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April 26 Wednesday Bicycle touring France from Mon Viviers France to Granges France When I peek out of our cycle touring tent door in the morning, I notice the clouds are still there without one clear patch ... but at least the sky is faintly brighter where the sun is supposed to be. It rained lightly last night. Sharon suggested that we leave our bicycle touring tent set up and take a bike ride into town to buy food and wait to see what the day is going to do. She is not keen in cycling in this cold and rainy weather. I boldly predict that it will clear by this afternoon. After all, how long can it stay like this? Are we caught in some grey zone? I convince her to pull up stakes and dismantle our cycle touring tent and reload our panniers and cycle touring gear. Maybe 30 kilometres up the road, the skies are smiling? We decamp in the damp grass. We get on our touring bicycles and recross a pedestrian bridge, taking us back over our clear little tributary of the Rhone. We stop cycling long enough to dump our accumulated three days worth of trash into a roadside Dumpster. After only cycling about four blocks we are in the village. I hadn't realized we were so close to stores ... we had approached town along the river and then followed the river as it skirted the back edge of town. Our silent mode of travel by bicycle allowed us to sneak up on a guy peeing against a church wall. Sharon said it must be some different kind of wailing wall. Mon Viviers is a medieval village in a picturesque setting with the Rhone River and pastoral fields on one flank and some short choppy hills on the other. A statue of Christ the Redeemer peers solemnly from atop a cliff. Sharon is starving this morning. We lean our loaded touring bikes against an ancient plane tree at the bottom of a steep hill to a Cathedral and use our long length of aircraft cable to lock our bikes to the trunk. A sign by the Cathedral says 796 ... referring to the year, I think. We leave our bikes and go around the outside of the huge stone structure, ducking through an arched passageway leading into the courtyard. Two men on scaffolding wave to us and continue their refurbishing of the building. We carry on to the front of the church and bump into an elderly couple peering at a brochure. "Bonjour!" I heartily sing. "Bonjour," the woman replies. They look British, I think to myself as they pass us. Then I hear the old woman say, "There's a patch of blue," in an English accent as she peers up at the sky. I turn to look up, and indeed there is a tiny patch of blue. Kodachrome, rather than black and white. One huge wooden church door is slightly ajar, as if welcoming visitors inside. At the top of the door, two wooden carvings of standing men. One man is holding a rather large sword. Please leave your weapons at the door before you enter is the implied message I receive. Only brothers may enter here. We go in and find the interior lit by a soft light falling through the many panes of stained coloured glass. Usually I find the old churches in France and Italy so dark, but this one seems brighter inside than outside. I have to squint my eyes to reduce the glare. The first thing I see, as we enter through a side portal, are two immense canvases -- paintings of religious scenes, of course. One is painted in bright sharp colours, rather than the usual drab pastels that lack fire, but spark the emotion of the reverent, capturing the severity of whatever event is being portrayed. As I round a corner into the main chamber of the Cathedral I am struck by a life-size depiction of Jesus on a dark wooden cross. This, however, is not what jolts me. Beneath his feet is a skull and two arm bones in a crossed position like on a pirate's flag but these bones look like -- ugh -- the real McCoy. I'm suddenly grateful I haven't eaten breakfast. Just below this treat is a bronze ball representing the earth, I presume. A long snake's body is slithering on the face of it. It has a horrid serpent's head attached. I almost expected it to crawl through the skull's eye socket. In my mind's eye, of course, that is exactly what it does. That's what happens when I read too many Stephen King stories in a tiny bicycle touring tent over the past few days. Whoever thought of that wicked depiction of Christ the Redeemer should be writing horror novels or making macabre horror movies. Could these mean: We'll scare the devil out of them? Or are they intended to put the fear of God in? I can hear them cackling now. And, believe me, it's not pious laughter. There are many large tapestries on side walls and behind the altar. This is the first time I've noticed tapestries in the churches. Sharon exits the church fairly quickly. I have no idea why. Hmmm. There's still lots of good stuff to discover. A blooming purple Judea tree greets us at the church's exit. As I stand admiring the church doors, trying to decide if I should take a picture, Sharon goes into the courtyard. By the time I follow, she is nowhere in sight. She could have either gone farther along to overlook the rooftops of town or back down to our bikes. I don't see her. Being "starving" as she put it, I assume she has gone back down to our touring bikes. That's what I do. On the way down I admire the greenness of the view in the valley. Sharon is not down by our touring bikes. We had passed several boulangeries on the way to the church. After checking my change, I decide I have enough for a couple of baguettes. I head off down the street to buy some. Main street is large enough for two-way traffic plus parking, which is an oddity in these medieval towns. The street is obviously of recent vintage, unless they knocked down a row of houses to put the street in. But I don't think they do that in Europe. Off the main street is a maze of narrow cobbled alleyways. I can see an enchanting view of the purple Judea tree and the Cathedral's imposing tower, lined by the stone buildings along the alleyway. I see a sign for a bread shop, so I go follow the cobbles in that direction. I find a bread shop, but it is closed. I return to the main street and continue down it, going past another church, a flower shop displaying radiant spring blooms, a super mercade with boxes of oranges, lemons, and apples set out on the sidewalk, a patisserie with some delightful looking pastries that each cost as much as two baguettes. Continuing along, I spot another sign promising a bakery in fifty metres and head down the cobbles once again. I see what I think may be a bank. I go to enter, but hesitate as I try to decipher the cryptic inscriptions denoting their services. I don't see any bank card emblems, so I plunder past toward the bakery. The two baguettes I receive are soft and warm. Like a vermin, I scurry along backstreets, past suspicious stares from townsfolk. When I get back to our bikes, I spy Sharon sitting on a bench nearby. She says something about me being her hero (a knight in shining white baguettes), but she really only has eyes for the baguettes. We tear into them. They are still steaming. I fish around in the depths of my panniers and extract the horrid prune jam mixture. Even though Sharon is starving, she still pronounces it as vile. Jam sure lasts a long time when it tastes like prune puke. We survey the map. We can cycle along N86 or wind around on little roads that cross and recross the river several times. We notice that if we cycle the little roads we eventually will have to return to N86 anyway. We opt for a slow start to our day's bicycle tour and head for a bridge across the river. Soon we find ourselves cycling along a white road depicted on our map (white means smaller and therefore less traffic for cycle tourists). We happily meander along on our fully loaded touring bicycles, cycling past tree-lined lanes and fields of beginning crops. One field has tiny flowering plants. A field across from it has nothing but sticks, looking like used soda straws, spaced evenly in long straight rows. In one town we can't find the road we want, so we follow another in the hopes that either it is indeed the road we intended to cycle, or it will intersect with the one we want. We bicycle past a pond of water that is fully covered by a layer of green algae. Weird, unworldly noises permeate the surrounding air. "What is that?" Sharon implores me with wide eyes. "Aliens," I calmly reply. Before Sharon's eyes burst -- and she can't get any closer to me without turning our bikes into a tandem -- I tell her it is a chorus of frogs. "They don't sound like any North American frogs I've ever heard before," she says. "That's because they're French frogs and they roll their R's. Crrroak! Rrrribbet!" I kid her. Creature from the Green Lagoon, coming soon to a free bicycle touring tent site near you. I went into a business I thought was a bank. Referring to our French-English dictionary, the sign translated to "savings bank." I pushed on the door to see if they handled cash advances. It was locked. I cupped my hands up to the window and peered into the gloomy interior. No sign of life. I checked the hours on the door. It is just before noon. The bank closed at 11:45. We still have no money, but we decide to pedal out of town. On our way out, we pass a Credit Agricole on main street. The clerks are leaving as we cycle up to it. It closed at 12:00. But, hey, there is an Instant Teller. I tried our Visa card, even though it doesn't show the Plus system on the machine's symbols. In a couple of minutes, voila, I have 2000 francs, the maximum the machine would dispense. We hop back on our fully loaded touring bicycles merrily go on our way. The bike riding is flat and serene between two rivers. We pass four nuclear power plant funnels, all steaming from each of their one congested nostril. I haven't seen any three-eyed fish in the Rhone River -- but that doesn't mean they're not there. As a matter of fact, I can't see anything in the muddy turbid swirling water d'leau. In Coucourde we mailed home this week's batch of postcards, along with our Italy regional maps we used on our cycle tour there, and stamps and coins for our nephew, Cal. I said "pas avion" to the postal clerk and it cost 22 francs ($6) ... considerably less than the 67 francs (nearly $20) last time. We cycled across the river on yet another hydro project. We cycled back across on a cool suspension bridge. As we cycled along the pastoral countryside, we spotted five horses, each a different colour, in a pasture. They galloped over to investigate the funny looking horses we were riding. Sharon fed them some tender grass that was growing just outside their reach, even when they strained their necks. There was an all-white horse with a noble looking head; an off-white one was starting to get grey with old age; a dappled mare; a sorrel reddish-brown horse with a white blaze on its forehead; and the fifth horse was a dark chestnut stallion that stood watchfully poised on a small knoll throughout our entire stop, while the other four crowed and jostled around the sagging fence, jockeying for better feeding positions. We didn't have any water left in our cycle water bottles, and the headwind was beginning to parch me, so I figured Sharon must be well past parched as she normally drinks three water bottles to my one. I pulled my touring bike to a stop and wandered into a "maison de sports" to ask for water. After I filled my bottles the woman wished me "bon courage" as I departed. They're actually very friendly in France when you're on a bicycle tour. We ride on, looking for a grocery store to spend some of our newly acquired francs at. Sharon wanted to go to one earlier, but I couldn't see the place that the sign was indicating, and since it was out of our way, I declined. Bad move on my part. Sharon has now passed the merely hungry stage and is well into cranky. She says I get cranky when I am hungry, but she can be a bear herself. And we all know mama bears are worst when they get cranky. It is getting late. We pull our bikes to a stop outside a small store. Off to my left I hear Sharon say, as I go to enter the tiny shop, "I don't care where you go. I don't care what you buy as long as it's not Camembert again. I'm tired of that stuff." You know you've been cycle touring in France too long when you don't want to eat Camembert any longer. Well, it shouldn't be a big deal, with over three hundred and sixty varieties of cheese available in France, I should be able to find something else. I'm not sure if Sharon will like it though. Some of France's cheeses are, how shall I put it? Tres yucky. The prices in the little store are high and as I'm sure we will find an Intermarche along our cycling route somewhere, I only buy a basket of semi-ripe strawberries from Spain to tide us over. We eat the ones that aren't too sandy and then cycle back to N86. Soon we see a sign indicating an Intermarche grocery store is ahead in five minutes. At a junction, we follow N86 -- which, unknown as yet to us, bypasses the Intermarche. In the little town of Granges we see a sign for a Mammouth grocery store, and turn toward it before realizing it is taking us into the city of Valence. At a traffic circle we see a sign: Intermarche two minutes. It points back in the direction we just came from. We decide to cycle back to the Intermarche, as we have no idea where the Mammouth is. By the time we make the decision, Sharon says we could have been there. I never think well on an empty stomach. We cycle into the Intermarche and I go in to buy bread, hot chocolate, apples, eggs (no-name that you pick yourself from a large cardboard stack and fill your own small container), chocolate bars, stir-fry veggies, all the fixings for an omelet, some green onions (or are they shallots?), and chopped bacon (in the land of France, convenience -- truly amazing), two cordon bleu, and a barbecued chicken that is on special (which, indeed is very special -- it still has some hairs and feathers attached, as I discovered later as I peered into the grease-proof sac). We cycled off and found a water spout that operates by spinning the top knob around quickly to pump the water out. We cycled out of town. At the edge of town we spotted some trees. Looks like home to me. With vineyard workers across from us, we pushed our fully loaded touring bicycles into some tall wet grass beneath a tree and behind a bush. Passing trains seem to toot the hours. Sharon is tired. She must have got too much sleep from our extended stay in our bicycle touring tent while it was raining a couple of days ago. We set our Kelty bicycle touring tent up so the door has a view of some splendid purple irises growing wild on a side bank. Above us, steep cliffside remains of an old castle can be seen. They are little more than a rocky outline skeleton staring over the precipice. I have been writing so long in my bicycle touring journal that Sharon asked me if I were writing about tomorrow. A few more minutes passed and I was still scribbling madly away. Sharon enquired if I was now writing about next week. |
