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20 Duelling Church Bells A bird, warbling like a sonar depth charger, did its bit to add to the din of ribbiting frogs and barking dogs--so much for the peaceful countryside. In the pale moonlight, alien croaking voices rose to a crescendo sounding like a conspiracy to overthrow the reign of the mutant howling mutts. The frogs eventually emerged victorious, drowning out the wails of the moon yowling canines. The church bells across the valley were equally gregarious. First they gonged the hour, then a different chime sounded for the quarter hour: one chime for quarter past, two chimes for half past and three chimes for forty-five minutes past the hour. At 12:45 it gonged twelve times for the hour, then three more chimes for the minutes. From midnight until 1:00 a.m. it gonged a mind boggling fifty-five times--the perfect company for an insomniac. The church farther up the valley played a tune first, then gonged the hour. The town's folk must have had church bell envy. "My gong is bigger than your gong." A blue sky with a slight breeze greeted us in the morning. We were tucked away in a wildly overgrown olive grove. Next to us the trees were neatly trimmed and the grass was cut. The road leading to the grove was one lane and we were setup near a corner. Each driver, barely slowing, gave a toot on their horn to warn anyone approaching from the opposite direction. "Italian drivers speed around corners with equal pressure on their horn and gas pedal," Sharon deduced. At the France-Italy frontier the border guards waved us through. Four of them were standing chatting with each other. With the European community unity there appeared little for the fellas to do. But no one had decided what to do with the surplus of ex-border guards. Everything in Italy seemed overstaffed compared to North America. We passed eight guys working on the road--with one jackhammer between them. What did they do? Share it? They stood around watching one guy jackhammer. Maybe the union didn't want their arms to get sore, so they supplied eight guys per jackhammer? "Hey, it's my turn. Turn it up to ten." "Why are there so many of them?" I wanted to know. "All that standing around they do, they would get bored if they didn't have a bunch of people to talk to," Sharon decided. "Maybe there's that many of them so they can provide an audience and clap and cheer as we go by," I said. "Bravo!" they called out as we passed. It didn't take long to pass through Monaco's city of Monte Carlo and soon we were eating lunch overlooking Nice. I asked Sharon if she wanted to go to her favourite park, but she declined the invitation. The sun had more strength and there were many more people than on our visit three months earlier. Roger would have had his Mickey Mouse shorts on and been out scoping the beach. Mega traffic. Sharon and I were two dots on an eight lane road out of Nice and it didn't bother me. Amazing how a few days in Italy cured one of cycling phobias. The whizzing motor scooters were gone. Car drivers followed the rules of the road. It all seemed so orderly. We went through Cannes, past the old stomping grounds in La Bocca. We followed route N98 through the mountains and along the sea. At Theoule we pushed our bikes along a gravel road cut into a hillside above the train tracks. There were many trees, but no flat spots to pitch our tent. The gravel road turned out to be a dog-walker path, as well as a favourite for hard core mountain bikers. We waited until it was twilight, then pushed our bikes back to the "easy" place Sharon had seen. It entailed removing all our panniers and hoisting our bikes up a treacherously loose slope. At the top were rocks, sticks, stinging nettles, thorns and a creek. It didn't leave much room, but we managed to squeeze onto a tiny outcrop flanked by the stream on both sides. I was cranky, tired and hungry. Sharon insisted on making pasta--I thought it was too much trouble to drag everything out, but by the time she finished I was in a much better mood. |
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