"A traveler without observation is a bird without wings." — Moslih Eddin Saadi
In the next morning Krzysztof sprang a surprise on me when
he ordered French breakfast that we enriched with some salami, cheese and eggs.
The usual French breakfast basically consists of a piece of bread or baguette,
jam, butter, croissant and black coffee served in big funny caps. The people
around us must have been amused by looking at our lavish breakfast. Well, what
the French enjoy in the evening, we in the middle Europe like to have for breakfast.
As always on my journey, it was for me a strange feeling of luxury to sit at a
table with coffee and breakfast. With all due respect, dear readers, you have
not the faintest idea what it is like, unless you stay voluntarily in a tent
for 20 days without basic amenities.
We departed rather late, having many kilometers to
catch up on. I had bad luck during one break because my bike slipped down and my
bike gear stabbed my foot. It was a deep wound and started blooding heavily. As
usually, I airily put some plaster on it and did not care anymore.
I had a great opportunity to try out Krzysztof's bike for a while. Well, I must say that it was truly a horse of another color! It was like riding a bike version of Harley Davidson. All the hi-tec gears, handles that fit just like a glove, speed lock for the bike fork and very practical luggage made riding the bike on the road a whole new experience. No wonder, it was brand new road bike and of a higher price category, about twice the price of my bike. I was really amused by Krzysztof's reaction to my bike that he called a perfect torturing machine for masochists. Well, it might not be far from the truth.
On the way we were asked for help by one man on a
special bike. He found a small cat and it was breaking his heart to leave it
there alone. It was obviously hungry and needed to be taken care of. We gladly
helped, and Krzysztof helped with transporting the cat in his front luggage while
I took his belongings on my bike. We were supposed to ride about 6 km in the
same direction as we were originally heading to, so it was really not a problem.
Operation save the kitty ran pretty smoothly,
on the way we even helped few elderly ladies to fix their bike. Oliviert, the
guy on the special bike was joking that I might have a special taste for old
women when I was so eager to help. Actually, quite the opposite is the true,
even though it is true that I always try to be helpful. After all, so many
people have helped me that I feel obliged to pay it forward. After we had accomplished
our bonus quest, we were invited for something to drink, which in fact later
became an invitation to lunch. His spouse was equally nice and they treated us
with tasty Prosecco and Crème de Cassis a la Kir Royal. For lunch we were lucky
to taste the original ratatouille, and I can now confirm that this dish is
really good. I originally thought that I disliked ratatouille because I tried
it once from a cane bought in Lidl during the French week, but it goes without
saying that can food pales in comparison to the real stuff. The food and drinks
were delicious, the company utmost pleasant and the mood also great. It was
interesting to exchange views about countries and learn something about France
from the insiders. Oliviert has a beautiful house with very well cared garden
and a pool – I would call it a rural paradise. Their 2 plus 1 new cat and 2
dogs only emphasized the atmosphere of an idyllic dwelling. Everything was
great, but out of the sudden, my wound started bleeding again. Oliviert noticed
that and immediately tried to fetch several friends of him who as pharmacists
could professionally take care of it. I insisted that it is just a little scratch
and it does not need any special attention, even though the blood all around my
feet gave another impression. In the end, all of his friends were not available
on the phone, but Oliviert's spouse was so nice that she cleaned the wound and
gave me some big back-up plasters. Short thereafter, we were totally caught
unprepared by heavy rain. Krzysztof managed to cover our bikes just in time,
but it poured so much that we were totally wet within few seconds. After some
coffee as warm-up and few minutes of break, we said goodbye to our new French
friends and set back on the road. We were elated by this experience for the
rest of the day, saying that their generous hospitality and this quite
coincidence were almost unbelievable. But as Oliviert earlier said, he also
travelled a lot and having the traveler spirit, he feels hospitable to strangers.
Someone who does not travel much would be rather unlikely to invite complete
strangers. I must fully agree with him.
The next few hours were spent rather in rush because
we did not have much time left. We had a whirlwind visit in Nantes – just went
to the train station where Krzysztof inquired about his train ticket, to Lidl
to do small shopping, and then speeded away. Originally, I was looking forward
to enjoying what Nantes has to offer, but on the other hand, I wanted to see
off the Eurovelo 6 and therefore, I decided to skip sightseeing in Nantes and
continue with Krzysztof. In the evening I was quite tired, probably the ratatouille
with vegetable went through my stomach just as quickly as we rushed through
Nantes. However, we had a ferry to catch and we had to be on time. We had no
clue when the last ferry goes, but it was sure it will not drive until the late
evening. In the end we managed to catch the last but one just in the nick of time – one more minute and we could only
beckon the ferry from the shore.
Then we biked for another half an hour, took a nice
break with beer and some fruit and asked one guy where we could find a camp. He
gave us clear directions, but my frequently updated offline map did not
indicate any camp in that area. I think that there was a good reason for it as
we were to find out later. The camp appeared to be closer than anything else
and Krzysztof said it would be worth of trying. I was rather for going to a
camp I found on the map, but I acquiesced since I could not put too much
reliance in my offline maps, either. It was about 9:30, getting dark and cold,
my socks were still wet from the rain and tiredness also did its deal on our
strengths. After several kilometers, when we were about to give up and plan a
retour, Krzysztof happily showed me a sign that said the camp was quite near. I
was really surprised and happy that in the end, this detour was not all for
nothing, and we rushed to that place. Well, those who know me are quite aware
of the fact that I do not need any luxury to feel comfortable. If it were so, I
would not undertake this trip in the first place. I guess it would sound
utterly ridiculous when I start complaining about living standards right now,
but you bet that I am having a luxurious living in my tent compared to what we
were offered there. That let's say, proto-camp was namely quite dilapidated
even to my standards. We asked the proprietors whether they had a free caravan
to lend and it appeared to be quite a difficult task to find that out. They
were very nice, but apparently also practiced some kind of an alternative
lifestyle. Krzysztof inquired about shower, I took the role of the consecutive
interpreter and actually later a mediator as well :P Now few words to those
showers. Imagine a ramshackle building where you can see all sort of moldy old
pipes with awfully looking walls and old leaking garden tubes serving for your shower. The shower
corner was a realy corner, why would they bother with linings, eh? The guy introduced
us to this utmost touristic horror with words "And now, here you can take
your shower – and here is the light, you just need to plug this in." An amazing
idea to put a power strip for a temporal light to a place where water splashes
all around! At that very moment, I dismissed any thoughts about having a
shower. I exchanged my looks with Krzysztof, but he appeared to be alright with
that. "Well then", I said, "let's see the caravan." The
presentation of the caravan was a special task that was done by the boss
himself. We entered an old (I mean, really old) caravan where you could feel
putrid smell of a bygone era and rather would not like to know what history was
written there. The boss pulled out the second bed with a broad smile and went
for some sheets. I wanted to explore the caravan a little bit more so I opened
the only cupboard there. I found there some smelly rubbish, and surprisingly a
half of a cake. I rather did not want to know how old it could possibly be. For
Krzysztof, that was the last straw that
broke the camel's back. Now I had the pleasant duty of explaining the two
dangerously looking men with even more dangerously looking fighting dog (with
even more dangerous name Tyson) the situation that we have decided to look for
something else. It actually ran much more smoothly than I had originally
thought. Later, I regreted that I did not take any pictures of that campsite.
It looked so scary that even I was afraid of pulling out my cell phone there.
Afterwards, we were left with no other alternative
than to look for another place to stay at 10:30 pm. As you can imagine, most of
the small accommodation places is closed by that time and we were frantically
asking around in bars and restaurants where we could find a place to stay. We
rode another 30 minutes on the main road and found a little village. Krzysztof wanted
to check the advertised room for rent, but it was futile. Meanwhile I checked
something on my GPS, but by the time I finished, Krzysztof was already gone. I
was like, great; nothing better could happen than getting lost in a strange
city in the dark and looking for each other. Eventually, I found him on the
main square. He talked to a group of partying people and to my utmost surprise
told me that they agreed that we could stay with them. The funniest thing was
that the guy who invited us was not the proprietor of the house, but the owner luckily
did not mind either I guess you can imagine how extremely happy we were that we
found a place to stay. It was a decent party, one of the guys celebrated his
birthday and the others were his colleagues from work. They all worked in the
factory for biscuits in St. Michelle, probably the most famous French biscuits
that are exported all over the world. I immediately added that it would be my
dream job to work in a biscuit factory. To my utmost surprise; however, they
did not have any factory shop where you could buy the products for a bulk price.
This totally reminded me Edinburgh where I went to a biscuit factory every now
and then to enjoy plethora of sweets for my morning coffee. Besides biscuits,
they had a very interesting salty cake with ham for which I immediately asked
the recipe. I intend to bake it back at home, but I do not hold high hopes that
it will be exactly as delicious as after biking 120 km. Hard to believe, but we
could even take a shower after this hard day. All of them were terribly nice
and I had a great opportunity to practice my French a little. This was really
incredible – just a stroke of luck and really a happy ending of all those
pitfalls we had to get through. In the morning we were offered some coffee and
our gratitude was beyond words (especially beyond my poor French vocabulary).
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