When I was a little girl, I used to keep a very juicy diary. I imagined my diary to be my friend, like some heavenly person who wanted nothing more than to know what I had for dinner or what boy I was crushing on. When I was too busy to keep diary updated on my comings-and-goings, I would always tell diary sorry. Sorry diary, I have been too busy with my life to stop and tell you about it.
Now that people actually READ my diary… I am sorry that I have not updated this blog for such a long time. It is not finished, I simply took a siesta.
Since I last wrote, we rode down the coast of France and made our way into sweet little Pau. The homecoming was grand; riding straight south towards the magnificent Pyrénées. The first few weeks trying to live here in Pau were a complete shock to the system…. but now I have settled, and have a small piece of my brain available to try and comprehend this past month, I begin again!
The month was August, nights were cold, and we entered a leg of the trip unlike any other. Gone was the guidebook giving us hints, trails, maps, details… instead, we had Michelin maps and a compass and a bit of creativity. We only ended up on a few highways (highways make Kelly very unhappy) and only got stuck in a random crop field with random cows and random old French farmers once.
On the subject of entertainment:
Let’s be real, this whole trip was entertaining. But when there weren’t any kilt or beret wearing old men or people dressed up like characters from a si-fi film to people watch, or beautiful castles or rivers or mountains… or immense amounts of traffic to avoid, we had to come up with other ways to not fall asleep on the two wheels.
First we started an “American classics” book club, (not so much of a club actually, we didn’t find anyone else to join in fact). We read The Great Gatspy and Catcher in the Rye together in the tent— gag-me cute. Actually, to clarify, I would read and Todd would fall asleep. Although the next day he would always ask me “so what happened in the story last night?” as if I hadn’t just read it out loud to him while he snored.
Eventually we reached a point where we couldn’t find American classics in the stores any longer (no way!) and instead we took turns telling books and movies from our past. Todd recited (with surprising accuracy) Arnold Schwarzenegger classic, Collateral Damage, the Doom series and the real story behind everybody’s favorites shelled-heroes Michelangelo, Donatello and Raphael. I told him the Twilight stories, Over the Hedge (god, I love animated films) and Nicholas Sparks tear-jerker Dear John. It’s amazing how much you can get into a story! I didn’t miss television once.
The last two weeks of the trip, full of nostalgia and salty air (and Todd’s quite accurate recitation of the Lord of the Rings trilogy) we’re some of the best of the trip... and our lives. Once we found our way to the coast, the temperate ocean air kept us warm and comfortable, and our bodies were running like machines through the miles. The first night by the ocean (after that beautiful resort with the pool and sauna and restaurant and hard ground) we found ourselves without a camping ground for miles. Inspired by our French cycling friend Thomas who free-camped for nine-months, we decided to ditch the kiddy-land reports and get it on with Mother Nature.
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| setting up camp:) |
And after my scathing review of free-camping… here I was, free-camping. We set up camp in the middle of a nature reserve… 30 meters from the ocean, tucked into a little pine forest. We took our dinner (and bottle of wine) to the coast and made scrambled eggs. The sun didn’t set that night, it freaking exploded. Magnificent reds and yellows covered our secluded little beach. The tranquility and beauty of the moment, ushered further by the nearing of the end of the trip, was almost unbearable.
Yet there I was, surrounded by the magnificent flame in the sky crashing into the rolling ocean, with a bottle of wine and the man of my dreams… and my nerves were buzzing like a bee hive. What if someone see our tent while we’re out here and takes everything? Did we lock the bikes? What if there is a bear? Todd just squeezed my hand and smiled. Oh to have his fearless gut! We finished up our wine and dinner quickly in the early dark and followed the light of our headlamps back to the tent. Everything was just as we left it. I scrambled into the tent for that false sense of security it gives me— as if it were a long cabin reinforced by crowbar instead of a thin layer of fabric. We then proceeded to the obligatory ten-minute-blowing-up-the-worthless-air-mattresses routine and finally brushing teeth with our heads sticking out the tent flap and trying to avoid our shoes with our toothpaste spat.
Each foreign noise, I would quickly click off my headlamp and sit motionless… waiting for the predator to pounce the tent and take us prisoners to that dungeon in Dante’s inferno dedicated to trespassers. We sat there like fools in semi-darkness, until the noise subsided. You see, it’s not that I can’t sleep in the wild… I can’t sleep with the thought that at any moment someone could come by with a blood hound and AK47 and break down the tent in a fit of anti-trespassing rage. (Don’t worry, this didn’t actually happen).
We finally crawled into our sleeping bags and Todd started snoring immediately. I strained my ears listening for the sound of footsteps, or monster steps, but heard nothing besides the rumble of my great-protector of a boyfriend dreaming about steak.
At the first sounds of birds I was elbowing Todd, “Hey, hey… we can get up now.” He groaned. “Todd, we have to get up before someone sees us! Look, the sun is rising!” I force-fed him cereal until he was semi-responsive and packed up all my stuff like a bandit. We opened the tent to a foggy cold morning, and took down camp silently. Crawling out of the forest, I tried to remain natural. As if it was normal for two scraggly-looking twenty-somethings wearing spandex to be awake and emerging from the forest with pushing bikes at the mornings first light.
We covered a crap-load of ground that day, we felt like champs. The early morning rise gave us a chance to relax at midday with baguette sandwiches and more instant coffee… truly, the worlds a different ride when you get out of camp before noon. We rode across rolling hills, through small sea-side villages and country roads, catching glimpses of the vast ocean at every turn.
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| I wanted to take it with... Todd said no. |
On our maps, we found a strange anomaly. We knew that we were ahead of schedule and wanted to take a proper tour of the coast, so we decided to take a short detour to a sort-of island called Ile de Noirmoutier. There are two ways to pass through this area, a newer bridge, or the 'Passage du Gois'. This several kilometre long road is completely submerged at high tide, therefore is only open for a few hours each day. Luckily we timed it right and we’re able to travel along the entire stretch of road without any problem. Along the way, there were bent over locals and tourists digging for muscles (molee) and washed up sea creatures still slimy from the sea. Very cool.
When we couldn’t find a camping ground that night, we slowly came to realization that tourist season was officially over. All of the small camping grounds were closed, and many of the big resorts sat with empty parking lots. As the darkness crept in and our bellies grumbled… the sandy forest looked more and more attractive…. Free-camping it is.
And the trend continued, for six nights.
That’s right. The lack of adequate camping sites combined with ample, no-people-for-miles forests… pretty much force a person to free camp. My Todd, he loved it. Just the right mix of hard-core and slightly illegal for him to have a good time. It took me a few nights, but, to be honest, when no monsters attacked us in the night, no people noticed our little tent, and no extreme unknown free-camping disease fell upon us… I actually started enjoying myself. We learned to conserve our water, carry everything we need with us, and set up our tent in partial darkness. It was a bit lonely, a bit hermit-esk, but who can argue with free?
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| bike path? |
Continuing down the coast (after we took a shot visit to La Rochelle, where we met some super cool stoners who invited us to stay the night with them (if it wasn’t 10am maybe we would’ve said yeah). We then took a short ferry trip from Royan to Le Verdon (about 30 km) and entered an enormous public park (I swear, you could bike for days there and see no one). The forest used to be a huge marsh-land, but a smart business man planted billions of pine trees, which soaked up the soggy land and created a rich habitat for… loggers. Nonetheless, there is an abundance of bike paths and beautiful beaches, with small quaint towns just big enough to have a surf shop and a seafood restaurant. What more could you ask for?
This part of the journey is like a beautiful dream. The salty sea air, Todd reciting the lord of the ring trilogy through endless rows of trees and spending the nights tucked away in a bed of pine needles. Unfortunately, this also was the land of the ninety year old bike paths and no grocery stores.
In the outskirts of Bordeaux, we took our last great excursion to the Duna du Pyla (largest dune in Europe… the thing was miles long, and miles above the forest stretching like a massive prehistoric dinosaur sleeping in the sand). We walked up it and ran around like kids in the soft bright sand. We shared some rum and raisin ice cream (Todds new favorite). A few days later, we began our journey away from the coast, the beginning of the end.
To avoid the outskirts of the Pyrenees, we decided to make a gradual shift in direction to south-east and then once parallel with Pau head straight south. This route took us through the small city of Dax (and there we found a lovely camping ground in the burbs, with hard ground and an incredible shower). At this point we were a day’s ride away from Pau… but we really felt like taking our time. The urge to rush to Pau was long past, and as it were, we were arriving ahead of schedule. Although the weather wasn’t on our side, as we found as soon as we left the coast the temperature dropped an astonishing amount, and we woke up to temperatures just a few degrees above freezing.
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| LAST NIGHT:( |
The last night we just decided to stop when we saw a place that looked nice enough. Unfortunately… this “place” never showed up. Neither did any signs for a camping ground. So we decided that the last night of the trip was going to push our new found free-camping abilities. We choose a random farmers road, and hid our tent along a line of trees separating two fields. Our front porch was a grown-in back road with a field of winter-corn chattering in the wind. We nestled in and shared a quiet dinner of mashed potatoes and soup with a boiled shallot (the last of our trail food selection).
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| smile if you love doing dishes! |
We rode our bikes approximately 4,500 kilometers, or almost 3,000 miles. Visited seven countries, heard countless languages, cooked about 75 dinners with one pans and took more photos than you can imagine. In the end, the things I was looking forward to we’re somehow now important (I thought I would look like a total babe; toned and tan, but ended up with thick thighs, greasy hair, freckles and chigger bites) and things that I never knew I would enjoy, I truly did. I discovered that my body can do amazing things, if I let it. But more than that… I learned that our bodies are simply a tool to help us discover our minds, and damnit, I think I’m a pretty cool person. Being alone with your own head and thoughts, with no job, no friends, no real connections or newspapers... you kinda have to have a few chats within your head.
And Todd, well, I have never seen anyone more beautiful. As we rode, he glowed. This was his element, his zone, totally his way of reaching his mind. He has always been in tuned with his body, and how it moves… his personality was perfection on a bike. It was really amazing to watch. Him with his little camp stove… running on faith and gasoline, putting up the tent and greasing his bike chain with an old bandana. It was home.
Thank you world, for being a home.
Voila! I thought I would finish the blog here… but then realized, whoa, I’ve still got a lot to say. So stay tuned, as I will continue the blog through my experience teaching English in France, living on bread and cheese and learning how to speak all over again.
