellite TV. If you are old farts and cannot stand Paris in the summer why not go somewhere interesting, not a camp site fifty kilometres from Paris. These people are either mad or have the imagination of a Tory party worker – probably both.

Off we go with no great urgency. Bart is happy to do another day with me but does not want to end up with a big ride to Paris to meet target number two the following day.

We see a sign for Chantilly at 25km. By this time I have worked that 25km represents 1 ½ hours decent peddling, if it is not too steep. In other words, a suitable time between breaks. So off we go to Chantilly for a coffee. It is at this point that discrepancies become apparent. At the end of the first day in Brighton I had done a mental inventory and found three things missing (apart from previously mentioned watch and mirror) – audible warning of approach, to wit a tortoise hooter that Bart had given me, a memory stick and Vaseline. Bart said that he had the latter two and there was nothing to do about the first one but buy something which, of course, I still have not done seven days later at the time of writing. In Chantilly it also transpired that Bart did not have Vaseline (which I was definitely beginning to need, and not to grease my bike) and that the memory stick had photos on it for target number two so I could not have it.

A quick look round Chantilly reveals that we can get some money at cash machine number three but nothing else. Silly me, it is Monday – how could I expect any shops to be open. After all they were open on Saturday so how ridiculous of me to expect them to be open on Sunday or Monday. France is clearly in need of a lot of immigrants from the Indian sub-continent.

I have definitely heard of Chantilly but could not remember why. On the way out I found out. I stopped to take a photo of this rather fabulous looking chateau. My esteemed young friend was not impressed, he assured me that two minutes on google would yield much better pictures. He is, of course, correct. We wandered a bit further and came across reason No, 2 why Chantilly is famous – race horses; it is the Newmarket of France. We found this out by having a bit of fun on sand roads. This is not the easiest thing to do on a push bike, actually harder than a motor bike because you have to both provide the power against the mass of friction that is the sand reacting against your back wheel (unlike a motor bike) and keep it smooth so your back end does not come in front of you and have you off, just like a motor bike.

Anyway, on to Senlis. First thing we see is a pizza place and it is 1.30 so can we get fed? We risk it and carry on. Once we get into the town we like it. Medieval, cobbled, narrow, steep streets, big churches – you know the drill.
We stop at a cafe and ask about food. “No mate, no food round here. It is Monday, see. I can recommend a pizza place on the edge of town”. Forty metres straight down the road a light is on for a lovely restaurant. We stop. And make ourselves at home. Good food is ordered. Bart tells the lady, in his excellent French, that we are passing through and our destinations. He refrains from telling her that I am an international tosser. Good food is brought and consumed slowly. Cheap wine is brought and consumed quickly. Olive oil is brought and used to oil the bikes. Bart also cleans all the sand from the chains. A very pleasant lunch.

A fellow, well dressed dinner of about my age, says “Avez vous la machine qui mange la plastique”, Even I understood that and I will try and use it on the rest of the trip, For those whose French version of Foreign is even worse than mine, “mange” means eat.

Perhaps I should add something here for the ignorant. The world has two languages, English and Foreign. English is the rational language understood by most. Foreign is an odd concept and Johny Foreigner keeps trying to change it to confuse us literary types. You get used to one dialect of foreign, in my case Chinese, and you move somewhere else and they speak a different dialect – Spanish. Of course, in France, many of them have never even learnt Hollywood English, let alone the Queen’s so communicating with the blighters can be damned difficult. Shouting loudly usually does.....

Regrets are useless things, unless you harm people, but the mange machine man said in perfect English as he left “Enjoy your trip to Rome”. I rather wished that I had talked to him

On we go. Out on Senlis on a big road with lots of high speed traffic. What is rather odd is the camper vans at every sort of pull-off (and these are on both sides of the road every 200 metres). Bart, being rather more observant then me, notices a woman on her own in the front seat of each one, not a man in sight. These are not petite little things either. The conclusion that we reached was that the little jockeys from Chantilly liked the big women from Senlis and were prepared to pay for their generosity of spirit.

Onwards and off the main road, down some country lanes past a huge chateau. This is something that I had forgotten; Britain has stately homes some, like Chatsworth or Blenheim, bloody huge but France has two-a-penny chateaux . I assume that this goes back to Louis X1Vth or earlier when France was the most important unified kingdom in Europe with a population five times that of the UK.

BUT. Communications were appalling in those days so many local bastards built up huge estates by violence and greed, enforcing their will on the serfs. This was shown in several ways: the use of the church to exercise power, hence all the massive churches in small villages in France; the feudal idea that your local lord would protect you and, if the shit really hit the fan, the king would protect you; the concept that, because your lord was protecting you, he deserves to live in some bloody palace with all the goodies that go with it. In 19th century Britain it would have been called capitalism and you can see all the buildings and follies that those particular greedy gits built; in 20th century America it would have been called protect rackets for which you can look at gambling, prostitution and the rise of the allegedly Sicilian crime families or the rise of the Kennedy and Prescott-Bush families; now it is called banking.

Did I digress by any chance. We wandered around Charles de Gaulle airport for a couple of hours, going in assorted different directions but only gradually working round it.

When we came across this grotty hotel in the middle of a building site masquerading as a town we decided to give up and get pissed. That close to Paris there is a dearth of shacks, abandoned caravans and football stadii so we had to do something. Naturally the hotel was not closed, it was full. However, we were sent off to find another hotel seven or eight kms away and we duly went to the trouble of actually finding it because Bart was excited about staying there. It was an F1 hotel. Sounds good? They are a big chain based upon the KISS (keep it simple stupid) principal. Bart was keen because he had stayed in them before on family tours of France when he was young. The price deal (cheap obviously) is based upon a maximum of two parents and one child per room. The price is the same, including breakfast of coissants, bread, juice and coffee, no matter how many occupants per room and how much a Yorkshireman can cram down. Bart has a younger sister, Sal, so the aforementioned CP plus wife, Edith, and Sal checked in to the F1 hotel, leaving Bart outside. Edith was Scottish so had no problem with this concept. I rather suspect that CP’s French was good enough to ask for a ground floor room so that Bart could climb in the window.

We were not disappointed. 34€ a room including breakfast for both. Breakfast in France is not called “Petit Dejeuner” for nothing. The emphasis is on the “petit” but, no surprise, Bart demolished lots of it.

Anyway we were directed for our last evening meal to this “Belguimn restaurant” which sells lots of muscles and strong beer. We had lots of both. The birthday cakes came round at the end but we did not have the guts to ask for one, this was because Sue, who was fifty on that day, was absent – when will people ever learn.

Bart was fine in the morning, no complaints about the night noises. The boy needs to drink more.

After aforementioned luxury breakfast we went shopping to get my missing bits, including a compass. Yes I had agreed that it would aid navigation in all the clouds. Silly us, the shops don’t open until ten.

I am a good old fashioned socialist who believes that people are not slaves to capitalism but no shops open Sunday and Monday, nothing opening till ten, lunch between ten and two only. These people need a stretch of hard times to wake them up, or the aforementioned influx of Asians.

Anyway we did hang around and get the memory stick but not the compass, Bart gave me
his repair gadget, repair kit and pump and I was on my own.

This is normal. It is, at least, the fourth trip that we have been on together that he has left early.

What a bastard.

See Episode 3