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November 5 Saturday Bicycle France touring from Lurcy-Levi France to Montigut France I got out of the tent this morning and saw why it sounds like a river is rushing past our compact bicycle touring tent. There is. The ditch we crossed last night is now a raging torrent of muddy brown water. It is spilling over and is rushing past our tent not more than six feet away. I do not tell Sharon. She calls out, "What's it like out there?" I answer back: "The Amazon comes to mind." She climbs out of the tent and exclaims, "My God! How are we going to get across?" "I don't think we can, Noah." We are surrounded by water on three sides of our tent. We have (luck was with us) set our tent on the only patch of ground that is not underwater. Behind us, bush and forest starts. I scout around and find a pathway through the forest. We push our fully loaded touring bikes along the slimy ground. We eventually reach a three-way fork in the path. We take the left branch which we guess would parallel the highway. We walk, pushing our stubborn bikes for a ways. Sharon decides we are getting nowhere fast. She leaves her bike and checks out the path on foot. While she is gone I have plenty of time to take a picture of the green forest path we are lost on. Sharon returns with good news. She says the path we are following comes out at a country road. We continue pushing our touring bikes and reach the road. Beginning to pedal down the road, we are amazed! There is water in fields everywhere. Ditches are filled to overflowing. Never mind the ditches ... rivers are overflowing. All the fields around here are swamped underwater. We survey the flooding and shake our heads. We had picked the only dry spot around within kilometres. We cycle across bridges and see the water: brown, murky, bubbling and boiling, rippling and churning past smells of rotting vegetation as the dank water swirls past us and over tree trunks on the normally dry riverbank. I stand on a high sidewalk and look down into an old woman's yard. The entire backyard is flooded, right up to the first level of her home. I take a picture of a half-submerged apple tree with apples floating and bobbing in the brown water. I conclude that this much rain is not normal here -- even at this time of year. We pedal our loaded touring bicycles down the road and observe cows stuck on an island -- there's only a narrow strip of land between them and the rising water. Somewhat scarily, we note that it's still raining and there's no break in the all-engulfing cloud cover. We ride our bikes up a high road and look down at a beautiful green landscape with tiny farms separated by fences of briar and bramble. Which reminds me, yesterday I saw a giant razor hedge clipper going along shaving the sides of the hedges. So that's why they "grow" like that. Red-roof buildings dot the countryside. Mountains in the background. Lots of sheep and white cattle populate the green countryside. Church bells toll the hour. It's late. Sharon discovers a park with a covered area in Montigut. We had to stop and fix her rear wheel wobble. We thought the rim was out of true, but it turned out they didn't get the tube back in properly at the bike shop with the rim guard and it was thumping. It continues to rain with passing showers. We heard on VOA short-wave that torrential rains in Egypt caused damage to 70 cities. Nothing about France though, so it can't be all that bad. We did 120 kilometres yesterday. But to get that many kilometres in, we had to ride before it was light and after it was dark. We still had headwinds -- except for our short foray in the wrong direction. We saw our first public toilet today -- footsteps mark where one stands while one squats over a tiny hole. I was worried my knees didn't bent that far and I'd end up crapping on my shoes. Sharon says she's been practicing by going in the woods. There is a soccer game going on. The coach keeps yelling, "Allez! Allez! Allez!" After half-an-hour, I figure out this must mean "Go!" |
