Cycles, Tents and Two Young Gents

Cycles, Tents and Two Young Gents

Published by Steve Roach at Smashwords

© Steve Roach 2013

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CONTENTS

Catamaran and Chips

Germans, a Sore Backside and a Lost Gun

Table Tennis and Dodgem Mayhem

Bad Camp Sites and Bent Tent Pegs

The Neon-Lit Ghost Town

St Malo

A Thief and a Dead Mosquito

The Outsider

Illness, No Fish, and a Tash/Sash

Bad Feet and a Bee Sting

Sunflowers, a Forest, Two Punctures and Jesus

Doing a Runner

Swimming Trunks, a Big Stick and a Rabbit

Long Roads, Big Hills and a Dead Dog

Ant Experiments in the Heat

Little Frenchmen and an Empty Camp Site

High Noon

A Rat, a Cat and Two Young Ladies

Sept – Un

Lesbian Swarfega

Flyslayers

A Bald Tyre and Round Clouds

Wet

The Flood

Stinks Like Team Spirit

The Parting of the Ways

Divinity in the Mountains

Warm Fanta

Around Paris in Eighty Minutes

CATAMARAN AND CHIPS

On the morning that the big adventure begins, I get up early and check my bike. Knowing virtually nothing about bike maintenance, this involves looking at it, seeing that it has wheels in the right place, and thinking that everything is just dandy.

I check the panniers. These little rucksacks, hanging from a metal frame above the back wheel, are packed with the necessary equipment to embark upon a European expedition. There are some clothes, for instance. A puncture repair kit. Disposable cameras. And, of course, a big knife. Every adventurer needs a big knife, it’s mandatory. I don’t yet know what it will come in useful for, exactly, but that’s not the point.

Two years earlier, I was working in a petrol station. It was something of a low point in my ‘career’. One day, sitting with my friend J in the pub, I suggested that we should do something to liven our lives up a bit.

I suggested a bike ride.

OK, Ste, he said.

Brilliant. John O’Groats to Land’s End it is, then.

What?

Basic training comprised solely of a brief conversation about when we should do it. We were both inclined to get going as soon as possible. These ideas have a way of evaporating if you don’t seize them, and becoming cloudy little knots of regret if they remain undone.

For advanced training, we cycled to Stratford, a distance of about 20 miles. It nearly killed us. The bad thing about cycling to any destination when you’re unfit is that once you arrive, you realise (with a sinking feeling) that you have to get back home again.

Shortly afterwards, at the beginning of November, I quit my job at the petrol station and we packed a few bits and pieces and caught the train up to Scotland. Some may wonder at the stupidity of cycling a thousand miles in the depths of Winter, and when we were in the middle of the Cairngorms, freezing and with the light fading, we were inclined to agree. However, seventeen days later, we stood at Land’s End and shook hands, proud members of a reasonably small club of people who had completed the ‘End to End’.

Two years later, the need for another adventure began to niggle at both of us. Although it was tougher than it should have been, we’d had enough time to look back on the End to End journey and forget about all the nasty stuff. What remained were the happy memories of a trip of a lifetime.

Let’s do it again, I said one day.

OK, Ste, said J.

How about Europe this time?

OK.

I booked a couple of train tickets. I bought a European road atlas.

We were ready to go.

Back to that morning of the departure day, and I’m all set. We have about an hour and a half to cycle five miles into Birmingham to catch the 10:03 train.

I walk across the street to J’s house in order to check everything is ready his end and see, with some distress, that he hasn’t yet packed. His things are all over the lounge, spread out on the settee, the coffee table and the floor.

His mother rolls her eyes and J races around looking for shampoo, his passport, money and a million other things that he has decided he will need. For some reason, he has swapped his 65 litre rucksack for a 35 litre one, and as a consequence has to end up tying mugs and other paraphernalia from his pannier rack. He has no actual panniers, of course, for that would be too sensible. He looks like a tinker.

Are you ready now? I ask, worried about the train.

Stop nagging.

We’re so unfit that we become soaked with sweat on the short ride into Birmingham. I’m nearly run over in Digbeth by ignoring a ‘Don’t Walk’ sign at some traffic lights. There’s a screech of tyres as a middle aged businessman skids his car to a halt right in front of me and shouts some very colourful language whilst gesticulating wildly through the windscreen.

I wave my hand apologetically, offer a sheepish smile, and quickly get moving again. We make it to the station with minutes to spare.

The train ride is boring, even though we should be excited. When we reach Portsmouth we ask inside the Tourist Information office where to go for the catamaran. It’s a ten-minute ride away.

The sun is blazing above us, and it’s a blisteringly hot day. We find the ticket office, buy the tickets and head down to the boarding area. Waiting there, lined up on the car park, are a large number of motorcyclists. Their machines are beautiful, gleaming in the sunshine. Compared to these beasts, our bikes look like toys. The owners smile, and nod, and their faces have a kind of sympathetic expression. J speaks to one of them.

We’re in your gang now.

They laugh.

The catamaran is fast and exciting. We stand on deck and watch as two great rivers of water are forced out of the back end, and see a rainbow amongst the mist. Two and three-quarter hours later, we are in Cherbourg. France!

We disembark quickly, not having to wait for any of the larger vehicles, and hit the roads.

They drive on the wrong side over here, I remind J.

Cherbourg town looks nice enough, and pretty much what I expected. Plenty of tourists and English people looking a little bit lost. There’s no real reason to hang around, except for a quick check of the road atlas to find the road that will mark the real beginning point of this great adventure of ours.

We eventually find it, and head out of town towards a place called Les Pieux. At 6pm it’s still really hot and I am half-dead within about seven kilometres. I shout for J to stop and collapse onto a grass verge. After drinking loads of water I raid my panniers and find some supplies - two packets of peanut M&Ms. Not the traditional expedition food one would expect, but they were very nice and it was all I had. J declines my offer of some sweets. He’s not really a chocolate man.

We continue, and head for Le Grand Large camp site at Les Pieux. I assume it is going to be a big site, full of English people and discos and millions of campers. It isn’t. But it does have a swimming pool and that’s a good start. We have a hamburger and chips each.

Our budget for this trip is a paltry eight pounds per day, whatever that converted into. By this time, we’d already spent about £40 between us, which wasn’t the ideal start.

At 9pm we arrive at our designated pitching spots and erect our new homes. J puts his dome tent up in minutes. My bright green tent appears to have been constructed with a design flaw that makes it somewhat lop-sided. Thinking that any tent manufacturer wouldn’t remain in business very long selling such flawed merchandise, I accept that maybe the problem lies with me, and try again.

Whilst J has a shower, cleans up and goes to look at the sea, I educate the other campers in English expletives. Small children and their mothers look on with expressions of pity and despair. They have the idiot pitched next to them.

I want a hotel.

After finally setting up a tent that I believe has a good chance of not collapsing during the night, we wander off to the leisure area and play table football and a few games of pool. We immediately start betting our scant financial resources on the outcome. We’re both very competitive people, which was probably the main character trait that enabled us to complete the John O’Groats trip, and this raises the tension somewhat on what would perhaps be a boring game of pool.

J’s trying hard to learn the lingo. I remember titbits from school, which were few in supply because I was thrown out of the French class by the teacher and ended up doing extra photography lessons instead. I tell J what to say to the barman and when he’s finished I tell him that he has just accused him of bestiality. He doesn’t swallow it.

It’s midnight before we know it, and the bar closes. There can be no more avoiding the inevitable turmoil of a cold night on lumpy grass under a flimsy shroud of bright green, lop-sided canvas.

GERMANS, A SORE BACKSIDE AND A LOST GUN

I wake early.

J refuses to believe that French water is bad for you. Continental water contains bugs and microscopic diseases that English supplies have filtered out. If you drink their water, there’s a good chance you’ll end up on the toilet with something resembling battery acid leaking from your nether regions. This lack of filtering applies to ice cubes in drinks, and even to washed salads.

J seems unconcerned though. He makes himself a cup of tea with tap water, not even waiting for it to boil because he’s too impatient, and guzzles it down without the slightest pause. I think he will come unstuck with this cavalier attitude. He doesn’t think so. I know I will, however careful I am. There’s a certain depressing inevitability to it. He’s probably doing the right thing, getting it out of the way early on in the trip.

There’s a bakery on site and we sit down close to the pool and eat breakfast - croissants, coffee, orange juice, a French baguette and some Laughing Cow cheese. It’s very nice. J snaffles it down, but remarks that he’d much prefer bacon and eggs.

Four people arrive and stretch out their towels over the sun-loungers.

They’re German, says J.

How do you know?

We all know the stereotype but I didn’t think J had based his deduction entirely on this. They hadn’t yet spoken, and in all possibility they could have been French, English, Swiss… anything. J goes off to the toilet. I watch the new arrivals as they clamber into the pool and start swimming. They do about twenty lengths without speaking a single word to each other. Mechanical exercise with no outward enjoyment. No splashing. J is probably right.

After finishing breakfast and returning to pack up the tents, we head off. We’re no further on than two hundred metres before I call a halt. My butt cheeks are chafed from the cycling yesterday and, in my panniers of many things, I have just the solution. It’s a pair of cycling shorts, with a bit of padding sewn in. I quickly change into them and stand there feeling stupid. It looks like I’ve had some sort of terrible toilet-oriented accident in my new shorts. J smiles and I know beyond any doubt that I look ridiculous.

Chop chop, Roach, he says, and we get going again.

Within an hour or so, the sun burns away the light mist blanketing the quiet countryside. I silently praise myself on having the sense to invest in a road atlas – it’s already proving invaluable. It might sound obvious that any responsible adventurer would bring along such a simple navigation tool. But, to put this in perspective, on the John O’Groats to Lands End trip we made do with an A3 map of the UK. And, what’s more, we got away with it. Here though, it’s a different story, with an endless number of minor roads snaking off in all directions. In the atlas, all these minor roads are clearly laid out and numbered, so hopefully we won’t get lost. As an added bonus, even the tracks that clearly aren’t roads (probably farm roads, or forest fire clearance roads) are included, and we quickly learn that a simple detour along these can shave off a few kilometres every hour.

Unless you’ve undertaken a very long cycle trip, or embarked upon any other kind of adventure where the only means of transport is under your own power, you probably won’t appreciate quite how important minimising the amount of equipment you bring with you is to the overall endeavour. When you are generating the only forward motion, any additional weight in your kit quickly begins to wear you down, particularly if it’s unnecessary.

An A3 road atlas may not sound like much, but