Tomorrow is a sort of red-letter day for
me, for rather obscure reasons. It is the twelfth stage of this year’s Tour de France, beginning in Toulouse,
and ending 209.5 kilometres later at a
small town in the Pyrenees called Bagnéres-de-Bagorre, a name that is indelibly
engraven in my memory. I can tell you why that is, in case anyone is
interested.
It happened in 1952,
when I was 24, and my wife Shirley and I, having left New Zealand two years
before with the obligatory need to “have a look at the world out there”, were about midway through, and had managed to
save enough – we hoped --- to give us a
month in France, on our first visit to the continent of Europe.
It all had to
be done in the cheapest way possible. We bought the smallest possible tent, and
a tiny methylated spirits stove, bought
a pre-war tandem bicycle that just barely worked, and had an immense pannier
bag stitched up to carry most of our stuff, including the bible-thick book
locating the tens of thousands of camping places maintained at the time by
every tiny village and municipality in France, as well as some books for
reading, which included, I remember, an immensely amusing book of ancient memoirs
by William Collett. And so we set off
on the Newhaven-Dieppe ferry to undertake a ceremonial visit to France dressed
in our formal wear of tee-shirts and scruffy shorts.
I wrote 16
years ago about this trip to France, in a small book that not too many people
have read, and I can hardly do better
than to reprint what I wrote then about some of our experiences as we made our
own Tour de France, beginning early each morning by packing the tent, then
cycling to the nearest village where we were lured to the nearest bakery by the
delicious smell of newly baked bread, then back into the countryside where we
would sit by the road to eat our wonderful breakfast of bread and cheese. At
the height of our adventures along the way were such as the passing through
huge fields of clover on both sides of the road, a countryside transformed by
incredibly fragrant scent, such as I had never imagined in my previously
limited experience of countryside, and have never seen equalled since.
And so on
further to some other town or village, to pitch our tent again around one
o’clock, giving us the afternoon both to rest from our exertions and to explore
the streets and shops of the town. Those shops! Bulging with glorious-looking,
and superb-tasting patisseries and
charcuteries, struck us, direct as we were from still-rationed England, and
before that from utilitarian New Zealand and poverty-enmeshed India, with complete
amazement.
Here I can pick
up the narrative:
“As we got off
the ferry in Dieppe, we had no idea where we were going, except south. We had
no conception of how far we could cycle in our month before having to turn back.
We wanted to see the Pyrenees, but
didn’t dare think we would be able to get so far, and, of course, Paris ---
an imprecise plan rather typical of our
course through life. We headed south across the gently rolling hills of
Normandy, came to a signpost to Bacqueville, which was marked on our map, and
by five in the afternoon of a glorious day found ourselves riding between
plain, brown fields where men were working at the harvest. Stooks of hay lay
scattered comfortably across the fields, and exquisite country scents drifted
up to us.”
This landscape
was lovely; then, suddenly, disaster. The pride of our equipment, our gleaming,
expensive pannier bags ripped across the top and tumbled to the ground, giving
way in a fashion that made us wonder how, with workmanship like that, the
English ever managed to win the war.
“Cursing English workmanship, I redistributed
our luggage by tying it along the length of the tandem. In the gathering dusk
we approached a peasant house surrounded by pigs and sheep, hens and chickens,
running free. On our inquiry, the woman, small and lean, but with bright eyes,
turned to her husband who was sitting at the kitchen table. “Oui”, he said,
giving his consent for us to pitch our tent among his animals. We bought eggs
and milk, and they gave us water from their well. When our tent was up, under
an apple tree, Madame came with a
huge bottle of cider, for which she refused to take money. We cooked our first
meal on our tiny stove, and when we passed the house on our way to take an
evening walk, they beckoned us in for coffee. Their three little girls tried
out their English on us, and we our schoolboy French on them. The farmer took
out a bottle of wine, and over it we managed to talk together. He had been a
chauffeur in Dieppe until four years before, but he preferred the life in the
country. In the morning, as Shirley tried to mend the split panniers, Madame emerged, unasked, with needle and
thread, to save our lives with the most graceful and generous gesture we could
imagine, allowing us to set on southwards, and ensuring that for ever after we
had a place in our hearts for the French people.
“This warm experience was
typical of our month in France. Friendly peasant farmers welcomed us to camp in
their fields, took the time to talk to us (which required patience, with our
French!), and usually offered us something to eat or drink in addition to the
staples we bought from them. At first the cycling was tough, with as much
walking uphill as speeding down, and always against the wind. But eventually
one early evening as we sailed south with the wind behind us, between the small
towns of Bellac and Cofolens, on Route Nationale
151, at last we felt we had wings. Everything, the pedalling, the pushing,
the scooting down hill and straining up, it all clicked, it suddenly seemed
easier and we felt we were sailing.
“We wore only shorts and
shirts, and quickly became brown, ragged and healthy in the blazing sun…. After
fifty or sixty miles, we would turn into a new camp ground. Every village kept
at least a field for camping, for which they often charged nothing. We took to
wandering around the small towns in the afternoons, sampling the superb produce
of the region….. For a few pennies a day we bought brown country mushrooms and
other vegetables and fruit. In many areas we could stop and pick blackcurrents
and berries that grew alongside the roads, and we ate them with cream at night.
From Bordeaux we headed south through a lonely forest, where we read in a local
paper that the Drummonds, an English family on holiday, had been murdered not
far away. (For several years, this became the best-known murder case in
France.)
We arrived in Mont de Marsan, a picturesque small town
at the confluence of three rivers, lying astride routes to Biarritz and the
Pyrenees, too late in the evening to buy food to prepare, so we decided to
splurge by having our first meal in a French restaurant. We spent a good deal of time looking around
the town for the best place --- something that became a regular procedure when
finally we reached Paris with its thousands of restaurants to match every
pocket and palette --- and finally we
chose the Hotel Richelieu, a
posh-looking place to be certain, where we could by no means be sure that two
ruffians in tee-shirts and shorts would be welcomed as diners. Maybe it was the
presence of Shirley, a handsome girl in
her simple finery and looking so damned healthy under her tan, that did it, or
maybe it was just French culture on show: whatever the reason, the maitre d’ and then the waiters greeted
us as if we were royalty, showed us to our table with authentic gallic gestures
of welcome, and opened up their menu which, although I have forgotten the
exact dishes we chose, I have never
forgotten the splendor for us of this beautiful occasion. We seem to have
chosen well: I notice on the Internet that Hotel
Richelieu is still there 67 years later, offering a menu described as ‘Assiette
Michelin, rated for its quality cuisine, yours to discover the best produce of
sea and country from South-West France.’ A menu that,
just to read it, makes one’s
mouth water in anticipation.
“We made it to the
Pyrenees, where at a little town called Bagnéres-de-Bigorre, our mended pannier
bags gave up the ghost and we bought some spanking new French ones, a thousand
per cent better than the English. Those pannier bags were genuine works of
craftsmanship, beautiful to look at, and ideally designed to do the job they
were meant for. And, like all works of good craftsmanship, they lasted us for
as long as we needed them, which turned out to be for several years, until we
exchanged our tandem for a Lambretta scooter.
“From Bagnéres, we turned
around, heading back for Dieppe, but by way of the Mediterranean coast and the
Rhone valley. On the way a few days
later, after passing through the walled town of Carcassone, while waiting for a
puncture to be fixed, we entered a small café in Beziers at 3.30 in the afternoon, a time when, in any place
we’d ever lived, one would be turned away contemptuously from any restaurant.
But here Monsieur et Madame, eating
their own lunch in the back, sprang to their feet. Of course, they could find
something, she said, and soon emerged with a huge plateen of soup, whole wheat
bread floating in it, a feature that would have delighted my father, who was
big on such homely touches. I think it was probably at this moment that we
became not just francophiles, but helpless, adoring francophiles, which I have
been ever since.
“Sleeping on a cliff above
the Mediterranean, we camped one night in a gale on the Cap d’Agde, and next
day watched the fishermen of Sete repairing their nets. We made it across to
Avignon and the Rhone valley, north to Montelimar, the self-appointed world
capital of nougat, and as far north as Chalon-sur-Soane, without having to that
point experienced even one day of rain, from the day we disembarked in Dieppe.”
That happy circumstance, a
sunny, hot and intensely beautiful August, fixed almost permanently in my mind
the misleading fact that one could always depend on France in August for clear
weather --- something that caught up with me in1963, when we took our family of
small boys on holiday in August and were subject to torrential rain almost
every day of the month.
When it did rain in Chalon
we decided to take the train to Paris, giving ourselves a four days to enjoy the capital of world culture, as I
naively thought of it. In those days we were able to camp right in the middle
of the city in the Bois de Boulogne,
at the usual nominal rate for camping in France --- one shilling a night was the
charge --- and that gave us some
financial elbow-room with which to take in some shows and eat in a couple of
outstandingly good, moderately-priced restaurants. By this time we had
covered 1,300 miles on our tandem, and
didn’t think twice about rounding with insouciant aplomb the Place de la
Concorde, already overcrowded with undisciplined French traffic.
“We were shockingly fit, and
convinced that France was the loveliest country on earth, Paris the greatest
city, the French the most civilized people. It’s a conviction that’s never left
me to this day.”
And wouldn’t you know: that
was the best holiday I ever spent in my life.
