Wheels pass wheels pass wheels,
People pass people on wheels,
French people cycle, too?
We had a very strange day today, which involved several chance meetings with a pair of people who are also cycling through France just now. We actually passed by them for the first time yesterday on the way out of some small town, and they very shortly passed by us. It seems that the enthusiasm of youth is no match for a lifetime of fitness, and the woman certainly sported the calves and thighs that would come from the latter.
She and her husband, we discovered, were cycling down to the south of France to visit a house that they recently had purchased. What a plan, eh? They showed us their route maps and the highlighted path they had already selected, and we balked internally, knowing that we could never plan a route like that. We can barely keep to a route for 30km once we do plan it. Hrmm.
Anyway, we ran into them at a grocery store and also at a bar later, so we said our friendly hellos and tried to pretend that we weren't racing across the French countryside despite the fact that we shared a string of goals for some time.
Today's ride led through the edge of a famous wine valley (the Loire) for a while (this part being hilly with spanses of river that kept it beautiful enough to be worth the effort) and then through an effective desert that spanned some 40km to the coast. After we left Luçon at the edge of the wine region we found ourselves in an intricate canal system that led through acres and acres with no shade or life. There were a few fields that looked like they'd been used for food at some time in the past, but now lay fallow. The bike track began along a canal on a gravel path, then it moved to share the deserted roads, and then it hopped up an embankment and was suddenly covered in charred plant matter. This last part was interesting; the nonpresence of a useable bike path led us to take a road that followed along nearby, but at some point they split so we had to get back up to the path... by this time, the ashes and rubbish were gone and replaced by wild, overgrown weeds and thistle plants. I used a knife later to extract a 1cm+ thorn that had become lodged in my pinky finger.
Then we travelled over 20km of nothingness (which I commented looked rather a lot like west Texas, for those of you who've been there) to La Rochelle, where we stopped at a seaside café to watch the France/South Africa match. If you weren't watching, let it be known that South Africa creamed France. Towards the end, France apparently got super discouraged and started throwing the SA players around for lack of something better to do. Once three of the SA players were out (two of whom were carried off on stretchers) and France had a red card and a yellow card under their belts, the French team scored a goal. Hmm.
The game watched, we elected to head down the beach a bit further towards Roquefort. For some reason we always seem to forget that French cycling paths are terrible, so we excitedly followed one that purportedly went along the beach. Well, it did go along the beach, but it was the rockiest and most horrible beach that I've ever been on. I was super happy to have my cyclo-cross tyres at that point. :-/
That beach conquered, we headed on and found a little stand by the sea that sold moules frites (mussels and fries). We stopped to eat our fill and end our day on a high note. Tonight we're camping in Châtelaillon Plage, and tomorrow we're heading down further towards Bordeaux. :)