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November 6 Sunday Bicycle touring France from Montigut France to Bourg-Lastic France "Hey, Campers! Hey, Campoors!" Honk! Honk! Car lights flash on and off. Music blares. More car tires scrunch on the gravel "Hey, Campoors!" Honk-honk! I groan and look at my watch. Five AM. Hmmm. Could be worse, I suppose. People start singing. So they do have young people here that go out and party. I was beginning to wonder if there were any. I get up. We may as well start packing up. It looks like the sleeping is over. At least we'll get an early start. I'm standing by the side of the tent when three male forms appear along the railing (we set our two-person bicycle touring tent inside a gazebo by the soccer field). "Bon matin," I say. They laugh, surprised at my being there as well as by my greeting. They all quickly duck under the railing as I tell them I'm from Canada and cycling France. They shake my hand and welcome me with a myriad of questions. I'm trying to figure out what they're saying when Sharon pops her head out the tent door to translate. They are surprised again and now they leave me and go over to talk to her. One particularly drunk fella comes over to me and starts speaking English and asking more questions. Soon, eight of them are swarmed around our tent in the little awning space. One fellow explains they rarely get foreigners in their little village, so they are very excited. Also, they have been drinking Pinot 5.1, an anise-based 45% alcohol, and are very jolly. It is supposed to be mixed five parts water to one part alcohol and there is a tap here beside our gazebo ... the only faucet for miles around they tell us. And we just happened to be camped by it. They stop here for water every weekend, they say, and just happened to stumble upon us. They give me a swig of their beverage. Extremely licorice tasting. "This is for men," one says. "Wine is for babies," another says. Yet another grabs the hat off my head and puts it on. They learn our names and break out into song -- something about Neil and Sharon always being in good spirits. "Merde," one says as they get ready to depart. "What's that?" I ask. "Ah, something akin to good luck when travelling," he explains. "Gee, thanks," I say and wonder what it means, especially since I can't find it in my handy-dandy French-English dictionary. He tells me that if someone says that to me, I should thank them, instead of asking what it means, because then it takes the good luck away. Two cars leave. David stays to talk with Sharon and Pascal stays to talk some more with me. David is speaking English to Sharon. He tells her he is 22 and works in a rock wool factory. He plays drums in a band. He says France has nothing good except the food. Pascal is talking to me entirely in French. He finally gets it through to me that there is a chateau near here that was bombed and we should go and take a picture of it for a souvenir. He is looking over my bike and gear. He thinks my flagpole is a CB antenna and he looks everywhere for where I have hidden the microphone. Pascal keep jabbering away to me. I finally ask David to interpret something Pascal is saying. After a couple of attempts, David says he can't translate what Pascal is saying. "Oh, it's too difficult to put French into English?" I say. "No," David replies, "Pascal's too drunk to speak properly. I can't understand him." (No wonder I was doing so well interpreting what Pascal had been saying.) Pascal hasn't said one work in English to me -- he just babbles on in French and mimes things. David says that when Pascal is sober he is a straight-A student in English. By the time they get ready to leave, it is 7 o'clock and the sun is coming up. David, taking his departure, apologizes, "Forgive me and my friends for waking you! We didn't know you were here." Sure. "Hey, Campoors!!" Honk. Honk. We throw our legs over our fully loaded touring bikes and cycle slowly through Montigut. A bakery and small grocery store are open. Hey, I thought everything was closed all day Sunday. Maybe they're open until noon? We're climbing lots of hills. We have great views of the valleys. Tiny farms dot the countryside with crooked lines of trees and hedges. We're on a small road, D987, and traffic is light. Climbing steadily on our bicycles. I pull my bike to a halt by a graveyard to wait for Sharon and have a piece of chocolate. I take a picture of the graveyard while marveling at the glass houses built over the graves and think How long would those glass houses last in America? One Friday night. Lots of leaves are rust-orange or yellow. As I slowly pedal up yet another hill in the last rays of afternoon, I look down a hillside and observe a tree so bright it looks illuminated from within. Stunning. Some of the sights of nature one sees while on a bicycle tour are amazing. We pull our loaded bikes to a stop in Bourg-Lastic and watch a van unloading goods into a specialty regional store. I ask if they're open. Yes. I go in and buy fruit. Lots of oranges. No price was shown so I ask. "Thirteen francs," he responds. "Per kilo?" I ask stupidly. (Of course it is.) The next thing I know I'm walking out with a kilo bag of Clementine oranges. At least they're tasty. I go in to use a public toilet and discover that someone has shit backwards from the footsteps. "Stupid foreigners," I mutter. We get back on our heavily loaded touring bikes and pedal a ways down the road before finding a leaf-strewn pathway leading down to a river. I explore and find a great camping spot under a big old oak tree. We have a marvellous view of the hillside with its autumn splendor and rushing water. It is an incredible starry night. Who would have though bicycle touring in France would bring such pastoral delights? There is a train track on the other side of the river. A small mountain train chugs past in the dark. Dogs, in the distance, bark. Sharon and I think the dogs are barking because they know we are here. |
