I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move. ~Robert Louis Stevenson
The early
morning was full of spectacular bike roads. Clearly, beach resorts took
particular care to build some decent infrastructure in their areas. On the way
I experienced one rather scary moment when a small girl unexpectedly ran in my
lane just few meters ahead of me while I was going downhill. I managed to squeeze
breaks just in the nick of time. That could have been a bad accident, I am
happy that nothing happened. Parents should not let their children bike on frequently
used bike roads unless the children grasp the importance of few traffic rules.
I reached Royan,
a big seashore city and I needed to take a ferry to another foreland. I could
imagine other things for 6 €, but this was a must. The area offered on the
first glimpse not much and I did not expect any good roads there, but later I
realized that the opposite was the truth. There is a special bike highway going
through the whole area that also serves as a stopper for countless forest wildfire.
I knew I should not ride too fast due to my health issue, but I simply could
not resist the temptation to speed up a little on a scarcely used and perfect cycling
road. Biking in the forest was very pleasant because the smell of pine trees
mixed with the ocean air together with some shadow was way better than biking
in the burning sun that I experienced until the early afternoon.
Later in
the afternoon I went to a bakery to buy some baguettes for lunch. As I entered
the shop, I saw a tourist, obviously a foreigner, who tried to solve some kind
of an issue. There were two beautiful young French girls behind the desk and
apparently they did not understand a word in English. The guy was smiling,
waving around with 50 € and I would not wonder if he wanted something other
than just few baguettes. That was a perfect opportunity for a spontaneous
consecutive practice for me and I took the most of it, even though French is
not my official language combination. The guy spoke English poorly, but from
what I understood, the girls slipped up and gave him more money than they
should, and he, as a honest guy, wanted to give them that money back. I am not
surprised that they did not want to accept money from a complete stranger
supposing that they did not know what it was for. I had the thing settled:
explained everything to the girls with my funny French with a funnier accent
and even funnier grammar, but I guess the message came across. Then the guy
started swearing in German for quite unknown reasons and I immediately offered
another “language combination” if he liked. What he told me only reassured my
previous assertion and I told the girls once again that they had made a mistake
and as a result, they had given him more money than they were supposed to.
Afterwards a happy ending with smiles followed instead of words. I chatted a
little with the shoppers and was offered a free taste of a cake that was there
as a novelty for customers. They told me I can take it all, but I did not want
to show my food greed as usually, so I refrained myself. Yeah, a really funny
experience – and the thankful dazzling smile as the expression of gratitude
from the girls – priceless :)
I was
really lucky today, as far as beautiful French women are concerned, even though
my newly boosted confidence in language proficiency was immediately shuttered
because I met two other French women who both spoke better English than me. I
was overtaking two cute blond girls, as usually thanked for freeing up some
space and speeded up. Later on, I got lost as always and ran into them again.
Then we engaged in a conversation and I found out that it was a small family
trip of a mother and daughter who decided to make a little adventurous vacation
by sleeping in camps. The mother was a flight attendant and the girl studied
international business in London – it figures why she had such a great accent.
I kind of joined them with their permission in their trip to the beach for I
also wanted to finally taste the ocean. My wound was getting better and having
this pleasant company was simply a too good lure to me. They originally headed
to a nudist beach and I am really happy that in the end we did not find it
because something like that is not my cup of tea. Still, the beach we found was
absolutely awesome, just like from a movie. Golden sand, playful waves, not too
many, but not too few tourists either, a perfect sea access with no hidden
danger of shells, medusas and other stuff. The girls were really nice and
talkative and I was just having a whale of time. We left the beach at 6, wished
a great vacation to each other, and took the opposite routes.
After a blissful
break on the beach I biked further. The road was fine, but as it was getting
darker and darker, the road was also becoming narrower and narrower, with holes,
sand and other unpleasant surprises. I was probably passing through an
abandoned area in which nobody took much effort with building proper roads. At
night I have not met a soul for more than 2 hours. It was getting really scary
in the abandoned road through the forest
and vast open areas. Eva lighted the way very well, but I also needed my
headlamp to see further in the distance. In one moment a wild boar crossed the
road and gave me a warm smile with its beautiful white teeth. At that moment I
was pondering on finishing my night ride and building a tent somewhere, but
after this experience I told myself, no way, tonight you are definitely not
going to sleep in the forest. Nonetheless, I built my tent near the forest, on
a crossroad between the civilization and wild areas. I found few benches with a
perfect spot and I took every precaution to make sure that no animals would
come near to me: I pulled out my old unwashed socks that must have repelled any
vermin or maybe even all living beings in the kilometer distance.
No comments:
Post a Comment